My Life In Bars

A non-drinker's journey through a world that often revolves around, well, drinking

Two things are true:

1. I have spent a substantial amount of time in bars.

2. I have never drank¹.

I also spent a good number of years (specifically from about the ages of 14 to 20), OUTSIDE of bars (sometimes figuratively, sometimes quite physically), pining to get in. Not for the alcohol, though. For the music. If I’d ever procured a fake ID, I wouldn’t have been buying six-packs of Natty Light or whatever; it would’ve been solely to see bands I love in venues I couldn’t legally get into.

On their first headlining tour, Pearl Jam (my favorite band at the time) came through Salt Lake and played Club DV8, a 21-and-over club. Thinking the show was all-ages, which DV8 sometimes hosted, I bought myself a ticket. Imagine my crumbling dismay December 15, 1991 when they wouldn’t let me in². Memorable show too! Lead guitarist Mike McCready took an epic rockstar leap that landed less than epically, resulting in a broken ankle³. And, if the internet is to be believed, the opening act was: Smashing Pumpkins⁴?!?!

That’s just the most personally defeating of dozens of concerts I missed out on because I was too young for 21-and-over clubs like the legendary Zephyr Club (may she RIP) among other less-storied institutions. I had no desire to drink. That wasn’t the draw. I just wanted to see the music I loved in person. I was knock-knock-knockin’ on a door that was never gonna let me in. By law.

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Having since turned 21 (and then some), the mystique of the unobtainable is long gone. In its place, just a fog of stale cigarette smoke, grumpy sound guys, cheap PA systems, and amateur drunks. The first time I showed my ID and got in, it was with pride and relief. Today, showing my ID feels more like, “Really? Do you seriously need to see this? LOOK AT MY BEDRAGGLED FACE. MY SNOW-CAPPED BEARD. MY DEAD-INSIDE EYES!”

After years of yearning to get in and now even more years of actually getting in, my overall verdict is that bars aren’t that great a place to see music. They work. They’ll do the trick. They’re a necessity for a certain level of band. They serve their purpose. But a transcendent bar show is the exception, not the rule, in my experience. (Maybe I just don’t like ragtag Guided By Voices-type music enough.)

Why? So many reasons:
- amateurs not holding their liquor or their tongues, though this can happen in arenas and stadiums too; frankly, this can happen anywhere. You’re just in closer proximity to it and the likelihood of running into is exponentially higher in a bar.
- the inherent noise of the bar itself (people shouting orders, the clank of glass bottles chucked into garbage cans full of other glass bottles, the inherent chatterbox social aspect of it all, the split attention where music isn’t the single focus, etc)
-the sound/acoustics/floorplan (and often business model) are typically optimized for the bar and not the music. So many bars have terrible, outdated sound systems because that’s the last thing they want to spend money on.
-the soundguy (or girl) is often not optimized for the music either; I remember seeing songwriter Dan Bern at The Dead Goat Saloon and the sound person could not figure out how to make a single acoustic guitar and vocal not feed back, which should not be an unsolvable mystery to any competent sound person. Bern eventually just unplugged and sang to us all from the middle of the floor, no speakers involved.
-bar soundpeople are notoriously underpaid and overgrumpy
-other secret reasons

Behold! My power rankings for where I prefer to see shows, listed from most-preferred to least-preferred:

-a theater (Eccles, Kingsbury, Radio City, Carnegie Hall), seating is key
-a listening room or house show (The Living Room, Velour, Hotel Cafe), seats are a plus
-a bar that (gasp!) cares about your listening experience (The State Room)
-an above-average amphitheater, preferably in the reserved seating section (Shoreline Amphitheater, Santa Barbara Bowl, Red Rocks)
- a bar that doesn’t care about your listening experience (Burt’s Tiki Lounge, may its charming diveydumpiness rest in peace, or NorthSix in Brooklyn), at least it’s intimate!
-an arena (Delta Center, San Jose Hockey Arena)
-a stadium⁵ (Rose Bowl, Mile High)
-a festival⁶ (Lollapalooza, Telluride Bluegrass, Kilby Block Party)
-a below-average amphitheater (Utah First Credit Union Amphitheater)
-a nearly-free outdoor concert
-a totally free outdoor concert⁷

