Just like pretty much everyone else in St. Louis, I was surprised when I heard that Ballpark Village was getting a “cowboy bar.” Unlike the people in St. Louis that think they are too cool for country music and this guy from the St.Louis Business Journal, I thought I had died and gone to heaven when I heard the news. The only thing that would make this announcement better would be putting Yazoo out of Nashville on tap.

The post I reference above is from a Section Editor at the Business Journal who has been to the PBR bar in Kansas City. He is not a fan. Apparently he has a thing against bars that bring in “over-sauced bachelorette parties”. I would assume he is a hermit and doesn’t get out much. He certainly doesn’t frequent any drinking establishment in Soulard, on “The Landing” or any piano bar for that matter.  He has a “pie-in-the-sky” idea of how Ballpark Village will be an extension of the Cardinals and will reflect “tradition, class and ”the Best Fans in Baseball”. The ginormous ABInBev Brewhouse and the even bigger “Cardinals-themed” restaurant will encompass 50,000 square feet of space. PBR St. Louis will take about 8,000 square feet. If you do the math with those numbers, that means 86% of the first phase will be reflective of the Cardinals and A-B, while 14% will be home to something unique to downtown St. Louis. Those percentages seem to reflect the Cardinals pretty well.

The people to support this establishment are here in St. Louis. That is evidenced by the large number of folks that attend country concerts in the area. The live music scene is active and exciting here in downtown St. Louis, but the country music part of that is almost non-existent. I could write a whole other blog post about how much I despise people who think they are too good for country music. I don’t complain about music I don’t care for; I just don’t listen or go to the shows. It’s not like I only care for country music and hate everything else; I’ve been to shows by Mike Stud, Kris Allen and Lee Dewyze in the last year.

PBR St. Louis will bring live country music to downtown St. Louis that really hasn’t existed before. The people are here to support it. Here are some acts that I would love to see personally play the PBR stage…and maybe even ride the mechanical bull.

Patrick Davis: An awesome songwriter who wrote “Where I’m From”, which was a big hit for Jason Micheal Carroll last year. He also has written tracks on albums for Lady Antebellum and Jewel.

Pork McElhinny: I met Pork 3 or 4 years ago when I was in Nashville. I saw him play one night at a BBQ joint and went back the next day because I didn’t get his name. I was pleased to find that he happened to be playing across the street that afternoon. We’ve kept in touch since and I had the opportunity to see him in rural Illinois a couple years ago. He’s the definition of a guy just trying to make it in Nashville.

Alayna: She’s relatively new to the Nashville music scene but apparently has been well received at many local music clubs and has been writing songs with some well-known people in town. She raised money for her debut EP via a Kickstarter campaign, so the St. Louis start-up scene can definitely relate to her story. The video for her first single was released December 1, but it was this cover of Lady Antebellum’s “Downtown” that got me interested in her.

You may not be excited by the idea of these folks playing in St. Louis, but you should be.

To sum up my excitement, I leave you with these lyrics:

Then the mountains rose up,
Across the great planes
And all the angels up in Heaven started singing
“all it’s missing is a pretty thing”

Let there be cowgirls for every cowboy
Make them strong as any man…Lordy
Something you can’t tame, she’s a Mustang
The heart beat of the heartland.
She’s got a drawl y’all, yeah,
She’s the salt of the earth and rocks my world.
Let there be cowgirls, come on.

 

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