While his kid-brother, Bill, was already a local legend from the Replacements' and Soul Asylum's road crews, Tom Sullivan gave up a successful career in insurance to make his mark on the Twin Cities music community. He and Bill co-helmed the famed Minneapolis rock club the 400 Bar in the late-1990s and 2000s.
Five years after his bar-owner days ended, Sullivan died suddenly Tuesday at home in Minneapolis. Cause of death was not certain. Bill said his brother "died peacefully in his sleep." He was 62.
The eldest of eight siblings and a father of four, Sullivan was a captain of the basketball and track and field teams at Minneapolis Southwest High School and went on to play football for University of St. Thomas. Then, in 1976, "he got a bitching Camaro and headed west, which was the thing to do in those days," Bill Sullivan fondly recalled.
Sullivan came back to Minneapolis in time to help his road-weary brother take over the 400 Bar on the corner of Cedar and Riverside avenues in 1996. There, the brothers helped foster the careers of future local music stars such as Mason Jennings, Haley Bonar and Caroline Smith and up-and-coming touring bands the White Stripes, Drive-by Truckers and Bright Eyes.
Tom was also keen on honoring the bar's ties to Minneapolis' West Bank music scene of the '60s and '70s, and he brought back Willie Murphy and Spider John Koerner for regular gigs.
"He was more the nuts-and-bolts guy behind the place," said Conrad Sverkerson, stage manager at First Avenue and a 400 Bar employee before the Sullivans' ownership. "A lot of the day-to-day work was Tom's."
Jennings credited Sullivan for giving him his start in the music business in 1998, when he signed up the newly transplanted singer/songwriter for a weekly gig before he even had a record out.
"He believed in me and my music when I really needed support," said Jennings, who went on to sign a national recording deal a few years later.
