How to Satisfy those Honky-Tonk Beer Munchies

Robert’s Western World
416 Broadway
Nashville, TN





You ever notice how a good greasy meal at midnight doesn’t actually need to be good to be good?

You know what I’m talking about.

After a night of honky-tonkin’ up and down Nashville’s infamous Lower Broadway, fried shoe leather on a bun starts to look as good as Kate Upton losing a water balloon fight.

I’m pretty sure “beer munchies” derives from that same part of the brain as “beer goggles” -- only with milder next morning consequences.

I’d like to brag to you that Suit757 was in such a sudsy state of mind at midnight when I ordered my cheeseburger and onion rings from the hot plate in back of Robert’s Western World.

But that would be a lie.

I made this decision stone sober.

Scary enough. But this isn’t Suit757’s first rodeo. Or first visit to Lower Broad.

I’ve done this enough to know that Robert’s Western World is Nashville’s top oasis of real music in the creative wasteland that is “Music City.”

And the tiny flat top out back is one of the few places in town not named Waffle House to eat after the witching house.

Now, understand, nobody comes to Robert’s Western World to eat.

They come to drink beer, soak up the retro atmosphere and hear the best traditional country music in town.

Eating sometimes becomes a byproduct of the above. Which, I guess is why they put the little griddle back there in the first place.

After a long typical Suit757 day of driving across the breadth of Mississippi, Alabama and Tennessee, I finally checked into my Comfort Inn at a quarter to midnight, checked out of my suit and headed down to that stretch of touristy honky-tonks in downtown Nashville.

Literally in the shadow of the famed Ryman Auditorium, home of the original Grand Ole Opry (until the corporate hacks moved it to the suburbs), a strip of decades old honky-tonks lines Lower Broadway.

If you are “in the know” like Suit757, you can bypass the annoying bouncers out front by cutting through the alley out back next to the Ryman. All the honky-tonks have back doors utilized by the locals.

Three doors down, Tootsies is famous as the place where Willie Nelson and Patsy Cline’s husband got drunk one night and wrote “Crazy”, the most played song in the history of the juke box.

On the other side is The Stage on Broadway, which sports an awesome mural of Merle Haggard hocking George Dickel Whiskey with a tag line that reads, “Water’s for teardrops, Dickel’s for drinking.”

But the live music these resurrected tourist traps feature is the typical cheesy pop country pabulum that passes these days for creativity in this town.

Some dude from Upstate New York awkwardly wearing a cowboy hat singing about tractors and honeysuckle and crap that appeals to 55 year old housewives.

If you are looking for REAL country music in the Country Music Capital of the World, Robert’s Western World is about the only place you can find it.

Every night, you’ll find a real deal talented band that always features pedal steel guitar and upright bass and singer with more talent than all the fake pretty boys this town produces in a year.

BR5-49 used to play here before hitting it big time -- or, at least as big as big time can get playing this genre of music.

The setting is as authentic as it gets.

A former Western wear apparel store, the shelves are still lined with cowboy boots for sale.

The bartenders and waitresses are dressed straight out of central casting from a 1950s hipster stage set. Lots of pink hair dye, mousse and tattoos.

I found a spot at the bar in the back right in front of the little griddle.

Being the only sober guy in the joint, I desperately ordered up a Yazoo Pale Ale, a nice hoppy local Nashville brew.

My second choice was less inspired.

Dos Perros, also brewed by Yazoo, is supposed to be a “Mexican style” beer.

Look, I like Mexicans as much as any other gringo.

Chimichangas and mole? Sure.

But I’m not sure Mexican-style beer is a genre that begs for replication.

It tasted like a Corona without the lime. No thanks.

While the Yazoos were $4.50 each, I was able to score a Miller High Life for less than half the price.

Bargain!

That’s a fraction of the cost of a similar quality beer at Tootsies. With a much better soundtrack.

The best thing I can say about the burger is it is cheap and quick.

This isn’t gourmet.

The grill man chisels a block off a stack of frozen burgers and tosses the hard disk onto the flat top.

The onion rings are frozen too, of course.

But the man knows what he’s doing.

He’s like the Michelangelo of frozen meat product.

