Ringing in Crazy Horse’s New Ride

Most New Year’s Eve concerts around the Southland will have built-in emotional impact as the clock strikes 12 and ushers in 2000. But when Diamond Rio plays the Crazy Horse Steak House--for two decades one of the nation’s top country-music venues--on Friday, it will ring in not just a new year but a whole new Crazy Horse.

Citing an increasingly competitive live entertainment field in Orange County, the Crazy Horse’s owners decided to move out of the cozy 250-seat Santa Ana site that’s long been a sentimental favorite of musicians such as Garth Brooks, Emmylou Harris, Buck Owens, Ray Charles and countless others.

The New Year’s Eve show inaugurates a bigger, fancier Crazy Horse in the popular Irvine Spectrum shopping center, at the junction of the San Diego and Santa Ana freeways.

Two weeks ago, singer Toby Keith gave the final concert at the Santa Ana club, and Diamond Rio has the honor of the first performance in the new digs, which will hold 600.

The Diamond Rio concert has bucked the national trend of lackluster ticket sales for New Year’s Eve, with the late show nearly sold out. An early show still has plenty of tickets.

It’s a blessing that owners say will allow them to land more and bigger acts than they can afford now, but also a bit of a curse for performers and fans who worry that some of the Crazy Horse’s famed atmosphere may be lost.

“It’s a small, wonderfully intimate setting where you could really make your point,” says Owens, who figures he has played the Crazy Horse 25 to 30 times since it opened in 1979.

“It’s hard to get that kind of warmth,” adds Waylon Jennings, another Crazy Horse veteran. “People build these things to look more modern, but more modern is not what’s happening.”

To that end, Crazy Horse owners Jay Nuccio and Brad “Paco” Miller have had the new facility designed to resemble the original as much as possible. It has the same shoebox shape, with the stage midway along the long back wall.

Overall dimensions also have changed little. The new showroom is just two feet deeper than the original, but 28 feet wider, to accommodate twin bars that flank patrons instead of the single bar directly opposite the stage, allowing more seating around the stage.

Some 20 years’ worth of photos and other memorabilia will be moved to the Irvine facility to help retain the look of a venue that was named nightclub of the year eight times during the ‘80s and ‘90s by the Academy of Country Music.

The big difference will be an upper deck for dining and concert viewing. On that count, the new version takes a cue from Owens’ Crystal Palace in Bakersfield, which he modeled in part on the old Crazy Horse.

Nuccio and Miller will keep the restaurant’s focus on the Angus beef steaks that helped make the Crazy Horse a local favorite, but they’re expanding the menu with new upscale dishes to be more competitive with the wealth of nearby eateries in the Spectrum. In addition to modestly increasing the number of concerts they offer each month, Nuccio and Miller plan to reach beyond country periodically with adult contemporary performers, classic rock shows and the occasional blues band.

On the lineup so far are country acts Sawyer Brown (Jan. 7-8), Bobby Bare (Jan. 18), Keith (Jan. 21) and Mel Tillis (Feb. 7), soft country-rocker David Gates (Jan. 16), Latin rock band War (Jan. 23) and pop-rock group America (Jan. 24). The changes add up to a big gamble with a successful formula. Nuccio, who bought the club in 1997 from original owner Fred Reiser and his partners, says, “We’d be taking a risk if we didn’t do anything.”

In addition to the long-running Coach House in San Juan Capistrano and its new sister, rock-and-pop-concert club the Galaxy Concert Theatre in Santa Ana, Nuccio said the new 1,200-seat Sun Theatre in Anaheim and a House of Blues slated to open in 2001 as part of the Downtown Disney expansion in Anaheim are proof that the Orange County concert market is heating up.

By moving to the Spectrum, Nuccio and Miller say, they’ll be closer to the ever-expanding south Orange County market and in a better position to draw Inland Empire country fans, thanks to the tollway that now links Riverside and south Orange County.

“Our goal is to have enough seats to compete but still give the same type of experience the Crazy Horse is known for,” Nuccio says.

BE THERE

Diamond Rio, Friday at the Crazy Horse Steak House, Suite 39, 71 Fortune Drive, Irvine. 6:45 p.m. ($145 to $165) and 9:45 p.m. ($205 to $275). (714) 549-1512.