Not Quite the Last Roundup for Country Music Venues

With no new hot country dance, song or movie on the horizon, it ain’t easy being a country and western club these days.

Just look at the scores of clubs that have shut their doors in the San Fernando Valley over the last five to eight years, most notably the Palomino Club, which closed in late 1995.

“Country’s on a downswing right now,” admitted Darryl Harrelson, president of the California Country Music Assn., a nonprofit group that helps emerging country artists get to the next level.

“We’ve seen lots of bands go on to something else because there are just not enough clubs to support them,” Harrelson said. “The line-dance fad is phasing out, but a lot of the clubs, if they stay open, are now switching to salsa and swing because that’s what the younger people want.”

Which isn’t to say that country is dead--far from it. A few clubs have kept their doors open and, because of a lack of competition now, their owners report that business is good.

“My business is up 20% over last year,” said Bob Rustigan, owner of the Cowboy Palace in Chatsworth. “We attract a hard-core country crowd, and they’re pretty loyal.”

Yet Rustigan, like other club owners, is constantly looking for extra incentives to keep the customers coming back. On Sunday and Monday nights, he offers complimentary barbecue; there are free dance lessons and live music seven nights a week; and he doesn’t charge a cover fee.

“That’s key,” he said.

Across the Valley in Burbank, Crazy Jack’s has also been forced to broaden its repertoire.

While still offering live country and western music on weekend nights, three years ago Crazy Jack’s added karaoke Monday through Thursday.

The small club also has a Dixieland jazz band on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons and a 16-piece big band orchestra on Friday afternoons for the older crowd.

Still, the owners insist they are more than just a little bit country.

“Our logo is the four jacks on the playing cards, all with cowboy hats on,” Kammie Tavares said. “The CCMA (California Country Music Assn.) loves us because we do our part to promote the country bands. But then there’s more to country than just the music. It’s about an attitude, walking, talking, dressing, dancing . . . it’s really a way of life.”

Tavares notes that when the Palomino Club closed, the owners left a message on their answering machine suggesting patrons go to Crazy Jack’s.

“And that message ran on their machine for several months,” she said proudly.

Crazy Jack’s also offers crazy hours, remaining open from 6:30 a.m. to 2:30 a.m. seven days a week.

“We do that because we get a big studio crowd who are just getting off work at 7 a.m., and they want to come in and party,” she said. “We also have off-duty police officers who come in early in the morning after their shift ends.”

Tavares believes the club’s sponsorship of activities has helped it maintain a loyal following.

“We sponsor a pool league, we have a dart league, we hold benefits here all the time,” she said. “When one of our bands had all of their equipment stolen, we held a benefit and Dwight Yoakam came and sang.”

It was a similar lack of clubs in the Santa Clarita Valley that propelled Alton Harding into taking over a 10,000-square-foot theater in the area, tearing the seats out and reopening it a few months ago as a banquet rental facility.

“The Santa Clarita area is starving for this kind of place,” he said.

Harding said he tried to open a nightclub but wasn’t able to get an alcohol sale permit. So it’s now a rental facility, and on Tuesday nights a dance teacher rents it out for country lessons.

The highs and lows of country are highly dependent on factors that the clubs can’t control.

“A lot of it depends on the latest hit on the radio,” said Mike Bendavid, a Sherman Oaks dance instructor who teaches at the Cowboy Palace. “And right now, everyone is looking for the next danceable hit.”

Bendavid has been teaching dance since 1978 and well remembers the time when the film “Urban Cowboy” came out (1980) and ignited a huge country fad.

“Everyone wanted to be John Travolta,” he said. “Then that died down and then the song ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ came out and overnight everyone wanted to learn that line dance. It tends to go in waves.”

Although some, like Harrelson, contend that the popularity of country is now at a low ebb, Bendavid is more upbeat, noting that newer artists like Shania Twain and Faith Hill are helping to reignite the genre.

“There was a country dance festival recently in Las Vegas,” Bendavid said. “There were 1,100 people there, 1,000 of whom were there to do line dancing. So line dancing is still hot.”

Both Tavares and Rustigan also say the tourist trade has helped business, with both clubs getting a small but regular dose of Japanese and European tourists eager to taste a little down-home Americana.

“We had a contract with a French tour company that wanted to send their clients here,” Tavares said. “So from last August to October, we had French tourists coming in here. We gave them barbecue ribs, baked potatoes, corn on the cob and ice cream. They sang karaoke and learned how to line dance. They had the time of their lives.”

But the clubs’ true bread and butter are the regular patrons who come in on a weekly basis.

“I went to school in southern Indiana, and so country is enticing to me,” said Neil Ingran, a Hollywood resident who drives regularly to Burbank to go to Crazy Jack’s, a place where the crowd is so familiar that the band members call to the patrons by name. “And I come back here because I know everyone. It’s really a neighborhood gang.”

Jerry and Terry Healy, a couple from Lake View Terrace, also are regulars at Crazy Jack’s. They say they know all too well that it’s sparse pickings for country music clubs these days.

The couple say they’ve seen a lot of clubs go under and they’re not sure why.

“When we go to the Cowboy Palace on Friday night and it’s packed, I’d really like to know why other clubs didn’t make it,” Jerry Healy said one recent Saturday night at Crazy Jack’s. “I would think it would be the opposite.”

The couple met in church and discovered they shared a passion for country dancing. Now they do two-step and line dancing at Crazy Jack’s on Saturday nights and at the Cowboy Palace on Sundays. (“They put on a big spread of free food and there’s free dance lessons,” he said of the Palace.) Still, true fans genuinely miss the Valley’s best-known country and western club.

“There are places to be found, but nothing like the Palomino,” said Harrelson, of the country music association. “That really was the last great honky-tonk.”