There are exceptions. As mentioned above, The State Room in Salt Lake City could invent its own category: Listening Room With A Bar. That’s because the bar portion is in a walled-off back section, away from the music experience. Which means…no noise from the bar. And also a removed place where people can go if they wanna be chatty (not that they always do, but they sure CAN).

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I get it that bars aren’t just about music. For some people, they’re not about music at all. The music is just set dressing for some people—incidental, no more important than the lighting or their outfit or the wall decor or the drink selection. I know that bars are magnets for social reasons⁸—hangouts, get-togethers, hookups, the single scene. For an introvert with lousy hearing like me, it can be a real nightmare scenario: crazy loud, extrovert-friendly, flirt-charged, small-talk-driven, often involving dancing…none of which play to my strengths, whatever those might be.

Which is not to say I never tried.

I had more than a few excruciatingly dumb bar interactions with women, all of whom must’ve been SO puzzled.

When I lived in Boston one summer, my friends and I would sometimes go out on the weekends to try to meet girls. My main memory is going to a place in Allston called Harper’s Ferry, where a cover band would be playing. My friends, more extroverted and adept at flirting, would be dancing up a storm, chatting up girls, all your standard-issue good-time-having stuff. And I would be, well, staring at my shoes and trying to dance without looking stupid, which we all know only makes you look stupider. Every time we went, the band inevitably covered “Come On, Eileen” by Dexys Midnight Runners and, for whatever reason, we had universally decided that that was OUR song and we’d go nuts, which means I would tap my foot more enthusiastically while Kenny and Adam jubilantly “grooved.” I know for a fact I didn’t have one successful interaction with a girl at Harper’s Ferry. Adam and Kenny might have. But my memory serves up a litany of strikeouts.

That same summer, like any good American college student worth their weight in overconfident nationalism⁹ and socially inappropriate speaking volume, we traveled across Europe. In Budapest, my friend Barrett and I had convinced our Hungarian-speaking friend/guide Billy that we should go out and try to meet some girls. In an out-of-character feat, that night at some nightclub, I suddenly had the cojones to talk to this gorgeous Hungarian girl¹⁰. I can still picture her perfectly: long straight blonde hair framing her Disney princess brown eyes, bangle earrings, wearing a stark white cocktail dress to match her white-painted fingernails. I was playing it cool when she actually sat down to talk to me, and then, in a wholly snap-right-back-into-character feat, I proceeded to have ZERO game¹¹. The place was loud with Euro-techno and chatter, so we had to lean in to each other’s ears to even be heard, which was actually not the worst start. But between the noise and the language barrier and my skill deficit, it was quickly going nowhere. I’d say something; she’d furrow her brow, not understanding. I’d try again; she’d smile and shake her head, hold up her hands like she wasn’t getting it. She’d say something and I’d try to parrot it back to her and she’d shake her head again. Communication breakdown, in the words of Led Zeppelin. At last, in Peak Ben Stiller-esque desperation, I panicked and resorted to an overly loud and dramatically enunciated, “You have beautiful eyes!” (IN ENGLISH!) was the best I could do. It was Office-level cringey. Full-on Michael Scott-core. She had started out at least curious about this tall, red-haired American and I had NOTHING. I should have at least bought the poor girl a drink. She eventually drifted off, back to her friends, leaving me to feast on my self-loathing. And, man, there was plenty to eat.

Ultimately, me in bars in my 20s came down to a question I had to ask myself and perhaps the Hungarian goddess was wondering the same thing:

If you’re not drinking and you don’t seem to like to dance and you’re not trying to have sex with any of the women here, what exactly are you doing here?

