'Old-school saloon keeper' and former Lee's Liquor Lounge owner Louie Sirian dies

The neon signs out front still said Lee's, but all the regulars knew the beloved Minneapolis watering hole belonged to Louie Sirian. Texas honky-tonker Dale Watson even wrote a song about it, titled "Louie's Lee's Liquor Lounge."

"He bought it from a man named Lee, but he didn't change the sign," Watson sang. "′Cuz Louie thinks what really counts is what you′ve got inside."

Remembered in the Twin Cities music community as one of the most trusted, no-nonsense bar owners in town, Sirian died peacefully in St. Paul on Saturday, his family members said. He was 88.

Born Louis Sirian, he had been retired from the bar business for a decade. He sold Lee's in 2015, 39 years after buying it from the family of its namesake operator, Lee Triemert.

Under Sirian's proud and dedicated watch, the vintage saloon in a two-story 1890s-era warehouse at North 12th Street and Glenwood Avenue — with its checkerboard dance floor and wood paneling adorned with taxidermy, beer signs and Elvis memorabilia — was transformed. Once a hidden-gem corner bar, it became one of Minneapolis' most hopping music venues.

"He's a reminder of how important the people are who deal with the bottom lines and keeping the lights on at music venues," said Nate Dungan, frontman of the classic twang band Trailer Trash, which began a weekly gig there in 1993 that lasted off and on into the 2010s.

"Louie was an old-school saloon keeper, not some cool, young nightclub owner looking to cash out. He was in it for the long haul, and it showed. He treated everyone fairly and was very proud of his establishment."

Drummer Noah Levy, who's played with Brian Setzer, the Honeydogs and Trailer Trash, said Sirian was "kind and generous, and he looked out for everyone around him."

"The first time I settled up with him, he overpaid and said, 'You kids are good. Here's some gas money for everyone,'" Levy recounted.

With Trailer Trash leading the pack, Lee's became a suddenly hip hub for retro-leaning country, swing and rock bands in the '90s, including the Vibro Champs, Jack Knife & the Sharps and touring acts such as Big Sandy & His Fly-Rite Boys, Wanda Jackson, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Deke Dickerson and Watson. It also hosted punk and metal shows later on, too.

As the music scene there got turned up and more wild, Sirian remained remarkably even-keeled and unflappable. Watson said he "got to appreciate the kind of guy Louie was" the second time he played Lee's.

"I'd just met the guy, and as he was leaving for the night he handed me the keys to the place and said, 'Just lock up when you leave,'" Watson recalled Monday.

"We never actually had the chance to lock up, because he came back even before we left so he could clean the place," Watson added.

Sirian was known to meticulously mop the floors himself and make them shine. Oftentimes he would stay late to clean and then return in the morning to operate a check-cashing business out of the bar, guitarist Dan Gaarder remembered. He also rented rooms above the bar as apartments for transient tenants.

"He was the hardest-working guy in the room, and a lot of the work he did was either for making the bar better or for helping others," said Gaarder, who played there regularly with Trailer Trash, Two Tickets to Paradise and other groups.

Sirian picked up that work ethic growing up in St. Paul. After serving in the U.S. Army in Germany at the same time Elvis Presley was stationed there, he went to work in the city of St. Paul's water department and was still working there even after he got into the bar business.

Before Lee's, Sirian owned two other classic bars in St. Paul: Joe & Stan's on West 7th Street (still open under different owners) and the Viaduct Inn on East 7th (closed, but immortalized in the movie adaptation of S.E. Hinton's "That Was Then, This Is Now" with Emilio Estevez).

Louie's likeness and likability became the basis for a "Louie Sez" cartoon that appeared weekly in the bar's ad at the back of City Pages, each with some sort of ironic quip or sage catchphrase he said. Dungan's favorite of those: "I'll see it when I believe it."

After retiring from the city of St. Paul to focus on Lee's, Sirian had some not-so-nice things to say about the city of Minneapolis over the years.

In the mid-2000s, he said city officials broke a deal with him to keep using city land he maintained for many years as the bar's parking lot.

He also voiced complaints about the Twins' new ballpark, Target Field, when it was built three blocks from Lee's in 2010. He said the entrance nearest to Lee's was "for the elite — the players and the people with the most expensive seats. They aren't coming over here."

Nonetheless, the Twins were fans and had Sirian throw out an opening pitch at the ballpark when he sold the bar in 2015. After retirement, Sirian showed the kind of dedication to his home in St. Paul that he did to Lee's, staying busy with projects and yardwork there. He very rarely returned to Lee's.

The bar lived on as a music venue under new ownership for four years but was closed and resold in 2020. It is for sale or rent again, and a listing for it at leesmpls.com shows time-capsule-like photos of the bar area inside remaining largely untouched.

While many would like to see Lee's reopen, Watson voiced a popular consensus: "Louie was the heart and soul of the place, and it was never the same without him there."

"More than anywhere else I've played, that place was defined by who owned it," Watson said.

Sirian's wife Carmen and daughter Jeanne both died months apart in 2006. He is survived by daughter Carmen and son Louis Jr., both of the Twin Cities. At press time, funeral arrangements were still pending at Anderson Funeral Home, 1401 Arcade St., St. Paul.