I’ve seen a lot of bar rooms. As a 21 year-old, I wanted to be a musician, and being a musician meant having a close relationship with numerous honky-tonks, lounges, saloons, taprooms, gin-mills, and pubs. I spent about 15 years working five or six nights a week, from 9 o’clock until the wee hours of the morning, in rock bands, dance bands, and country bands. I sang Eric Clapton songs, Michael Jackson songs, and Merle Haggard songs. 

We would load in our gear the afternoon of a gig. Ancient dust would rise from the stage carpet as we set down our amps, releasing the smells of stale beer, stale cigarettes, and cheap whiskey.A shaft of sunlight would struggle through the murky front glass of the bar, past the dingy beer signs and posters promoting “shooter” specials. A waitress would vacuum while we tried to get the sound system balanced, yelling “check, check” into microphones until it sounded right. 

There would only be a sprinkling of people in the bar when it was time for the first set, so we would do our softer material, songs like “Desperado,” “Every Breath You Take” and other ballads and mid-tempos. By the second set, we would get into our dance stuff as the bar patrons started getting a little liquored up, and on the third set we pulled out the hard rocking material. Then we’d back off and move more toward the mellower songs again in the fourth or fifth sets as the night got closer to closing time, and the boozy dancers just wanted to cling to each other.

I saw a lot of crazy shit in those years. There was that biker bar in South L.A. where the owner kept asking me to turn up, even though my Super Reverb was on 10 already. One night two women got into a fight over a guy during our band break, and took it outside. One woman had the other by the hair, and was pounding her head against the cement ground, blood everywhere. I ran in and yelled to the bartender, “Call the police, a woman’s getting killed in the parking lot!” but he just shook his head and said, “Nah, we don’t want any trouble here.”

A group I was in once played stark naked in a bar, in a scheme to get our band some publicity. Some middle-aged women may still have Polaroids of that night tucked away somewhere. And there was the time that the guys in that same band, as a prank, hired some strippers to jump up on stage on my birthday. The bar owner fired us for endangering his liquor license.

And there are so many memories of really, really drunk people. The guy who ran on stage and jumped up onto the bass drum, his arms raised like Rocky, until the drummer stood up and cold-cocked him. The insanely drunk man who chased me down M street in Georgetown one night after a gig, shouting, “You asshole, I’m gonna kill you!” (He didn’t kill me).  There were many instances of extremely intoxicated women swaying in front of the bandstand and exposing various body parts, with come-hither looks that were somewhat diminished by badly smeared mascara or lipstick. And one night there was a stabbing right in front of me on the dance floor. 

Eventually I worked my way out of the bars, and started playing guitar, fiddle, and banjo for numerous Nashville country artists. Instead of sleeping on top of twin reverbs in the back of a van, I could relax in a comfortable bunk on a tour bus. Instead of 5 sets in bars, breathing other people’s cigarette smoke, I was playing one hour concert sets in nice, smoke-free venues. That was more like it.

But occasionally, someone will call me and say they need a lead picker for a gig at a VFW or something, and I’ll throw my gear in the car and go down there. I’ll have fun for a while, winding out crazy solos on my Tele, but after a few sets, the smoke will start getting to me, I’ll remember that I’m not that fond of obnoxious drunks, and my eyelids will start drooping as it gets way past my bedtime. That’s when I tell myself, “I’m never taking another gig like this again.” 

‘Cause when it comes to playing in bars, I’ve been there, and done that.