What is Old Town Tavern?
Most Old Town bars play music. Old Town Tavern books it, every day, and has since 2006. It began in a small brick building at 7320 E Scottsdale Mall, on the Civic Center a short walk from Brown Avenue, and called itself “the biggest little stage in Old Town.” For most of its life that was accurate. The room was about 800 square feet, the upstairs looked like a treehouse, and bands often played in the alley out back.
The music is the point. The performers are mostly Valley musicians playing rock, acoustic sets and covers, with afternoon shows and night sets, and some of them have national résumés. When Phoenix New Times named it the Best Hidden Gem Music Venue in 2021, it listed Gin Blossoms guitarist Jesse Valenzuela, Pistoleros alum Mark Zubia, Corey Gloden of Wyves and Shawn Johnson as regulars. Cover is rare. Beer is cheap by Old Town standards.
In 2025, with the building aging and the lease not renewed, owner Paul Mitchell moved the tavern about 20 feet east, into the former Back Door building at 7330 E Scottsdale Mall. The new place is about 3,000 square feet, with room for two bars, a front patio and a bigger stage, and the tavern stayed open through the move. Finishing the second half of the building took another year of city approvals, which the City Council granted unanimously on July 1, 2026.
The crowd skews local: people who live in Scottsdale, musicians who know each other, and visitors who wandered off the Stetson Drive circuit and found a band instead of a DJ.
When to go and what to order
Pick afternoon or night. Music runs every day, with afternoon sets Tuesday through Sunday and bands in the evening. Weekend afternoons are the easy introduction, when the patio is in shade and the room is mostly regulars. The full lineup is on the tavern’s site.
Drink simply. The menu is built for it. Domestic, local, Mexican and import beers are $6, including Four Peaks, Huss Scottsdale Blonde and The Shop’s Church Music. House wine is $8. Bachelor parties looking for bottle service are in the wrong building.
Eat if you need to. From noon to 7 p.m. the kitchen serves a short lunch menu: pretzel sticks with cheese sauce, cheeseburger sliders, a foot-long hot dog, burrata bruschetta and deli sandwiches such as pastrami and Swiss on rye. For a real dinner, walk to Bootleggers Smokehouse or The Mission first.
Use the patio. It faces the Civic Center, and it fills first. On Cigar Night, a monthly patio evening that began on September 28, 2026, the tavern sells cigars and the first beer is $3. Smoking stays outside.
Leave the dog. The tavern asks patrons not to bring pets because of the crowds and the size of the patio. Park in the Civic Center garage. For the rest of the week’s music in town, see our live music guide.
The bar that stayed small, then grew
Old Town Tavern opened in 2006, the middle of the decade when the nightlife north of Indian School Road was turning into ultra-lounges and bottle service around Stetson Drive. The tavern went the other way: a tiny room on the Civic Center mall, south of the club blocks, with cheap beer and live bands. New Times visited in 2011 and found the outdoor “stage” was a section of alley separated by a few plants and a dumpster. The verdict: “Free music and cheap beer? We think so.”
That formula held for more than fifteen years and earned it a place among the Valley’s local music rooms. It also made the old building a problem. By 2025 the building was aging, the landlord would not renew the lease, and the bar had outgrown 800 square feet. Mitchell found the answer next door, in the building that had been The Back Door, and announced the move in August 2025 with a farewell acoustic festival.
The expansion was harder. Finishing the second half of the new building took about fifteen months of permits, hearings and council meetings. According to the tavern, part of the opposition rested on the belief that it planned to build a nightclub. On July 1, 2026, the council voted 7–0 to approve it, and Mitchell said work would start right away on a new stage, an opening between the two rooms and more than 60 indoor seats.
The honest assessment: it is a bar, not a restaurant, the food is a short lunch menu, and the music is local rather than famous. That is the point. As the 2020s push the rest of Old Town toward supper clubs and dress codes, Old Town Tavern remains the place to hear a working band for the price of a beer.