Remembrance of Bars Past, Vol.3

McGill's Way

And so continues the Inca F.P. 2006 Club Comeback, er, Wayback Tour, brought to you for your reading and visceral enjoyment by, well, by my somewhat damaged but still basically intact bicameral mind; this being installment number three.

We have previously covered the Cactus Lounge (i.e., The Mother Ship) and Fat Dawg's, both located on Railroad Ave. in south Beaumont, near Lamar University. Now, we come to our next entry, and we are still on the same damn street, although as it got closer to the freeway, Railroad Ave. was sometimes more properly called Spur 380 (the whole thing is MLK Parkway now, of course.)

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3. The Foxy Lady. Located a block off of Highway 69S (Cardinal Dr.), the Foxy Lady was housed in a non-descript low-slung building on the corner of Spur 380 and Florida Street. I believe the club itself had its origins in the late 1960's as a college-age rock 'n' roll club serving Lamar. That, if true, and the Hendrix-ian name, would have caused me to be predisposed to favor the place, even though it did not look like much from the outside.

For most of the time I can recall, the entire exterior of the one-story wood building was painted a flat gray, like the primer coat on a car; the only exterior feature that stood out at all was a small-ish lighted sign on a pole in the parking lot announcing the place in script, with I think an attempt at an identifying logo, a small drawing of a fox wearing a hat or something. Inside, the area was divided into several small rooms, most of them dimly lit. As one entered, the bar was dead ahead; off to the left at an angle was the entrance to the main area of the club, a larger room with several tables and chairs and at the back of the room, on the south side of the building, a cramped stage elevated maybe a foot above the floor. The ceiling in there seemed awfully low, as I recall. It was probably 8 feet, but when the place was crowded and loud and full of smoke, it seemed much lower. I am right at 6 feet tall, and I used to rise up in a sort of involuntarry modified crouch every time I needed to go get another drink, or visit the restroom. My peripheral body imaging system had me thinking I was about to hit my head on some overhead pipes or something.

What got me out to the Foxy Lady in the first place was that the club frequently featured live music. I was 18 and a senior in high school, and at the time guitarist Scott McGill was huge locally, and he had a regular gig out there. I think it was on Thursday evenings, I am not sure about that; but one of my best friends at the time, Mike O------, would come pick me up and we'd go out there to hear McGill play.

The music was good -- Scott played mostly hard rock covers, and could whang the guitar around a little bit. I remember several tunes, but the one that really stands out was McGill's version of Ten Years After's "Choo-Choo Mama", probably because the song gave him room to really kick out the jams and solo like a mo-fo, and also because I always wondered if him picking that song to cover had anything to do with the almost constant rumbling of freight trains just outside.

But even more than McGill's always-excellent performances, what I really remember about those initial visits to The Foxy Lady was being first exposed to that club atmosphere -- crowded, smoky, liquor flowing, live music; it is impossible for me to describe exactly how that was, feeling that weird energy made up of several things, including exhilaration, underlying but not-too-far underlying sexual tension, and a vague sense of danger. My friend Mike and I were truly out beyond the pale a bit. If trouble started, no parents or principal or coach or anyone would be able to save us. And if some girl was hit on either of us, well. . . Of course, being new to it all, I likely exaggerated some of the possibilities in my mind. Still, I was getting a pretty good idea of what it was like to be 'down in it', and before long I was hooked.