“Uh? I want you to fall in love with me and furiously kiss and then, months or years later, once we’re married, THEN the sex.” Sorta goes against the entire premise of Weekends In Your 20s…

I wasn’t made for the nightlife, ok?

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I eventually graduated from just listening to bands in bars to performing onstage myself, playing in different bands.

I don’t remember the first bar I played. Strange for someone who involuntarily catalogs random Firsts¹² with OCD-leaning aplomb. But I know, somewhere along the line, we landed a Thursday Night Residency at a Tier-C¹³ Salt Lake City bar called the Grizzly Bar. It wasn’t even downtown. It was roughly in the neighborhood I live in now, in a weird commercial strip mall pocket of Holladay. I say WAS because it IS no more. It closed. The space became a yoga studio for awhile. And then it sat vacant. And then it was bulldozed a few years ago. It’s now a patch of dirt or mud, depending the weather.

Back then, you could smoke in bars. So I’d come home at 1am after playing two sets at the Grizzly Bar and promptly place whatever I’d been wearing in the wash, such was the horrific morning-after stench if I didn’t. You’d forget it stunk in the moment, because you’d been there for a 3-hour gig and your nose had become desensitized to the smoke and stale beer smell. But in the morning, if you left them out, those clothes reeked, punishing your olfactory like rotten smelling salts dipped in fecal matter.

By the time I got to New York, in my mid-20s, the novelty of the bar had worn off. Dominic & I played a lot of them all through Manhattan and Brooklyn. Some legendary (CBGB’s, The Bitter End), but most that no one’s ever heard of, were kind of absurdly out of the way, have probably turned over or gone out of business, and I’m too lazy to look up the names.

I don’t think twice about playing bars today, playing The State Room a good 3-4 times a year, except it means my kids and nieces and nephews can’t come.

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As for the drinking?

I went to my fair share of parties in high school. Not all of them. But enough, for sure. For obvious reasons, none of those parties were in bars. Ours were up at The Pit (every high school has their version of “The Pit”….the weird, sorta remote place that kids go to have a kegger, which they think is secluded and secret enough to not be busted—despite the fact that it’s the same place they use every time—only to have the kegger invariably and predictably busted). Or sometimes the party would end up at so-and-so’s house, parents out of town or renowned for its LPI (Low Parental Involvement)¹⁴. I was present at a bunch of these, drunk teenagers making out sloppily on the trampoline, a couple others groping behind a locked door, the rest sorta milling around, quoting Monty Python or Saturday Night Live in the backyard or in a kitchen or around a TV. I was invariably the designated driver, dealing with slurring, near-puking friends with varying degrees of patience, driving them home while not dealing with whatever parental or gastrointestinal aftermath awaited them once they got there.

Surprisingly, I have genuinely fond memories of those times, talking to girls I didn’t think even knew I existed in the high school halls, earning alcoholically-enhanced laughs for medium jokes, watching friends make idiots of themselves, the feel and sound of the cool canyon winds brushing through the trees, music on the stereo, hanging out, nowhere to be.

The closest I ever got to drinking was not actually in high school. I wanted desperately, painfully to be cool, so it’s a bit surprising in retrospect that I didn’t ever cave to the teen peer pressure. I suppose it was a prelude to my life as a branding guy that I established my quiet-teetotaling brand well enough that, by my junior or senior year, partiers stopped offering me drinks. They knew I was there socially (comical, knowing myself as a staunch introvert). At one point, we were at a multi-school kegger and some dude from Olympus or West High School offered me a beer only to be immediately shut down, not by me but by my friend Ben, who practically scolded the guy. “HEY! This is Paul. He doesn’t do that!”

College drinking wasn’t tempting either. I saw enough Beta Theta Pi’s puking on themselves (or each other) to not see much romance or allure in that.

