C & W Nightclubs: Riding High

By Michael Demarest

With the Texas two-step, fancy fumadiddle and derringer-do

They have names like Charlie Horse, Chaps. Mr. McNasty's, Outlaws. Cody's, Dallas, Lone Star Cafe, San Antone Rose.'Silver Saddle, Gopher Gulch and Wild Wild West. The sound of their music is country, and the cut of their outfit is cowboy. Country-and-western nightclubs are riding high. In towns and cities from New Paltz, N.Y., to Carmichael, Calif., and North to South, there are now countless sagebrush saloons, corralling urban buckaroos with lively rustic dancing, good ole buddydom and a frontier atmosphere that may owe more to hype than history but is infectious nonetheless. Only a year ago, many of the new spots were disco clubs, whose stylized allure has faded fast in some locales. Now. decked out with steer horns, long bars, and waitresses in Stetsons and hot jeans, they have struck a bonanza.

They also strike close to the durable American dream of macho romance and derringer-do, the image of cowboy as hero and cowgirl as valiant pardner. Several hundred western-style watering holes feature bucking mechanical bulls on which patrons of both sexes risk serious damage to body and ego (see box). A spot called Outlaws, formerly a mud-wrestling disco outside Chicago, provides roisterers (for $2 a pair) with Harrington & Richardson .22-cal. western-style revolvers and nine blank rounds for mock shootouts. At some places, mostly for atmosphere, there are signs announcing NO GUNS, NO KNIVES. NO TIES. For down-the-hatch topers, Chicago's Rodeo offers a selection of booze that includes Redeye whisky, Rotgut Scotch, Panther gin and Snakebite vodka; Rodeo also claims to be the city's largest Budweiser outlet after Wrigley Field. Manhattan's Lone Star Cafe boasts the sizzlingest made-to-order chili east of the Pecos, but attracts a relatively cool clientele To be sure, says Maryann Smith, 34, the entertainment coordinator, "some people may have Stagecoach or High Noon in the back of then minds, but they don't throw it in your face. There is respect, good manners, even gallantry --and that goes with the Old West too, doesn't it?"

Indeed most of the country-and-western clubs aim for an image of laid-back conviviality, rather than the high-strung competitiveness of the discos they are replacing. The beat is slower, the music more sentimental, and touch dancing is back. Couples on the floor whirl through ^ the Texas two-step cotton-eyed Joe's s heel-toe polka and country swing--even waltzes and foxtrots. A number of clubs offer nouveau westerners free dance lessons--though, as one owner puts it, "the steps are easy to fake." Many of the saloons have live bands, either local groups like Soozie and High in the Saddle, Dale Allen and Pearl Studs or Aged in the Hills, or touring outfits like the Memphis Rockabilly Band or Sleepy La Beef. A few attract such top country-and-western stars as Willie Nelson, Charlie Daniels, Eddie Rabbitt, George Jones, Ronnie Milsap and Tanya Tucker. Says Sam Siam. a Jerusalem-born architect who owns Fool's Gold in Houston: 'Sometimes it takes someone from outside your country to be objective. Country music has always been here. It's j in everyone's blood " Adds a Denver club manager: "Country-and-western ' is the classical American music--and everyone looks good in a cowboy hat."

The classier clubs sport Indian rugs, barn siding, hand-hewn beams, potted cactus plants and paintings that are not quite Remingtons. The customers are of all backgrounds and ages, mostly clad in some semblance of western garb. Shepler's, the biggest western-wear store in Denver, reports a 75% increase in sales over the past year. "And most of these people," says a Shepler's department manager, "have never been on a horse in their lives." Manufacturers of cowboy boots (average price: $150 a pair), hats ($70) and other fumadiddle--western slang for fancy duds--are unable to keep up with demand. A typical night errant, Houston-based Oil Company Executive Bob Hull, 37. lays out as much as $500 for the outfit he dons in the evening.

C&W hangouts owe much of their initial popularity to the film Urban Cowboy, which depicted John Travolta's cavortings in a Texas honkytonk. The movie, maintains a Denver saloon customer, "put the social stamp of approval on western style. People realized you didn't have to be a cowboy to go into a western bar." Cowboy was shot at Gilley's, a raffish, cavernous 27-year-old saloon in Pasadena, outside Houston. The film helped make its co-owner, C & W Singer Mickey Gilley. a millionaire superstar (his recording of Stand By Me, from the movie, was on the Top Ten country list for five weeks): his place won last year's Country Nightclub of the Year award, given by the Academy of Country Music.

As a result, the regular clientele of 'Gilleyrats"--mostly oilfield roustabouts and construction workers--have been joined at the bars (all three of them) by hordes of tourists. The gawkers find the joint a lot seamier and steamier than its movie version. Says one reformed Gilleyrat of his old crowd: "If they don't get into at least one scrap, they think their weekend is wasted.' Houston, which had a dozen cactus cabarets in 1975, now has more than 300, few of which care to emulate Gilley's Dodge City style. The most successful, Fool's Gold and San Antone Rose, are in affluent residential areas and cater to Gucci gauchos. A Houston-based conglomerate, McFaddin-Kendrick, has launched a national chain of 40 western barns that mix country music with disco. In April a Fort Worth entrepreneur plans to open a three-acre C&W supersaloon described as the world's largest nightclub. It will be called Billy Bob's Texas and have 42 bar stations on four levels, two 7,000-sq.-ft. dance floors, and ten live bulls, which only professional rodeo cowboys will be allowed to ride. For other patrons there will be calf-roping contests.

In the past year or so, at least 15 saloons have opened in Denver mostly in the southeast part of town, where singles apartments and condominiums are concentrated. In the San Francisco Bay area, where there are more than 125 of the clubs, prospective two-steppers can dial a special number (652-2792) to find out where the action is. Some newcomers are lured to Detroit's Urban Cowboy, the most successful C&W spread in Michigan, by truck drivers who tout its charms on their CBs. The Boston area, with a full-time AM country-music station, has about 30 clubs offering C&W entertainment. Mr. McNasty's, a former gay leather bar in Kenmore Square that is now the city's only seven-night-a-week live country-rock place, often has waiting lines on weekends (Slogan: Famous for good clean fun.) A dark, Dantean cavern that waives the $3 to $4 admittance charge for local cabbies (they help spread the word) and books some of the most popular country-rock acts in the area, McNasty's according to Owner Rich Thomas, 38 is "a workingman's nightclub." Or as Singer-Model Elizabeth Harrison, 21 puts it: "Disco turns me off because the people are really plastic. When you're here, you feel like everybody knows you. It's really dynamite. There's no competition. You want to dance, you do it. You want to get drunk to the gills, you do it."

Washington is one major citv in the nation where a night-blooming cowboy has no place to hang his ten-gallon. The desert will be greened in March when Mike O'Harro, 41, who owns two of the capital's most popular discos plans to open a C & W establishment in Georgetown. The venture will be aimed at what O'Harro calls "Government superchic, not rednecks." While conservative Washingtonians are more attuned to Blue Moon than bluegrass, O'Harro is confident that his Saddletramp saloon will be a boomer. As Ronald Reagan's rancheros take over the town, western chic may be a capital gain. --By Michael Demarest

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