First anniversary Bash Featuring MoonCats and Dakota Shivers Brewing

March 28, 2026 • 2:00 pm @ The Prairie Dog Taproom

The whole thing started over bourbon in Spearfish. A buddy asked Michael Chidiac what he planned to do with his retirement. Four drinks in, they were talking about hot dogs. Five years later, they’re throwing a party.

That conversation eventually produced a pop-up tent in Custer, a food truck that blew over in one of those Black Hills thunderstorms, two seasons at Miner Brewing, and eventually a home alongside a lazy creek outside of Hill City. Along the way, Michael and his brother Jimmy were cataloguing everything that drives people crazy about going out. They called it the “eight waits.” The table, the order, the drinks, the check. The problem was never the food or the beer. It was all the time in between that nobody was giving back to you.

When Miner sold, they started looking for a permanent place to call home. Jimmy pushed Michael toward a former Smokejumper Station on 1.6 acres in Hill City. Michael wasn’t sold until Jimmy took him out back. There was a creek, and a natural cove between two structures that framed a stage almost perfectly. The sun set behind it. The audience would look in. He saw the vision immediately.

The Prairie Dog Taproom opened in the spring of 2025 and was built around the idea that your time there is yours. The taps are self-pour, the food is ordered by QR code, and the menu features hand-stretched pizzas, bison burgers, and artisan hot dogs. The conversation doesn’t have to stop for a refill or a check-in from a server. You stay as long as you want and leave when you’re ready. On busy nights, that difference shows up in small ways. People settle in instead of hovering. Groups spread out instead of lining up. It’s not unusual to look around and realize no one’s paying attention to their phone.

The music side took shape the same way. Michael and Jimmy brought in production engineer Nate Moon, who has spent 15 years running sound and lights for major regional acts. Nate turned a 30-day outdoor build into something that stopped them cold on opening night. Camp Comfort played under the lights, and the three of them sat in the back and watched the shadows move with the performers, the sun dropping behind the stage, the whole yard glowing in a way nobody had planned for. They had been drawing up a permanent covered structure. They scrapped it that night.

In year one, the Prairie Dog hosted 70 shows. They brought in five Nashville acts, a patriotic series featuring the 147th Army Band, local Rapid City staples, and regional acts nobody in the southern hills had seen before. When a show didn’t fill the way they’d hoped, the venue gave people their ticket money back. Not because they had to, but because the kind of place they were building was worth the patience it required to grow the audience.

As they round the calendar into year two, acts are calling to get booked based on what they heard from artists who played there. The crowds are getting bigger, and the brothers already have 40 shows booked before the first anniversary party has even happened.

They’re continuing to bring in stronger regional acts while keeping space open for local performers who are part of the fabric of the Black Hills scene.

It’s less about building something new and more about understanding what’s already there. A year in, Prairie Dog Taproom has started to settle into its role. A place where the experience of a show still feels personal, even as the crowd grows.

At the end of the month, they’ll mark that first year with a full-day bash on the creek. Dakota Shivers Brewing out of Lead takes over the taps at 2 p.m. Buckskin Cult from Spearfish follows at 4. MoonCats, the North Dakota Americana act that became one of the venue’s defining bookings in year one, closes the night. A special Irish-inspired menu runs through the day.

As the sun drops behind the stage and the lights come up, The MoonCats will take the stage the yard alongside the creek will fill up in the same way it did that first night.No one in a hurry to leave, no one waiting on anything, just folks there for a good time and one heck of a party!

First anniversary Bash Featuring MoonCats and Dakota Shivers Brewing

March 28, 2026 

2:00 PM
Dakota Shivers Brewing (Lead) tap takeover

4:00 PM
Buckskin Cult (Spearfish)

Evening / Headliner
MoonCats (North Dakota Americana)

All Day
Irish-inspired menu available