Soaring with the Eagles (and the Pigs)
Chris Riemenschneider, Star Tribune Friday, Sept. 29, 2006

Doug Knutson has lived in south Minneapolis for most of his life, but he only found out a couple of years ago that the Eagles Club even existed. And he's been trying to make heads or tails of it ever since. "It's sort of this hole-in-the-wall, VFW-and-wedding-hall type of place," Knutson, 45, said last week while watching his favorite local band, the Butanes -- which is what originally brought him to the Eagles. "In a way, it reminds me of the Rock 'N Bowl in New Orleans, just this weird, old, hidden kind of place where now you can see a lot of really great bands play."

Officially, it's called the Fraternal Order of the Eagles (FOE) Aerie No. 34. Explaining ! what all that means will probably make a lot less sense than Knutson's description, but here goes ...

Tucked away on a quiet street near the Hexagon Bar and Memory Lanes, at 25th Av. and 25th St., the dusty, time capsule of a club is home to the Minneapolis branch of a Masons-like organization.
FOE No. 1 was started by theater owners in Seattle way back in 1898. Minneapolis got its own Eagles order a year later. Back then, Eagles members were mostly stagehands, actors and other performers, explained John Eicher , bar manager and nearest thing to historian at the Minneapolis Eagles Club. Today, he said, "anyone can become a member so long as they get two other members to sponsor them."

To me, it all sounds like a ploy by older members to get free drinks from prospective newbies. But anyway, the club itself -- which opened in 1953 and hasn't been remodeled since a fire in 1983 -- has long been open to nonmembers. Bands started playing there in 2003.

"It seemed like too great a room to only be u sed for bingo," said Vince Gillespie the Eagles bartender who started booking bands with the help of longtime friend Max Ray (the Wallets/X-Boys horn player).
The room Gillespie referred to is the club's dance hall, a 200-or-so-capacity room that sits off the main bar area. It has a low, tobacco-coated ceiling, a checkered-wood dance floor and a funky little tucked-in stage with red curtains behind it (which cover up the electric bingo sign).

"It's one of the closest things we have to a beat-up old honky-tonk," said Becky Thompson, who performs there most Mondays with her country band Old School. Thompson moved to the Eagles Club after her weekly gigs at Lee's were canceled last December. In fact, most of the Eagles' regular performers are castaways from other venues.

The Butanes haven't had a regular home since their Cabooze stand ran out in the early '90s. The Liquor Pigs and Willie Murphy booked regular gigs there after the Viking Bar closed in July (Murphy also now plays the 400 Bar on Mondays).

And then there are the X-Boys, who've never really had a home. The loose '70s-themed cover band also features Chris Osgood and Dave Ahl of the Suicide Commandos , three ex- Suburbs and scenesters such as Steve Fjelstad , who was staff engineer at Twin/Tone Records, and former Suburbs/Hüsker Dü roadie Casey Macpherson .

All these veteran players gravitated to the Eagles Club, Thompson theorized, "because we get treated well there. That's getting rarer and rarer." The club's longtime patrons have been as welcoming to the bands as have its operators. "I l-o-o-o-o-ve it when the bands are here," said Jacqui Ihde , a fraternal member since 1985, who said she would've joined years earlier, "but I thought it was just an old person's place."

That stigma still exists. The bands have ! brought in new blood to the Eagles, but it still could use an ! infusion , many of the regulars say. "A lot of people don't seem to know it's there," said Randy Webb of the Liquor Pigs, who so far haven't seen all that great a turnout for their relocated Friday happy-hour gigs. "The place holds twice the bodies we could ever get in at the Viking, so it has potential."

Some other selling points for the venue: free parking, cheap drinks ($3 a beer average) and, along with the Hexagon Bar and Memory Lanes (ex-Stardust), it's in something of a born-again entertainment district. At the very least, Gillespie and the other Eagles Club handlers hope a few myths about the place will soon be dispelled."You don't have to be in the military or join a cult or anything like that to get in," Gillespie said.