And it wasn’t in my first experiences living away from my parents, in Boston with my Tower Records coworkers or Boston College coeds at Harper’s Ferry. Or New York for that matter. The weird looks I got when, on the company dime during my first commercial shoot in Prague, I told the waiter, “I’ll just have a water” and then, when the whole team toasted “to a great shoot”, I clinked my little glass of water—it may as well have been a sippy cup as far as they were concerned—with all theirs. Or the way the entire Ogilvy-NY office shut down around noon on St. Patrick’s Day, the whole place evacuated to whichever bar suited them. If I was gonna do it, that would’ve been a prime day to sample a Guinness or an Irish Mule.

No, the closest I ever got to drinking was a decade into my settled-down life as a husband and father. In my 40s! Always a late bloomer…And it wasn’t a mid-life crisis thing, either! It was on the day (I’ve mentioned this), a certain company I worked for required me to fire 2/3 of my team against my will (against theirs too, to state the obvious). NINE people in one day, most of whom were highly-valued contributors, none of whom deserved the way it all unfolded. Word came down from the new Marketing leader, who was out to make a name for himself and show he wasn’t afraid to take big swings. I appealed to the CEO, with whom I had a decent relationship, in protest. He backed the new Marketing leader. My hands were, for all intents and purpose, tied¹⁵. It was beyond terrible. A travesty.

After the gut-wrenching grueling, painful, angst-filled morning of awful one-on-ones, I knocked off early that day, for obvious reasons. And set out to clear my head before heading home so as to not treat my family as whipping boys for my crippling corporate disillusionment and crisis of conscience. I ate a late lunch solo and, after finishing, as I walked back to my car, there was a sports bar open next door. I slowed down. Then stopped walking, gazing inside. Wondering. Considering. I would say I even wanted to. Escape sounded nice. Checking out sounded dreamy. I pictured myself walking up to the bar and even thought about what I might order. Thought through where I’d buy breath mints after and what I’d tell Holly. Who would blame me on a day like that?

Against the midlife crisis odds, I decided to keep walking.

Any other time—keggers, business trips, concerts, parties, casino floors, pre-show green rooms, post-show comedowns—it hasn’t really been much of a temptation¹⁶.

Some of that probably comes from my mom’s dad, who was known to say, after a particularly rough day, “I’d go out and get drunk if I thought it’d do me any good.”

Some of it comes from religious upbringing, where I was taught to stay away from alcohol¹⁷. “Strong drinks” they call them.

And, probably more, it’s because I know myself. I get very into things. I have an addictive personality. Music, especially. But also, say, food. I have a not-that-healthy relationship with food that can sometimes bend towards the emotional and compulsive. Media (movies, tv) too. Reason goes out the window. I have almost zero doubt that I would be incapable of being a casual or healthy or reasonable drinker. I think there are plenty of people who have a healthy relationship with alcohol; I’m friends with some of them. I do not see myself, just constitutionally and psychologically and maybe biologically, as being in that category.

So I don’t play. No judgment to those who do¹⁸.

I totally see how, on some nights, it might help my ultra-tightness unwind. Be the proverbial chill pill. Or even just offer some temporary escapism when my mind and anxiety are sprinting breathless laps around my mind. A brief commercial break for a worried heart. A shortcut to dreamville.

But currently it’s not on the menu.

My friend Eric, also a non-drinker who’s had plenty of experiences like the one I had in Prague, watching the whole table order drinks with fun names like Blue Hawaiian and Old Fashioned and Cosmopolitan…and then, when it got to him, ordering “just a Diet Coke please”, came up with an ingenious plan: invent fictitious drink names. What he’d do is he’d take an old country/blues music star and use their name (“I’ll have a Conway Twitty.” Or “Can I get a Sister Rosetta?”) as his drink order. He’d say it with cocksure conviction, as if the waiter/bartender surely must be familiar. When the bartender/waiter inevitably didn’t know, Eric would clarify helpfully, good-naturedly, “oh, it’s just a seltzer with grenadine and a lime” or whatever non-alcoholic mix he felt like that night. Brilliant.

