Will’s Pub, despite its permagrip on the cutting edge of the city’s music scene, cannot be claimed by any one generation.
The “compound” as some call it — the footprint of the place has crept in its 17 years at 1042 N. Mills Avenue in Orlando — has become a 3-in-1 multiplex, with different nooks and personalities but unified in their organic weirdness.
On this humid Friday, just days before the Will’s brand turns 30 years old, there’s a mashup of country-folk on the bill at Will’s says owner Will Walker, 53, but out back by Dirty Laundry‘s micro tiki bar, there’s late ’80s Mötley Crüe on the speakers and a drink called “Lemmy,” a double Jack and Coke, on the menu. A burgeoning Oaxacan taco pop-up is setting up to carve al pastor from the trompo.
The front entrance of Will’s Pub. (Rich Pope/Orlando Sentinel)
Inside at Lil’ Indies, past low-riding sofas that channel a Victorian funeral parlor and the vintage Ronald McDonald wheel cover that haunts the dreams of many regulars, there’s a quiet gathering of folks enjoying craft sips.
There are young women in club-kid boots, bare-midriffed, and fortyish dad bods — some dressed for the corporate Zoom they just left, others clinging to punk roots with T-shirts that now cling to their bellies. There are artistic women, Millennial and GenX, equal parts IDGAF and funky, thrift-store aesthetic. Dark skin, light skin. Pink hair, gray hair. It’s all here.
A twentysomething couple admires the work of local artist Kris Osborne — a textural rhinoceros in lovely muted colors, a haunting self-portrait, a girl on the beach, the background a series of crisp, graphic rainbows.
Will’s Pub, says Orlando musician Eugene Snowden, was one of the first places outside downtown Orlando’s then-thriving music scene to grab hold outside the district. T-shirts like these, now vintage, didn’t hurt. (Courtesy Will’s Pub)
Some are here for a quick cocktail, others will linger to hear the stylings of DJ BMF, who’s been spinning here for about as long as Indie’s, named for Walker’s daughter, Indiana, has been open — about 15 years.
Will’s moved to this location after 11 years up the road, in what was previously an antique shop, before the proprietors shuttered the place overnight, stripping the building of its copper wire and aluminum duct work, making the place unrentable.
Walker, who managed the property at the time, took that opportunity to open the bar he’d dreamt on since his teens.
The front entrance of Will’s Pub. (Rich Pope/Orlando Sentinel)
A tavern only in its first year, Will’s Pub V1 was doing quite well without live entertainment. Its storm-like turn toward becoming an iconic music and art venue, the community stronghold it is today, occurred on the heels of its first anniversary party — a weeklong event that Walker remembers, with humor, as “a total f*cking failure.”
The modular stage he built eventually became a real one, though early regulars will remember the ramshackle ones, as well, where plywood on the pool tables gave Orlando’s rich music scene a place to root down and grow.
R&B powerhouse Eugene Snowden, 63, then a part of an improvisational percussion band called Umoja, says he owes much of his career to Walker, who “would give anybody a chance.”
Performer Eugene Snowden on stage at Will’s Pub at an April 2024 show with the Legendary JC’s. (Amy Drew Thompson/Orlando Sentinel)
“It was very welcoming,” says Snowden, a New York native who describes the Orlando music sciene of the ’90s as “the closest thing I’d seen to Greenwich Village anywhere. It was unbelievable. Back then, big venues like the House of Blues and the Hard Rock had local bands headlining.”
Will’s, he says, “was a bastion of independent creativity,” ready to host anything.
“It was up to [the artist] to sink or swim, but you were going to have a stage to play on at Will’s…. Everything from a jazz legend to the craziest rock and roll to serious pit punk to real f*cking avant garde death…. It’s where people who were writing and playing their own, original music were welcomed.”
Part of its success, says Walker, was the layout — a front bar with a jukebox remained sound-insulated from the music room in back. Part of it was timing. The mid-90s to early-2000s, he says was a unique blip for the music scene. Genre-specific clubs were dying. The way bands were touring began to shift.
Will Walker, owner of Will’s Pub, sits in the center of the beloved Orlando mainstay that is celebrating its 30th anniversary in September. (Rich Pope/Orlando Sentinel)
Orlando was a teeming reef of talent, rife with “people who’d been playing in the city for years … and this ridiculous depth of local acts,” artists who Walker speculates were the children of musicians lured here by Disney in the ’70s.
“When we opened, some of these smaller punk clubs were closed or were about to. Places like Skinny’s and Club Nowhere,” he says. “The people who played there were my regulars. They were drinking at Will’s.”
Before long, he was renting equipment on weekends, jerry-rigging the lights over the pool table to shine on a makeshift stage.
“We had a regular scene there, and it was cool because we turned a lot of people onto stuff they’d never have found out about,” says Walker. “That lent itself to the multigenerational thing. People were curious about music outside their usual genres. Older people didn’t give a sh*t if it was a punk rock band. If it was good, they were gonna check it out.”