In ten minutes, the previously frozen block of beef has been transformed into a juicy tender burger with just a trace of pink in the middle. Topped with lettuce, tomato and a slice of raw onion, I’ve had much worse burgers for double the price.

Best of all were all the jealous looks from all the inebriated tourists surrounding me at the bar struck with beer-munchie-envy.

“Dayyyymmmn! That looks goooood!”

Within moments the grill man went from sedately enjoying the talents of the band to being busier than an IRS agent at a Tea Party rally.

Suit757 the trend setter. That’s me. Always on the cutting edge.

Like I said, sometimes you don’t have to be good to be good.

Rating: Seriously Thought About Buying Shirt.

Jukin’ at Red’s

Red’s Lounge
395 Sunflower Ave.
Clarksdale, MS






I CRAVE authenticity. The real deal.

It’s getting harder and harder to find it in our homogenized, franchised, mass-marketed modern America.

That search for the real thing is what brought me to the corner of Sunflower and Martin Luther King Boulevard on a Sunday night in Clarksdale, Mississippi.

I love the blues.

From Chicago electric blues to the hypnotic rhythm of North Mississippi Hill Country blues to acoustic country blues played on a bottle neck slide that originated right here in Clarksdale, this authentic brand of American music is one of my favorite genres.

Virtually all modern forms of popular music, from rock n roll to hip hop to R and B, derived from black cotton pickers strumming homemade cigar box and dime store guitars here in the fertile Mississippi Delta at the turn of the last century.

While the blues originated as a black genre of music, now days if you go to a blues club anywhere in America, you’ll find yourself surrounded by middle-aged white guys sporting beer guts, beards or pony tails -- or, more than likely, all three.

In the 21st Century, the blues audience is almost completely white.

And chances are the performers are too.

Sure, there are a few black blues artists like Kenny Neal, Shemekia Copeland and Duwayne Burnside who are literally following in their fathers’ footsteps, but the majority of modern blues artists look a lot like their audience.

And I supposed that’s fine. People should be free to listen to and perform whatever type of music they want.

But whenever I’m sitting there in a strip mall blues club sipping one of my microbrews listening to some white guy play a tired version of “Sweet Home Chicago”, I can’t help but let my mind wander…

…to some smoke-filled shack hard against the railroad tracks deep in the heart of the Mississippi Delta -- where the blues started.

The real deal.

Dim lights flickering, beer bottles clanging, an old weathered black hand sliding a bottle neck across the strings, big legged women rhythmically swaying their hips to the low down dirty blues beat.

A place where Suit757 doesn’t belong.

A place where I have no business being.

A place where sketchy-looking characters could cut me with a switch blade if I look at them the wrong way.

Yeah. That’s why I’m talking about!

Okay. Some of my friends think I have an unhealthy fixation on danger.

But that’s not it. I just crave something authentic.

That’s why I came to Red’s Lounge.

I heard it was perhaps the last true juke joint left in America.

Juke joints are the down home places where blues were first performed for an audience.

They were places for hard working black people to unwind after hot days under the Mississippi sun picking cotton.

Moonshine, dice playing and felicitous companionship could all be found in theses smoky, sweaty shacks out in the country or in town on the wrong side of the tracks.

For the most part, the local white sheriffs had no interest in interfering with the goings on in black juke joints. Liquor laws, last call, fire regulations went largely unenforced.

Cuttin’ and shootin’ was an occupational hazard for blues players in juke joints.

But as the musical tastes of black folks have evolved beyond their blues roots and the casinos with their free whiskey have drawn them to their riverboats on the Mississippi River, juke joints with live blues have all but disappeared here in the Delta.

Except for Red’s.

Red Paden has been running juke joints for most of his adult life. And he loves the blues.

At his namesake blues club in the heart of Clarksdale, he still schedules live blues every Friday, Saturday and Sunday night in a run-down former music store. Whether any one shows up or not.

Walking through the front door of America’s last standing live music juke joint was the fulfillment of a life-long fantasy.

I’ll admit, I was a bit nervous -- for all the aforementioned reasons.

Plus I had talked to a guy in Memphis who told me Red sometimes “has an attitude” about white people coming to his place to soak up the black juke joint atmosphere. “Although he’ll happily take your money,” he quickly added.

