Montana’s most notable recent restaurant goodbye came in downtown Bozeman, where a well-known steakhouse closed without much public warning. The shutdown joins the restaurant closures that have surprised diners across America, but this one stands out because of how quietly it happened, and because of who had been running it.
Open Range is no longer operating in its downtown Bozeman space.
Open Range in Bozeman
Open Range had been one of downtown Bozeman’s recognizable steakhouse names, located on East Main Street in the heart of the city’s dining district since founder Jay Bentley opened it in 2013.
Bozeman Real Estate Group reported that the restaurant closed without a public announcement. The steakhouse had been purchased in 2023 by brothers Gavin and Joey DeGraw from Bentley.
Gavin DeGraw is a multi-platinum recording artist best known for “I Don’t Want to Be,” the song that became the theme for the CW drama “One Tree Hill.” His older brother Joey is also a singer-songwriter, and the two have spent nearly as much energy building hospitality ventures as they have music careers. In 2007, they co-founded The National Underground, a live-music bar in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, and in 2011 they expanded the concept to Nashville, where it grew into Nashville Underground — a six-story, 55,000-square-foot restaurant, bar and event space on Broadway that the Food Network once named one of the top 20 celebrity-owned restaurants in the country.
That hospitality background is what drew them to Open Range. Joey DeGraw, who has a home in Big Sky and had grown close to the Bozeman community over several years, said the brothers wanted to bring the same level of polish they’d built in New York and Nashville to the Montana steakhouse. Under their ownership, Open Range expanded from a few days a week to seven, added a happy hour, and the brothers talked about eventually building out the restaurant’s roughly 6,400-square-foot basement, the way they had at Nashville Underground. Joey had even floated plans for a future Open Range location in Nashville.
That made the closure feel especially abrupt for locals who’d watched two well-known musicians take a personal interest in the restaurant’s future.
A local report from 100.7 XL Country also noted that the closing appeared unexpected, with many residents still looking for more information about what happened. Photos shared online months before the closure had shown a notice in the window citing a renovation project, but that notice came down without any follow-up explanation.
The space is not expected to stay empty. A new restaurant called Meson Frailes is planned for the building, which means downtown diners may soon have another option in the same location.
Still, a replacement tenant does not make the closure meaningless.
Open Range had its own identity as a downtown steakhouse, made more distinctive by the DeGraws’ hands-on involvement, and restaurants are not interchangeable simply because another concept moves into the room. Regular customers remember a particular menu, atmosphere, staff and era.
For Bozeman, Open Range’s quiet ending marks another sign of how quickly the city’s restaurant scene can change — even when the people behind the counter have platinum records to their name.
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