After an intial period of several visits, Mike and I got to be 'regulars', and became more comfortable with the whole scene. We would try to get out there an hour or so before the show started, to get a good table and also because I think they ran a special on pitchers of beer early in the evening. One of the areas off the main room had a couple of pool tables, and we would often shoot pool and drink beer, waiting for the live music. One night my turn came up on one of the tables, and I was to be playing some guy I'd never seen before. He was a more-or-less regular looking guy for the times (late 1970's) -- mid- to late-20's, long hair, jeans, sleeveless black Deep Purple T-shirt, Wolverine work boots -- and he seemed decent enough. I did notice he was drinking his beer rather quickly, and straight from the pitcher instead of a mug. And also that he had several tattoos on his upper arms, which was pretty unusual back then. Anyway, we began playing, and at some point in the course of small talk it was revealed that my opponent had just been paroled out of the Huntsville Unit of the Texas Department of Corrections only the day before. He'd been serving a five-year sentence for auto theft or maybe armed robbery, I cannot recall for sure which; and he'd got out early for 'good behavior.'

I had got comfortable with the club scene by then, as I said; and I suppose there was a part of me that was even a little cocky about it, because a lot of my school friends weren't allowed to even go out of the house on weeknights, not to mention to some seedy nightclub. But I was mostly still just a cheese-eating high school boy myself, really. The realization I was playing pool with a half-drunk ex-con was a nice little wake up call for me, and a reminder too that there was a whole lot about the great big world out there I still did not know about just yet. At the time this fellow informed me of his 'record', we were playing rotation, I believe; and I think I was even ahead by a bit. Somehow, though, my game suddenly and inexplicably fell apart, and my opponent ended up beating me handily. We shook hands, and I eased on out of the billiards area and went looking for a good table for when McGill and his band cranked it up a bit later.

I got to know Scott McGill a little later on, just in passing. He worked for awhile at a record store in Parkdale Mall along with a couple of friends of mine, and I saw him there and at some of their employee get-togethers. He seemed like a nice guy. He is still playing locally, too; or was the last time I checked.

One thing Scott unknowingly did for me back then was give me a little insight into what it meant to be a local guitar hero. The difference between the best local player, which Scott probably was at the time, and the rest of the area wannabes was significant enough, I'm sure. But the gap probably was not all that great. On the other hand, the difference between any local great and the guys who actually made The Big Time was vast; maybe not exclusively talent-wise, there is always the story about the lucky break launching the unremarkably talented into the stratosphere. Yet there is the palpable sense I think to the local guy sometimes that, talent aside, you just can't get there from here. Those big time guys are limo-ed around everywhere and indulged hand-and-foot, while the local player, who has the same dreams and maybe even the same talent, clerks in a record store for close to minimum wage during the day, and sweats it out in the local clubs at night for a piece of the cover charge.

That is not nearly all there is to it, of course. I went to school with and was friends with a fair number of musicians - in fact I dated a keyboardist/vocalist for a few years - and I think every one of them who by choice or due to circumstance went on to live unglamorous everyday lives (like most of the rest of us) still plays; either on their own or in some mostly informal local scene. It turns out that the playing, singing, and writing of music is in their bones; and that while some secret or not-so-secret wish for stardom and big success might have been the focus for awhile, the truth is they already had the real reward, all along. They had (and have) the music in them. They really just want to play. And they still can. That is the real gift.

My own musical talents such as they are could probably clear a room full of adults in under a minute in most instances, but still I can very much relate to the creative drive the musically gifted among us possess, this urgent desire that cannot be erased, by intention or by time. And I have no problem saying I was always very respectful of anyone like that, who could play, and I was envious of them, too; Scott McGill not being the least among them.

Of course, Mr. McGill eventually went on to other things. So, too, did the rest of us. I went to college, my friend Mike joined the merchant marine. Our nights of good times and great music at The Foxy Lady were relatively brief. Even so, the club went on for awhile. I remember seeing Gatemouth Brown there once - he was great - and the '60s psychedelic band Fever Tree, about a decade after their one hit ("San Francisco Girls".) Then at some point in the 1980's the whole establishment was entirely re-made, into a strip club. I never visited it in that incarnation; but I did hear from someone who did that even within the relatively easy criteria of that low category, the 'Lady' was at the bottom end of the scale.

Which is fitting, I suppose. It was a place that could never have been called, in any context, a 'gentlemen's club.' In the long view, I think I count that as a plus.