Another guy said when he tried to videotape one of the performers, Red threatened “to cut him”. The opinion of the regulars was divided on whether Red was kidding -- or not.

But that which made me nervous was exactly what made me so excited as I parked my rental car on Sunflower Avenue and slowly walked toward the low rumbling blues pouring out of Red’s door.

As I pushed on the weathered handle and paid my $7 cover to the friendly lady at the front, my apprehension eased a bit.

I pulled up a battered stool near the front door and ordered a beer from Red. Three bucks for a 12 ounce bottle of Miller High Life (I wasn’t about to ask Red for a beer list).

Plus I tipped Red a buck. He seemed to appreciate it.

No sign of a switch blade. That’s a relief.

As it turned out, I didn’t have anything to be nervous about.

The crowd was almost entirely white, except for a few folks who seemed to be kin to the band.

Right up front was a table of five 20-something white girls downing 18 ounce bottles of Bud. I figured they must be European (as was much of the crowd). American chicks would never walk into a place like Red’s by themselves.

It was close to a packed house. That’s a couple dozen people in this cozy joint.

Every last one of them seemed to be damn glad to be there, soaking up the authentic divey charm and the kick ass blues band.

The real deal.

These adventurous blues lovers were just like me!

The band was in the midst of a full blown scorching set of electric blues when I walked in.

Taking the lead was a 14 year old kid named “King Fish”.

Yes. You read that right. Fourteen years old!

Maybe there is hope after all for the future of black blues.

The kid was amazing, playing scalding guitar riffs behind is back and with his teeth, ala Jimmy Hendrix. He belted out blues with a voice way beyond his years.

On keyboard and occasional vocals was David “Space Cowboy” Isaac.

Perhaps most entertaining of all was Space Cowboy’s nephew on drums, aptly named, “Hollywood”.

Hollywood looked like he was twelve at the most, but spent the entire evening effortlessly banging out the blues beat with a charismatic smile plastered on his face.

While Red’s Lounge wasn’t quite as scary as I had feared/hoped, it was plenty authentic.

Years old posters haphazardly tacked to the walls.

Various flotsam and jetsam piled high against the windows.

A tapestry of plastic trash bags staplegunned to the ceiling to minimize the leaking rainwater from the roof.

A soft glow of red snake lights shaped into musical notes.

Most authentic of all was Red himself, stumbling around behind the bar, drinking his own profits and soaking up the kick ass blues unfolding in front of him in his own place.

Red wore a tattered holey Red’s Lounge t-shirt that read “It is what it is”.

I was jealous.

Our entire Suits in Strange Places rating system was devised with places like Red’s in mind.

Uncool touristy places make it easy to buy a t-shirt. They are ubiquitous. Exit through the t-shirt gift shop on your way out.

Think Hard Rock Café, House of Blues, B.B. King’s Blues Club.

The coolest places make it HARD to get a t-shirt. You’d feel like a loser-tourist-idiot even asking for one.

THOSE are the AWESOME places.

The harder it is to buy a shirt, the cooler it is to wear it.

That’s my Suit757 t-shirt philosophy.

I really wanted a Red’s shirt but I was too chicken to ask for one.

Roger Stolle, who owns the Cat Head Delta Blues and Folk Art store down the street, told me the next morning that Red’s does indeed sell t-shirts.

Roger said, “I keep telling Red to put up a sign or something if he wants to sell them. But he won’t do it. ‘This is a juke joint,’ he says. I guess to be an authentic juke joint, you have to have some ridiculous conversation to buy a shirt.”

Exactly.

Rating: I really, really wanted to buy the shirt…but I wimped out.

The Agony of Amplified Jersey Girls

Chickie’s and Pete’s
183 US Highway 130
Bordentown, NJ




Have you ever walked into a bar with a crowd of people yelling and screeching at the top of their lungs?

Fun!

Well, maybe fun, depending upon your mood. And the place.

But it loses its appeal when the bar hands those people a microphone and amplifies it throughout the building.

Otherwise known as “Karaoke Night”.

