Churchill's at night
Photo by Tony Vargas
Longtime Churchill's Pub manager/booker/in-house promoter, Michael Toms, made his exit from the venerable Miami institution this past January 1. Churchill's marks its 30th anniversary as a mainstay of the Miami music scene in 2009, and owner Dave Daniels will be taking over the lion's share of day-to-day operations.
Toms was a bartender at the venue in the Eighties, then left to travel for some years before returning to Churchill's in the early part of the new century. He was instrumental in bringing the business to a second renaissance after a downturn in the Nineties.
"There were quite a lot of good times, from local bands that came up and really impressed me, to bigger national acts like Agent Orange and Dick Dale, to the low points, which were the spate of robberies in early 2001," he says. "Being able to help out Sweat was a high point....I was blessed to be in a place to help them out. I see it [Sweat Records] as big as a lynchpin for the future of Miami music as Churchill's has been in the past."
Toms is moving on to start an liquor inventory management company called Bevinco of Miami.
-- Dominic Sirianni
