Stag Nite at El Leñador — oh what a site.

Entering the El Leñador on Wednesday for Stag Nite (sic) is a little like taking a hot tub time machine. The carpet alone, full of nostalgia and the reek of cigarette smoke, screams Leisure Suit Larry to the disco cobwebs of your mind, where George McCrae and his mustache sit sipping rusty nails and saying things like, “you dig, man?”  This hipster paradise — ironic, almost legendary — also offers a perfect venue for laid-back jam bands or earnest singer/songwriters. In front of a room-stretching mural of pastoral landscape, echoing the past incarnation of El Leñador as a German beer house, sit the entertainment for the evening. With the stained-glass interior windows removed from the bar area, you can watch the band from fifty feet away, choke on a cloud of smoke and never loose sight of your bartender as he reaches into a cooler and pops Stag after Stag after Stag or generously over-pours a Jameson.

And last Wednesday at least, the band was totally worth the $5 cover, the $1 beers, the nostalgia and cigarette smoke, the Cherokee street hipster love-in, the accidental run-in with old friends and the lingering hang-over. John Krane, Tim McAvin, Jesse Irwin, Fred Fiction, Elly Herget, and Alvie Caby comprise the St. Louis Region’s answer to Monsters of Folk; and their song swapping country and folk stylings proved for me the ultimate touch of irony as I drank Irish Whiskey in the Germanic décor, wondered aloud whether anyone was brave enough to eat the Latin fare they served there, and washed it all down with a Milwaukee beer. These musicians played as much for each others’ benefit as for ours.  It might as well have been a basement jam of singer/songwriters, if that is, the basement was an old catering hall and you were charged 5 dollars to listen in, and you were friends with some of the most talented folks from the South City set. Oh it was a thing to see, an old run down restaurant on Cherokee given a second life as an ironically fueled rock venue with no self-consciousness, no pretense — a thing of beauty — if you are into that type of thing.

Posted by | September 9, 2010 | Music | 3 Comments 

Comments

  • http://short.kdhx.org/18d2b5 Roy Kasten

    This is great. Gritty and vivid. I guess I need to get down to Stag Nite soon…

  • http://tonyrenner.blogspot.com Tony Renner

    I thought the dollar sign went before the digit… You know, $1 drinks and $5 cover….

  • http://short.kdhx.org/18d2b5 Roy Kasten

    Yes, Tony. Fixed.