I usually chicken out, but I have ordered two Lefty Frizzells over the years.

1. I have tasted. One time was on purpose—out of pure sensory curiosity, finding quickly I had no taste for it (“it” being beer). And any other time was accidental—when some dude or dudette got sloppy at a concert or sporting event or house party and spilled some of their beverage of choice on me.

2. Don’t get me started on all the false starts, cancelled shows, snowed out June concerts, I had before ever seeing Pearl Jam live.

I never saw them electric until 2009! (I saw them acoustic at The Bridge School Benefit concerts several times, but that’s not the same, man.)

3. Or that’s what I remember the review in SLUG magazine saying. I just looked it up and it sounds like the torn ligaments belonged to bassist Jeff Ament, which makes a lot more sense knowing his proclivity for aerial showmanship. (See below)

4. This feels made-up. There’s a less than 0% chance that 1991 Paul wouldn’t have known that. I declare shenanigans!

5. Some of my favorite shows ever—Springsteen at Camp Nou! Bjork at Coney Island Baseball Park! U2 at the Rose Bowl—were like this. But for every one of those, there are at least five, no SIX!, that were blah.

6. Exceptions abound! Radiohead at Field Day (in a stadium no less) was a top 3 concert of my life. Seeing David Byrne at Telluride was also one of the greatest, most joy-radiating concert experiences of my life. Likewise John Prine and the Swell Season at Folks Fest. (Telluride and Folks Fest are, not coincidentally, festivals run by the same mother company.)

7. (No shade to my friends who spearheaded the amazing Provo Rooftop Concert Series which was an exception, of course.)

In the old days of the Twilight Concert Series, I wandered over from my work (across the street!) to see Jenny Lewis and Bon Iver. These were the days when the concerts were free for anyone, so you’d see a very wide spectrum of engagement—from superfans screaming every lyric to people who had never even heard of the band and might not even like music.

This was the tour for the first (my favorite) Bon Iver album and I had never seen them live, so I was extra-amped to hear/see the band. The whole Gallivan Center plaza was sardine-packed, sweaty shoulder to sweaty shoulder.

Since I’d arrived late-ish from work, I was situated a good 25+ yards from the stage and could only SORT OF hear the music over the buzzy din of plaza conversations. At one point, the gaggle of teens in front of me paused whatever they were talking about and one of them loudly wondered, “When are they gonna play ‘Skinny Love’?”

Reader, the band was, right at that moment, in the middle of playing “Skinny Love.”

I rolled my middle-aged eyes and walked away (I thought) forever.

It took VIP tickets to see Kathleen Edwards and Iron & Wine years later to get me back.

8. I actually kind of like the UK concept of neighborhood pubs, in certain contexts, because it’s more about a place to hang out and decompress and (in ideal situations) is just, like, the neighborhood hanging out after work.

9. At a hostel in Paris, we hit it off with a group of Jewish British girls (American Mormons & British Jews could be a two-season reality show) and ended up playing cards late into the night.

As the night wore on and things got looser, the subject of differences between the U.S. and England came up. One of my friends piped up, “So…in your history books, what does it say about us KICKING YOUR BUTTS!”

First of all: clearly a guy not looking to win any points. (This was pre-Andrew Tate, pre-Alpha Bro doctrine where they teach you to be terrible and condescending to women in order to sleep with them. We didn’t know!)

Second, no one laughed. Instead, the girls exchanged eye-rolls and quizzical looks.

One of them finally said, “Like we even keep track of all the little colonies that decided to be independent. Your big war is barely a footnote in our history.”

Burn.

It was the equivalent of the classic Don Draper meme. (We/USA were the young copywriter on top; the British girls were Don Draper/England.)

10. Billy had taught us how to say “hey, ladies!” in Hungarian. Phonetically it’s SEE-ya-stōk LAWN-yōk. And it got my foot in the door, against all odds.

