Barstool "Goes Country"

Like most people who’ve lived in New England the past 30 years, my only exposure to a country-western bar was from where else, movies and TV.  Specifically the Boar’s Nest from The Dukes of Hazard, the Rawhide scene from The Blues Brothers and the hick joint where Borat sang “Throw the Jew Down the Well” on Ali G.  That's it. Well all that changed a few Saturday nights ago when I stepped foot inside The Saddlerack, a country mega bar in Fremont, California.  Now I know “what happens in Fremont, stays in Fremont” – but this place was just too interesting to not write an article on. 

First of all, let’s start with the ride down from San Francisco.  It was me, two buddies, and a bus load of twenty-something Southie-transplant chicks with cowboy hats, denim skirts and hot asses making the 45 minute journey to Fremont for one of the girl’s 27th birthdays.  I don’t remember what I did when I turned 27, but I can guarantee you it didn’t involve a bus full of hot chicks on the way to Fremont.  (Think - keno) 

Now, why a country bar for a girl from Southie’s birthday?  I didn’t know or care, but I certainly wasn’t complaining.   Although that’s not exactly true, not knowing we were going to a country bar, I wore my standard Boston bar attire – jeans, long-sleeve button down shirt, and because it was raining, an orange Framingham Country Club baseball cap that I bought over the summer.  Not that I would’ve donned a 10-gallon hat ala Bum Phillips, but there’s no way I wear the orange baseball cap knowing we were “going country” for the evening. 

Anyway, we arrive at The Saddlerack and the first thing I see is the poster in the front entrance promoting none other than Brett Michaels, who’s somehow appearing there in a few weeks.  “Whoa, this place must be pretty big time to get a guy like Michaels” I said, jokingly.  But it was no laughing matter when I noticed right below the Michaels ad, it said Foreigner’s Lou Graham would be there the following week.  Not exactly the type of performers I was expecting at a country bar, and like I said, “Big time.”

Nonetheless, when we walked in the bar, it was clearly not cheesy hair band night at all -- it was all country from top to bottom.  First off the place was huge.  This was no bar, this was literally a country CLUB, but not like the one in Framingham.  More like Axis or Avalon but instead of glow sticks and ecstasy, it was line dancing and ecstasy.  There was even a cage adjacent to the stage packed with borderline ugly chicks grinding one another to ridiculous Hillbilly Jim-type songs like “Whiskey for My Horses”.  Obviously a strange sight, and song.

It was also odd seeing a mass of people on the dance floor all line dancing in-sync to every f*cking song.  It was like they all studied before hand.  Seriously, how these people knew the steps was bothering me the entire night and still kind of does to this day.  Keep in mind, we’re 20 minutes from Oakland (cue machine gun sounds).  And even more bizarre, the 2 big screen TV’s were showing, of all things, Sharks/Coyotes.  I mean literally no one in the entire place, forget the rest of America, was watching hockey that night. 

Apparently there was one dude though, because at one point my buddy/Sega rival from college elbowed me to tell me “Roenick just scored his 500th career goal”, to which I replied, “He could’ve scored 500 in THIS GAME and no one here would’ve noticed.”  Whatever the case, it made for an interesting viewing experience from the tables behind the dance floor where we sat for the majority of the evening -- aside from taking a quick break to play a “Demolition Man” pinball machine. As in Stallone, Bullock, Snipes…  Demolition Man.

Yes, of course there was a mechanical bull, which, unlike the one at the Liquor Store in Boston, this one was “hard core country”.  They literally refused to let fat people ride the bull and charged $3 a pop for those who made weight.  No way I was riding the thing anyway, however being unfamiliar with my surroundings, the degenerate in me took over and I started betting with the locals on how many rounds a certain individual would last on the bull.  I think it was a setup because I ended up losing $20 when a man in a cowboy hat was on the thing for all 6 rounds, even “taunting” the bull by going “no hands” for the first 3 and flat-out embarrassing the bull operator like the pitcher who first throws BP to Roy Hobbs.  Immediately, I overheard one of the cute girls from the bus say, “I want to have sex with that man.”  Also immediately, I began reading the rules for riding the mechanical bull.

Now obviously I’m getting more and more hammered as the night went on so the rest of the story gets fuzzy.  But at some point I remember the atmosphere changing.  At some point, the band went from all country, all the time, to the Bell n’ Hand on a Saturday night.   Instead of Alan Jackson and Garth Brooks, they started playing Bobby Brown and the Pussycat Dolls.  Frankly, you could make an argument that their moving rendition of Journey’s “Faithfully” was better than actual Journey (“Highway run…”) but that’s neither here nor there. 

The point is the band, for whatever reason, abandoned their country roots, sold out and went Dance Party USA for the rest of the night.  It was like Dylan going electric at the Newport Folk Festival, except without the pissed-off hippies and much, much more meaningless.  I mean there’s no way I’m dancing to any of this shit anyway, it was just disappointing.  The girls seemed to like it though, which as everybody knows, is all a cheesy cover band should be concerned with.

Regardless, if you happen to be in Fremont (??) and feel like “going country” for the evening, I’d say The Saddlerack is probably your best, and only bet.  The chicks were hot, the drinks were reasonable and the line dancing choreography was puzzling to say the least.   The bottom line is despite the weird looks I got for my choice of headgear, I’d consider flying back out there for Brett Michaels in a few weeks.  Coincidentally, Hooters is sponsoring a bikini contest that very same night.