A Friendly Country Home

Wandering from bar to bar, looking for love--it seemed for a time that Ronnie Mack’s Barn Dance might become a country music cliche. But after a few years of rootlessness, the Barn Dance settled into Crazy Jack’s in Burbank about a year ago, and it’s beginning to feel like home.

At a 14th anniversary show in January, Crazy Jack’s was packed with the Barn Dance faithful, a not-so-L.A. mix of fringe-jacketed women who can really drink, ponytailed 60-year-old cowboys, rockabilly young ‘uns and their gussied-up girlfriends. They converged seamlessly with Crazy Jack’s slightly more mainstream country crowd of mullet-sporting line dancers and their fortysomething tattooed wives. It was a little bit of Texas in the middle of Burbank, cultivated by Barn Dance impresario Ronnie Mack.

“That place had been aligned with line dancing and karaoke,” says Mack, “but it’s also got a lot going for it. It has a great dance floor and Jack’s a nice guy. He begged me to bring it there.” Mack, a tall, chatty fellow who often wears sweatsuits while hosting the Barn Dance, is one of the L.A. country scene’s most respected figures because of his impeccable taste and especially his warm and infinitely friendly demeanor.

His Barn Dance was key in fostering an authentic, down-home environment for local roots music acts to flourish, while launching numerous careers. Lucinda Williams crooned some of her first lovely notes on the Barn Dance stage, and Dave Alvin, Rosie Flores, James Intveld and Big Sandy are all regulars. There’s still probably no better spot in L.A. for seeing veterans like Glen Glenn, Ray Campi, Jimmy Angel and honking blues saxophonist Big Jay McNeely, musicians who may have fallen off the radar a bit, but who are as riveting live as wild rattlesnakes.

Mack hesitated before moving his Barn Dance to Crazy Jack’s. Part sports bar (seven or eight TV screens show NBA highlights, no matter what’s on stage) and part country-western saloon, the club has little in the way of decor other than bull horns, Budweiser posters, plenty of mirrors and a lonely disco ball. The tables and chairs look as if they might have been borrowed from a church community center. Yet it’s a big ol’ place with a dance floor, seemingly perfect for the Barn Dance.

Though he’s now comfortable in the new digs, Mack is less enthusiastic about Southern California’s country scene in general. He’s scaled his show back from weekly to monthly, in part, he said, because the scene is dwindling.

“There’s still those people, the Dave Alvins, the Rosies and the Lucindas,” says Mack, “but there isn’t a new Lucinda or a new Dave Alvin, and if there are, people don’t really know about it yet.”

Mack, an exceptional guitarist and songwriter, always put his own music on the back burner, but he’s started giving it more attention and recently recorded an album’s worth of power pop tunes. He’s worked for 25 years at the Tinder Box, a pipe and tobacco store in Santa Monica, while devoting endless unpaid hours to county music.

“I think if it wasn’t for Ronnie Mack and his passion about keeping the roots and California country scene alive, then there probably wouldn’t even be a scene in L.A.,” says Barn Dance regular Rosie Flores, who now lives in Nashville. “I’ve never met a more dedicated person. He’s put forth not only his time and his effort, but his money to keep the Barn Dance alive.”

The Barn Dance kicked off in 1988 as a radio show on KCSN, the Cal State Northridge station, broadcasting live from the Little Nashville club in North Hollywood. When it outgrew that now-defunct venue, it moved to the more spacious and famed Palomino nearby, and kept up even after KCSN became a classical music station.

The Barn Dance found a comfy home at the Palomino and later Jack’s Sugar Shack, often drawing sellout crowds. Among the luminaries who dropped in and performed were Emmylou Harris, Dwight Yoakam and Mary Chapin Carpenter.

“Bruce Springsteen came in with a friend of his and stayed for three hours,” recalls Mack. “At the end of the night, after the Barn Dance show is over, I have an open jam and he came up and sang some harmonies and played guitar with our house band. So I just played a Little Richard song and a Willie Dixon blues tune, and we were all trading off guitar solos. So that was a thrill.”

While today’s Barn Dance isn’t always as electrifying as the Barn Dance of the Palomino era, nobody would want to imagine a Los Angeles where new country artists attempting to eschew the oversized cowboy hat image had to battle it out for booking in L.A. clubs, where country music is generally as foreign as Nepalese flute music. Rather, the cozy Barn Dance stage is a necessity for young musicians, as well as a venue for honoring country music’s pioneers.

“One of the things about the Barn Dance that I’ve always done is to remember a lot of the legends that aren’t around anymore,” says Mack, “and do a whole tribute night to them. I mean Hank Williams is one of the greatest legends of country music, but even on his birthday a station like KZLA would never even consider taking two minutes to play one of his songs, because they think something like that would offend their listeners’ ears or something. I just always hope that there should be room for all types of music and everything should be given a chance.”

Ronni Mack hosts a benefit for the daughter of the late Jeff Roberts with Randy Weeks, Cisco, Robbie Rist, Bastard Sons of Johnny Cash, and more, Sunday 3-7 p.m. at Crazy Jack’s, 4311 Magnolia Blvd., Burbank. The next Barn Dance, a Waylon Jennings and Tammy Wynette tribute, is April 2, 8:30 p.m. at Crazy Jack’s. Free. (818) 845-1121.