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HONORABLE MENTION #2

The Purple Trojan. Thinking of early experiences in clubs and with live music reminded me of this place, my very first nightclub so to speak. Actually, it was what would be called today a "teen club", for 8th graders (Friday nights) and 9th graders (Saturday nights.) Or maybe it was 7th graders and 8th graders, I am not sure. It has been awhile.

In fact, to definitely date myself once and for all, the name of the the establishment in question was derived from the mascots of the two high schools (along with their jr. high school 'feeders') it primarily served -- Beaumont High (the Royal Purples; and no, I don't know what a 'royal purple' is) and Forest Park (Trojans). At the time, Beaumont had I believe seven high schools, and two school districts. There could have been a Greenie Panther club, or maybe a Bulldog Buffalo Bulldog club as well, for all I know.

Bulldog Buffalo Bulldog club, I like that. Kind of reminds me of Ford Madox Ford. Anyway, the club was located on the grounds of what used to be the Oaks Country Club, on the east side of N. Major Drive, between Manion and Gladys. I don't remember the Oaks CC, and the building and grounds didn't much look like any country club I'd ever seen, but that is what our parents called it, so. . .

The club was in a small one-story building divided into four main rooms; the one in the back, southeast corner was where the stage and dance floor was. The other back room (NE corner) was for spillover from the dance floor and general conversation. The front two rooms were basically for socializing only.

The place was well-lit (except for the stage/dance floor area), heavily chaperoned (by volunteer parents -the 'worst' kind, from an 8th grader's point of view), and of course there was no smoking or alcohol, officially. There was live music sometimes, though; and it was usually pretty good. One local band I remember was called Shadowfax, I think; Gary Tomberlin was in it (a/k/a The Lovable Gar-Bear, later a DJ). There were other local bands that came through there, too. I remember some killer covers, of The Beatles "Drive My Car", The Clique's "I'll Hold Out My Hand" and "Sparkle and Shine", and Tommy James and The Shondells' "Crimson & Clover", among others. On the nights with no live music, there was a DJ. One popular request - and remember, a goodly percentage of the club patrons were 13- and 14-year old boys - was Bloodrock's gore-fest "D.O.A.", about a guy describing, in vivid detail, how he didn't quite survive a plane crash. Another was Chicago's "Color My World", a laughably turgid and off-key ballad that was nevertheless foolproof for getting girls to slow dance with us, up close and all. Other songs heavily requested tended to more regional favorites, like Rufus Jagneaux's "Opelousas Sostan (I Can Hear The Jukebox Play)" or John Nitzinger's "Louisiana Cockfight".

Parents would drop us off out front around 7:30 and pick us up at 11:00. I am sure it was a pain in the ass for them (and especially those who had to chaperone), and in retrospect it was kind of cheesy for the kids, too. On the other hand, the whole scene was an invaluable learning tool for those of us who still were a little rough around the edges and/or wet behind the ears when it came to the social graces. I asked a girl out for the very first time in one of the front rooms of The Purple Trojan, to my 8th grade graduation dance. I was pretty nervous about it, and upping the ante even further was the fact that we attended different jr. high schools, and she didn't know me very well. I don't know if it was my good looks or what -- actually, hell yeah, I am sure it was my good looks -- but anyway, whatever the reason, she said yes.

Thank goodness. Had she said no, my subsequent life might have been altered forever, in unfathomable ways.

The Purple Trojan didn't fare nearly as well as I did, it turns out. In a few years it closed, and eventually the building was razed. The foundation is still there, though; at the back of a big open field on otherwise hyper-developed North Major Drive. There used to be youth soccer played in that field, before the league moved to the DD6 retention ponds a little further northwest. Nowadays one might occaisonally see some guy out there working on his short game, while another throws Frisbees to his dog. Most of the time, though, the field and the area at the back of it, where the club once stood, is entirely empty.