BLYTHEWOOD – Columbia lawyer Tom Hall, a former owner of a popular barbecue restaurant in Blythewood and other venues in Ridgeway, died Saturday night about 11:30 p.m. when the pickup truck he was driving crashed when it went off McCord’s Ferry Road and burned near Bluff Road, according to the South Carolina Highway Patrol.
Hall, 56, was a charismatic lawyer, musician and restauranteur with a storied history in many ventures.
He was an accomplished singer/songwriter and a proud member of Tom Hall and the Plowboys bluegrass band for decades, where he helped grow the music scene in South Carolina. He was a founder of the Columbia Mardi Gras festival and other events and owner of several restaurants.
Hall was an avid outdoorsman and loved quail hunting, field trialing and fishing in the off waters of South Carolina.
Hall is best remembered in Blythewood as co-owner of the popular Smoke Southern BBQ on Wilson Blvd., next door to where the QT service station is now located.
Smoke opened in early 2009 and offered not only good barbecue, but a music venue as well, where diners could sit outside around a fire pit and listen to different local musical groups who entertained on weekends.
In July of 2012, Hall was featured on the back of Charleston based Skirt! Magazine. In the photo, he was sitting on the outdoor bar of his Blythewood restaurant, wearing tall boots, a Smoke Southern BBQ t-shirt and a skirt with an eyelet ruffle. The photo also appeared in The Voice along with a photo of him sitting on the same bar eating watermelon and reading a copy of Skirt!
“To suggest the man’s leading a colorful, high-energy, variety-packed life feels like an understatement,” read the copy beneath the photo.
“His barbecue joint offers everything from pulled pork lunch plates to gourmet five-course dinners to live bluegrass and roasted oysters under a tin-roofed shed …and he’s written two operas, one that includes frying chicken on stage.”
Asked what he liked about reading Skirt!, Hall answered, “I can’t believe I’ve been a slave to jeans for so long.”
A native of Chester, Hall graduated from The Citadel in 1989 and the University South Carolina Law School in 1994. He clerked for The Honorable Paul Short.
Hall was named for his great-great-grandfather, Dr. Thomas Wade Moore of Chester, one of the signers of the secessionist document that led to the war between the states. His great-grandfather was Maj. Tom Brice who fought for the Confederacy. Although Hall was proud of his heritage, for years he was active in efforts to take the Confederate Flag down from the State House dome and then the capitol grounds.
He was also a documentary filmmaker and within weeks of the massacre of nine black parishioners at Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston by a white supremacist, Hall’s documentary, “Compromised,” opened at The Nickelodeon theater in Columbia.
Hall was married to Amy Peterkin and was a parent to three sons: Brice, Logan and Graham Hall.
Funeral services will be held Thursday, January 25th, at St. Matthews Parish Church in Ft. Motte, SC, at 2pm. Arrangements will be handled by Dukes Harley Funeral Home in Orangeburg, South Carolina. He will be laid to rest in the Peterkin family cemetery in Ft. Motte, SC. In lieu of flowers, donations may be sent to riveralliance.org and scquailforever.org.
