I've been playing music in the bars and clubs along Florida's east coast for most of my adult life. I break the cycle every now and then and take a real-people kind of a job, but I always seem to find myself back in one of the dives out at The Beach, playing bass or guitar with one group or another.
Over the years, I've managed to categorize the various establishments, and the folks that patronize them. I don't necessarily use the people as a gauge when making my judgment about any certain club, but sometimes the clientele give the bar it's personality, if you know what I mean.
Most bars are dark inside at night when the band is playing. Often the stage is lit up with some form of flood light system to give you a good look at the musicians. More often than not, the lighting is harsh and just detracts from the scene. I reason that club owners light up the stage so the rest of the joint stays dark and you can't see how dirty the floor is. But, that's my opinion. The smaller places don't have the fancy lighting, giving us guys up on stage a much better view of the house.
Hotel bars fall into a category all by themselves. Usually, a lot of money was spent during construction to create some kind of theme. South seas, nautical, '50s, etc. Generally, you find the higher classed patrons here with a little more money to spend. Usually these are travelers, and you see them once and they are gone forever.
Your neighborhood taverns are the opposite side of the coin. You play there ten times a year and you always see the same faces. Usually these places are filthy, and a lot of the people are the same way. You've got your Irish Pubs, and the Italian places, and bowling allies where the younger kids hang out and listen to rock and roll.
The service clubs are usually a lot friendlier than most places. These clubs are private, members and guests only, and you see the same crowd every single outing.
Then you have the restaurants along the oceanfront that have bars. No matter where you go, you can always find a place along the beach that serves food and has a little bar tucked into one end or the other, with a little dance floor and a few couples snuggled up in the booths or moving on the dance floor. There will always be a couple of wishful guys, hanging at the bar surveying the opportunities for an easy score for the night, and the usual number of unaccompanied ladies waiting for an invitation to cheat on her inattentive husband.
And so it was on this balmy September night a year or so ago; I found myself in just one of those little places on the beach a little north of St. Augustine. We had been booked there for a couple of weeks and things were as normal as the tide. The place was friendly and the waitresses did their best to forget to collect from us for our beers, hoping for a better tip at closing time. The boss was cool and turned as eye to his help, knowing from all the years how it went.
The locals came and went early in the evening, same as everyplace else, and the diners drifted in for a drink and waited for a table for dinner. A man in a suit perched himself on a barstool and smoked one cigarette after the other and threw shots of Tequila down straight. Young couples listening to our music occupied two tables, and three elderly women had taken up residence in a booth as far from the bandstand as possible.
I was on bass this night, with a good lead man named Chuck and a big Italian kid named Geno on drums. A friend from Neptune beach we called The Ice Man was playing rhythm and doing most of the vocals. Other than Geno who is thirty-nine, we are all over fifty and have seen lots of better days. I'm fifty-eight and wish to hell, I had treated my body to a less steady diet of alcohol for the past forty or so years. I still have a full head of long wavy hair and a full beard but the rest of the package screams for retirement. But I still like to look at the dollies and dream of days gone by.
We had just come back from break; it was straight up eleven o'clock. One of the women in the back booth requested us to do some old rock and roll songs so we were playing a Ventures tune or maybe it was Chuck Berry, who knows? I glanced up at the doorway across the room and watched as this blond with too much hair slithered into the darkness. Reason I say she had too much hair is because she looked like Retro Roxy with this big bouffant hair-do all piled up on top and spilling down to her shoulders.
The suit at the bar zeroed in on the blond as soon as she found a table in the darkness. He almost dumped a couple of tables and moved a dozen or more chairs as he stumbled over to greet her. It looked like they might be acquaintances. We had just finished the tune and it was calm in the room when Mr. Suit struggled to his feet and announced drunkenly, "Aw, who the hell needs this, anyway?" Then he staggered toward the door and vanished. Seems there has to be one in every crowd.
We played a few old standard tunes from the fifties and sixties and at 11:50, we took our last break. I really had to make a beer deposit so I made a beeline for the head. When I got back, Chuck was holding a slip of paper in his hand with a song title scribbled on it.
"You do this, don't you?" He asked as I approached.
'Sitting On The Dock In The Bay' was etched on the napkin in pencil.
"Sure, Chuck," I answered. "No problem."
He looked at the waitress for the customer that had delivered the request, but she had disappeared into the darkness. Shrugging his shoulders, he picked up his guitar and played the intro to the old Otis Redding favorite.
I sang the song through a couple of times and let Chuck take an extra lead bridge before we ended the song. I could hear a single pair of hands clapping from the house, but I couldn't make out the source of the response due to the stage lights.
We finished our set at 12:30. The house lights came on in the bar so the waitresses could find something under a table. Last call wouldn't be until 1:45, so after a short time, the lights were dimmed again and the hangers-on were again cast into the darkness of the room. The blond was still seated at her table nursing a drink and slowly smoking her cigarette. I packed up my bass and took it out and locked it in the trunk of my car. Returning to the bar, I eased my tired butt up on a stool, and stared down the front of Sally, the bartender's shirt. Sally was huge. Everybody got to look down the front of her shirt when she leaned over the bar.
I was sipping on a cold brew, wishing Sally would come back down to my end of the bar when a soft as honey voice drifted into my brain.
"That's my favorite song." The soft voice told me. "I haven't heard it in just forever."
I turned my head, still holding the beer in mid air and stared into the biggest pair of shining brown eyes that I have ever seen. They were staring back from a darkly suntanned face framed with a whole slew of wavy blond hair. It took several seconds for gravity to catch hold of my eyeballs and drag them down from her eyes to her full pink painted lips, and then even farther down past her neck to stare at her nicely displayed tan cleavage.
I guess that she must have caught me by surprise, because I usually have something witty to say right away when somebody speaks to me. I had a little trouble with this one, for some reason. All I could come up with was, "Oh?"
"Can I buy you a beer for the song?" She queried.
"Sure," I managed, as she made the high sign to Sally for a round.
"Join me at my table?" She asked, spinning on her spiked heel and winding her way back to her table in the darkness.
She was not tall, maybe 5'-5" but her heels made her seem taller. The woman was over forty, I could tell by the tiny wrinkles that streamed away from her eyes and the texture of her skin where it vanished into the top of her blouse. Her bust was big, but not gigantic, 38D if I'm a fair judge. She was also packing a few extra pounds which gave her a fine swell to her hips as she walked toward the table, but her waist was still small enough to give her a distinct hourglass appearance. Watching her walk away was just as exciting as watching her walk toward you, I imagined. Her blouse was thin and shiny so I could make out her lacy white bra underneath. She also wore a snug fitting and very short white skirt. Sliding off the stool, I headed away from the lights of the bar.
I located her standing next to the table, waiting for me to pull the chair away for her to sit. Doing so, I was treated to a wide expanse of creamy thigh as her skirt rode up when she crossed her legs. I sat in the chair beside her and concentrated on her eyes.
"Why are you staring at me?" She asked.
