Saddle Up ‘n’ Head Out to Nashville West

The band at Nashville West in El Monte struck up “Elvira,” the theme song of California line dancers, and there was a rush toward the dance floor.

“It’s our kind of music,” said a beaming Rick Zolozabal, as he led fiancee Michelle Mudry into the crowd.

There they joined a line of kicking boots and bobbing cowboy hats as the band thumped along in a grinding strip tease-like beat:

My hearrrt’s on firre for Elvira.

Giddy-up, giddy-up, hi-ho Silver, a-way.

The line dance, a chorus line done country style, is only one of several big numbers at Nashville West, where there is live country & Western music nightly. Zolozabal, 26, who met the 32-year-old Mudry at the club, said he has taught her all the dances.

Learning the Steps

“She came here to learn the two-step and she ended up learning the 10-step, the 24, the Sweet 16, the country swing and the Cotton-Eye Joe,” Zolozabal said proudly.

Country dancing, which has seen periods of decline and revival since the rush in popularity that accompanied the 1980 movie “Urban Cowboy,” is on the upswing again. The parking lot at Nashville West is filled nightly with pickups and semi-trucks. Inside, customers often find themselves wishing the dance floor were bigger.

“There’s a lot of real serious dancing in country music right now,” said Rick Shea, guitar and pedal-steel-guitar player for Dave Karp and Windfall, the house band. “These people really get into their two-step.”

“Not only that,” said Karp, the band’s leader, “people two-step different from club to club. Styles develop. Here it’s one way, go over to the Silver Bullet in Long Beach and it’s a little different.”

The two-step, called by some the Texas two-step, is the standard dance at such country nightclubs as Nashville West, the Silver Bullet, the Long Horn in Canoga Park and Crazy Horse in Santa Ana. People disagree on the amount of art and grace required for its execution.

“You’ve got to know what you’re doing,” said Bob Racken, a long-haul truck driver who frequents Nashville West. “You better not have two left feet when you get out there, or you’ll be picking your hind end off the dance floor.”

“There’s nothing to it,” said regular Eva Wheeler. “It’s just two steps. If you can count to two, you can do it.”

Wheeler works at Santa Anita and Hollywood Park as a “pony rider,” one of the crew of riders who accompany racehorses during the warm-ups and post parade. Her pet peeve has nothing to do with dancing.

“There’re a lot of people who come in here in cowboy hats and have never been on a horse,” she said. “They act like they’re country, but they don’t know which end of a horse is which.”

More Than Two Decades

Still, Wheeler said she feels at home in the barn-like Nashville West, which has been a country nightclub since it opened in 1967.

“This is the only place I’d walk into alone and feel OK about it,” she said.

Zolozabal, a security supervisor, said he not only met his finance at the club, but also proposed to her there. The Rowland Heights couple plan to have their wedding reception at the club as well, said Mudry, a schoolteacher.

“And we’re not the first ones to do it, either,” Zolozabal said. “It’s family here. It’s not like a singles bar. For a lot of us, this is our second home.”

Ray Panzica, club manager, said Nashville West holds a tight jeans contest every Thursday night, when dancers compete for a $75 cash prize. Tuesday is talent night, when amateurs can perform.

In the back of the room, oblivious to the music and dancing, a small group of eight-ball players keeps the club’s one pool table busy.

“I ran rock clubs before I came here,” Panzica said, “and I can tell you one thing. Country people know how to have fun.”

Nashville West, 11910 E. Valley Blvd., El Monte. Hours: 6 p.m. to 2 a.m., seven days a week; (818) 442-0337.