Will Walker, owner of Will’s Pub, at the front entrance of the beloved Orlando mainstay that is celebrating its 30th anniversary in September. (Rich Pope/Orlando Sentinel)
The next night, free jazz pioneer Sam Rivers might come in with a 16-piece band.
“And you’d see a lot of the same people, watching something totally different.”
Before long, acts from out of town, bands destined to hit — The Decemberists, Fallout Boy — were coming through. The local bands who’d open were just as good.
Orlando Weekly Music Columnist and Orlando Sentinel alum Bao Le-Huu was a regular at Will’s before he held either of those posts, but says he could easily dig through his own coverage and find an abundance of acts, now household names, whose forays through Orlando began at Will’s, alternative country acts Lucero and American Aquarium among them.
“Will was an early patron saint for bands like these,” says Le-Huu. “And even as they outgrew the club, and would play other venues when they came to town, they’d always end up over at Will’s to have some drinks.”
More than the bigger names, though, he notes. “There are some acts that are just underground legends that wouldn’t be coming through Orlando were it not for having a fan in Will Walker.”
The bar at Lil’ Indies at Will’s Pub. (Rich Pope/Orlando Sentinel)
After ten-ish years alongside the Loch Haven Motor Inn, Will’s moved to its current location, but says Snowden, whose career with the Legendary JCs (catch them at Lil’ Indies on Sept. 11), as well as his solo act, evolved through his time at Will’s, the venue didn’t miss a beat in its devotion to local.
“It’s still a scene where local is supported and musicians support each other. It hasn’t changed.”
And yet, everything has. It continues to. Innovating to survive. Expanding to thrive.
Not long after the move, Will’s began devouring its neighbor, a law office, in small bites, adding a patio and an office where promoters could print flyers and posters. It partnered with adjacent businesses, organizing street festivals and other events with Mills Ave. mainstays, like Wally’s.
A painting by local artist Kris Osborne, whose work is currently showing at Lil’ Indies, part of the Will’s Pub “complex” on Mills Avenue in Orlando. (Courtesy Will Walker)
Lil’ Indies, conceived at first as a quiet space where people could sit, grab a drink and catch up, began to showcase local art curated, then and now, by longtime Will’s-goer, Heidi Kneisl, a scenic artist whose queer, feminist, hardcore punk band, M.A.C.E., will be playing Will’s on Sept. 13, along with several others, part of a monthlong 30th anniversary celebration.
“A lot of artists hung out at the old Will’s, and a lot of hall mural projects and weird sticker campaigns came out of that,” says Walker. “[Kneisl] has been a friend and collaborator since then, and that’s how most of these things happen. The artists were there. And you just want to support them. We’re giving people what they want, but they’re the ones doing it.”
Lil Indie’s art program, he says, grew into its own legitimacy that way.
“Just like the music, it was organic. We didn’t do it because we had to; we did it because it was fun.”
Will’s, Walker told me, has been 30 things in 30 years. Kneisl hears this and speaks to its growth, its metamorphosis.
“He tangents into things, he wants to keep making it a place where people want to go, and that embraces everybody.”
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If you haven’t been to Will’s for a month, she says, “most likely, you can wander in and see something different. Because his gears are always turning.”
There are indie markets at Will’s. And wrestling matches. Pool and pinball and countless moments where some guy standing in the crowd is recognized by a musician on stage.
“Hey! Ken! Get up here!”
Next thing you know, Ken’s behind the drum kit. And he’s wailing.
Walker, meanwhile, is still behind the wheel.
“He has to be on the hustle and the grind,” says Le-Huu, who calls Will’s “an unmatched anchor for Orlando’s music culture … a place crucial to the soul of the city.”
As a business owner, Le-Huu says, “[Walker] works hard to keep it relevant, but he doesn’t chase trends. He follows his own compass. And I think that’s what’s at the heart of his success and longevity.”
Will Walker, owner of Will’s Pub, along with his daughter, Indiana, at the photo booth at the entrance of Will’s Pub. (Rich Pope/Orlando Sentinel)
And now, lil’ Indie isn’t so little anymore. Walker’s daughter’s own band, S.M.O.P., will be playing Will’s Pub on Sept. 5. It’s an interesting, full-circle time for her dad, who looks back on 30 years with an amalgam of amazement at both how long it took — and how fast it went.
“To accidentally fall into the middle of the scene that we had, at the time that we did, and be a part of the core of that was lucky and exciting, and it didn’t seem like work after a minute. And mostly, it still doesn’t.”
Want to reach out? Find me on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram @amydroo or on the OSFoodie Instagram account @orlando.foodie. Email: amthompson@orlandosentinel.com. For more fun, join the Let’s Eat, Orlando Facebook group.
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