Me and the ANB continued our weekend OC dive tour with a Sunday afternoon at Swallows Inn in San Juan Capistrano. This place has been around forever, has a lot of character, and has a lot of characters. In fact, if you look it up on the Google Maps it says "Funky country-western bar with dancing".
Driving down late on a Sunday morning was easy because of the reduced traffic.
The bar is just down the street from the Mission at SJC.
I took a left at this light and pulled into the parking lot behind Swallows.
But alas, there was no parking available. The parking is atrocious around here. I drove around for a few minutes and found parking on the street at the end of the block. I took it because, what they heck, it wasn't as far away as where I have to park for Downtown Disney. I rolled my gear up to the stage door.
When you step in the stage door you are right on the stage. This is your initial view.
Surf boards, golf clubs, ladies underthings, boots, and just about anything else you can think of is attached to the walls and ceilings for atmosphere.
John has his stuff on stage already. He'll be right back. Some of the ladies' delicates are even autographed.
Looking at the stage from the dance floor you see the front window. The stage door has the "Dilly Dilly" sign on it. Most of the time we leave the door open while we're playing.
There were a few TVs around but most people were dancing once we got going. I was able to watch the Saints game. Sorry Rams fans.
I brought my small rig. But I forgot to sign the wall. Next time. I signed it once about fifteen years ago but it's been painted since then.
The whole gang is here now and we do the setup dance on the small stage. Our buddy, Drummer Dave from True Willie, is working with us today. This is his warm-up gig in preparation for our next trip to Gilley's in Las Vegas. Jason can't do Vegas this month.
Dave says he's been looking forward to this gig all week. Dave is solid. I love working with Dave. More drummers should be like Dave.
His Mapex kit sounds great without being too loud. It looks like we are just about ready. We do a very quick sound check, grab some beers, and get to work.
The is the bar room. The dance floor room and the bar room are separate with two connecting doorways and large picture windows between them. Yes, it's kind of funky.
We are looking through the south door back across the dance floor at the stage.
We step through the door and look across the dance floor.
It's a great two-stepping crowd this afternoon. The floor was packed the whole time. Here's John banging away on his keyboard. I'm sure glad he brought only half of his rig.
Dave is having fun. He's fun to work with too. Dave really did his homework.
One the break we talk about how much fun we're going to have in Vegas.
Then we're back at it. The crowd was very nice to us, bought us a couple of drinks and tipped us generously. They loved our old school country.
We played from 2pm to 6pm on a Sunday afternoon. It's actually a pretty good deal because you still have time to make another gig if you have one. We used to pull doubles all the time back in the day. We packed it up and said our goodbyes.
I loaded up my cart to roll it down to the end of the block. I think there's a guitar player hiding behind my gear.
This funky little place is fun. It's a dive but it's a cool dive. I wish it wasn't so far away. Even so, we are scheduled for a couple more Sundays coming up in the next couple months. There is a large fun factor here. Thanks for looking!
Thank you for your indulgence,
BassCliff
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