11. “Rizz” in the parlance of the 2020s

12. First kiss. First concert. First date. First ad that ever saw the light of day. First song I listened to after finishing my LDS mission. First time I met Pat Campbell and Scott Wiley (different days). First game-winning shot. First Bridge School Benefit concert lineup (maybe even in order).

You get the idea.

13. That’s generous. Maybe D-a.2.3.

We wanted to play Liquid Joe’s and the Zephyr so bad. Our desire was not reciprocated.

When I finally DID play Liquid Joe’s years later, the shine had worn off. Nowadays Liquid Joe’s typically hosts bands like Everyone From The Band Live But The Lead Singer or maybe Three Unmemorable Guys From B-Level Hair Rock Bands That Formed Their Own “Supergroup” or the Spazmatics.

14. No one ever said LPI. I just made that up.

15. I could have quit in protest, yes. I considered it. I had even taken a few job interviews to test the waters, looking for a parachute (to mix metaphors). Ultimately, I needed the job and stuck it out. And made some enemies of friends in the process. It still aches.

16. If anything, as a foodie, I’m just curious about the taste. I had a long talk about the ins and outs of whiskey with my friend Jay in Nashville while we were recording Ryan Tanner’s album Together Is Where We Belong. He talked me through what made a good whiskey, a bad whiskey, a great whiskey. I hear Moscow Mule or Margarita or Gin & Tonic or Sake and am curious about flavor more than any neural or cognitive effects.

17. Only semi-related: one of the best friends of my elementary school years suddenly moved away. We kept in touch for a bit but, being elementary school kids in the pre-texting/pre-internet era and me being me, we eventually sorta faded out. No falling out. Just a fade.

Fast forward a few years and I’m at a summer overnighter with my church youth group. We’ve spent the day at the lake, water-skiing and boating and stuff. And then, after dinner, we’re all sitting around a campfire and they bring in this guest speaker: my friend’s dad.

Rewind a bit because you need to know that this guy was everybody’s favorite. Gregarious. Fun. A big sports fan. The coolest dad I knew, by miles.

And he was there to tell us all about how he had become addicted to cocaine and how it had ruined him, cost him his home and job, almost cost him his family. And how he had walked a lonely road out of addiction and back to where he wanted to be.

That really stuck with me. If this guy, who (from the outside) had it made and was universally beloved, could slip and fall that far, that hard, that fast….anyone could.

It profoundly shaped my view on substance abuse.

18. My second album had a song called “Like A Proper Noun.” My coworker Adam worked up an ambitious and fun labor-of-love music video that never quite got traction on MTV for some reason. Adam was a hero, doing absolutely everything, just asking me and the band to show up a night here or there for our parts.

Anyway, when we finally released it, a lot of my friends generously posted it on social media, sharing it (unlike MTV) with the world. Reactions were generally positive and kind. And, in contrast, there were also some people who thought the video/song was judgy about drinking, which is comical since 1) the entire treatment was worked up and executed by Adam, who is NOT critical at all of people who drink (him being one of them) and expressly was NOT trying to make that particular point, and 2) the lyrics are actually pointed at preening hipsters. The alcohol-related lyrics are incidental. Sure, it takes a jab at amateurs, people who can’t hold their liquor—but it’s not about just drinking alcohol in general. The heart of it is about the insufferability of Pretentious Hipster Loudmouths, drunk or not.

Fittingly, this ruffled the feathers of one particular hipster who likes to spout off, drunk or not, like an expert, one of Pat Campbell’s friends/former band managers, who took it upon himself to go off in the Facebook comments, projecting his defensive interpretation on me, calling me “miserable and judgy.” That hurt my supernaturally thin skin; I hate being misunderstood. In his defense, he kind of was the guy in the crosshairs, drunk or not.

All of this to shout loud and clear: it’s not a song that’s taking on anyone who drinks alcohol. It’s taking on pretense and loudmouths. If anything, it was effectively a sister song to my friend Dominic’s song “Loudmouth Soup.”