The night before I walked into the suburban New Jersey version of Chickie’s and Pete’s, I had gotten exactly four hours of sleep when my alarm went off at 3:30am. That was followed by a ride to the airport, TSA testicle fondling, planes, elevated tram rides, New York City subways and hundreds of turnpike miles driving a dirty rental car.

By the time I pulled into my Comfort Inn in beautiful (not) Bordentown, New Jersey, I was ready to get out of the suit I had been wearing for 18 straight hours, down a Goody’s Headache Powder and find something to eat for the first time in almost 36 hours.

But in a show of typical Jersey hospitality, my room’s air conditioning was broken, which really wasn’t going to work for me on this 90 degree summer night.

And since I am ALWAYS the last guy of the night to check in, there were no other rooms available. (Although a couple good natured stoners in the lobby offered me the extra bed in their room. I politely declined.)

So at an hour of the night I was hoping to already be half way between the cork and the bottle, I had to set out to find a place to stay, first.

And eat, second.

Fortunately, the Best Western was more than happy to give me a room with a working A/C in exchange for a hundred bucks.

Even more fortunately, I spotted Chickie’s and Pete’s on the way there.

I noted the bright neon lights and the full parking lot.

At 11:30pm on a Wednesday night, that was all I was looking for. Sorry loyal Suits readers, you can’t always be picky about good food and drink.

My Goody’s was just beginning to kick in when I opened the front door and was greeted with the sounds of amplified screeching.

Under almost any other circumstances, I might have a much better attitude about a packed house of fun-loving, hammered Jersey girls butchering “Don’t Stop Believin.”

Well, “much better attitude” might be a bit of an exaggeration.

But you know what I’m saying. I just needed a beer and some food.

Fortunately, I found a nice spot at the bar underneath a flat screen showing one of the West coast baseball games. Perfect. Except for all that screeching.

I asked the barkeep for a Sierra Nevada Pale Ale draft and a menu.

That’s when I discovered that this place I had stumbled into is a somewhat famous small chain of Philadelphia crab houses/sport bars.

In fact, the joint has been voted one of the best sports bars in America. How lucky is that?

I mean, you gotta love a place whose motto is “It’s a lot more fun to eat in a bar than to drink in a restaurant.”

Hey, come to think of it, that might be Suit757’s new motto!

The most prominent item on the menu was “Chickie's and Pete’s World Famous Crabfries”.

Is there any question? Gotta go with those. How could I live with myself if I didn’t?

For about eight bucks, I got an overflowing basket of crinkle-cut fries covered in Old Bay. They were okay, but what made them special was the two little ramekins of hot queso cheese attached to either end of the basket for dipping.

Clearly, this item is not meant to be consumed by just one human. Especially when that human is ordering a crab cake sandwich to go with the “World Famous Crabfries”.

But like I said, I was hungry.

The sandwich was tasty, consisting of two small crab cakes, lettuce, tomato and remoulade sauce.

I suppose Philadelphia is close enough to salt water to justify a chain of crab houses like this, but Chickie’s and Pete’s crab cakes aren’t going to make me forget about the ones served right on the shore of the Chesapeake Bay. That’s for sure.

Seasoned well with a good bit of bready filler, these crab cakes will do if you can’t get to Baltimore or Norfolk.

But at nearly midnight on a Wednesday, I really had nothing to complain about.

Especially when I noticed that Newcastle and Miller High Life bottles were on special.

Forget the $4.75 Sierra Nevada draft, Suit757 never passes up a deal.

Unfortunately, the $3 Newcastle, which I haven’t tried in years, just reinforced all my pre-conceived notions of the British who brew this bland, boring, waste of good barley.

After choking that Eurotrash down, the “Champagne of Beer” never tasted so good. Especially for two bucks.

Just as I took my last swig, the eight-top of American Idol wannabees behind me ordered up yet another round of kamikaze shots to lubricate their vocal cords. It was going on 1am.

If I wasn’t so tired I might have noticed (or cared) that some of them were pretty decent looking – at least for Yankee chicks.

What is it about Jersey girls anyway?

All I knew was that after an hour of enduring amplified Jersey girls I was in desperate need of another Goody’s.

And a good night’s sleep.

Rating: Would Wear A Free Shirt.