R.I.P. Viking Bar, July 31, 2006
Photos by Nick Lethert

Dear Fellow Mourners
Pat Kerrigan (July 31st, 2006)
I think it's time for all honorary and not-so-honorary members of the Krewe d'West Bank Social Aid and Pleasure Club to grab their hankies, sashes and parasols and head down to 1829 Riverside Ave for some crying in our beers and kicking up our heels. Once the ghost has finally been given up and the doors locked for a (hopefully not) final time, the faithful would join the second line celebrational funeral parade to the Biomagnetic Center of the Universe for an impromptu service, with KFAI blasting appropriate or inappropriate music into the neighborhood. This processional would include amazing outfits, a big brass band and horse drawn (or tricycle-powered) hearse bearing the mystical gris gris gumbo of countless magical/hilarious/outrageous Viking memories, ending with sending off in grand style the collective spirit of the Viking Bar in it's journey to the glory on the other side (maybe with the Liquor Pigs doing Prayer of Death).This is what I'm visualizing, how 'bout all y'all?

Enjoy every sandwich
Jay Johnston
Boo Hiss. Geez, I go out of town for a few days and my social world fell apart. I have confidence that the Pigs will find a new home and we will be there, whenever. As Warren Zevon said, "Enjoy every sandwich." All my "broken hearted" best.

The Death of the Viking Bar
Charlie Pine http://crucialtunes.blogspot.com/

Last night was the last roundup for the Viking Bar, probably the last watering hole with any strong links to the long and checkered music scene that once existed on the West Bank in Minneapolis. I heard the news second hand this morning and sadly wasn't there for the wake.

I'd give anything right now to have been in attendance. Though I'd been going there for well over 20 years it was since the early 90s that it became the only bar that really mattered anymore. It wasn't because what was presented was the 'hippest' music or that it was this week's hottest ticket. It bypassed all that and kept stubbornly to its own course.

The true focus of the place was that it attracted the remnants of many who could recall the long, gone glory years of the 'Bank. However as long as it was still open you could argue that it hadn't passed. It was also a magnet for alot of middle aged musos. You didn't have to fight crowds or shout over a din to enjoy yourself. And yet it still managed to attract a younger crowd too. I'll have to devote another piece to the tapestry of sounds that were presented over the years. But that can wait for another day.
Once inside it was a clubhouse and you didn't need to know the secret hand shake. Because anyone could be or was treated like a member. It was sort of like the Our Gang movies come to life for grownups. You know you'd always run into someone you knew and you would frequently encounter folks you hadn't seen in years. And there was the constant of a group of regulars that you swore couldn't have had a life away from the place.

It was sort of timeless. It never really changed inside. Unlike so many other clubs or bars that went through periods of being hip and fashionable, saw various renovations or folded, the Viking just stayed the way it always was. You could rely on that about it. And you always felt it would be there. Well now it's not. And from here on we're all the poorer for that.

Memories of the Viking
Jay Johnston

I confess to being a newcomer over the past 4 years, but we were loyal.

The Viking was our favorite destination on Friday night from 7-9 pm. We had a beer there while the Liquor Pigs played, prior to the Yonder Mountain String Band event at the Cabooze. The Pigs won hands down and we have been coming ever since.

Marty, Jay and Shelly couldn’t have been more hospitable as they tried to handle the crowd when the place filled up. The bouncers would look at Zana and I after missing a few weeks and simply say,” Welcome home”.

You took one look at those knotty pine walls and the ancient wiring system and you knew you were in West Bank paradise.

One thing remains as a common denominator, we love the Pigs. They will get gigs elsewhere and we will be there. But there was something to dancing to Bol Weevil after a couple of Michelob Golden Lights that made the world seem a bit bohemian. The aisle down the middle of the bar was too small and there was really no dance floor to speak of, but we just moved where we were. With Doug playing the “bones” on the floor in the corner.

It would be hard to forget the night the Pigs closed with Delilah and the women threw panties at the band. I recall hearing Lucinda confide: “They are getting kind of expensive to throw these days”.

We were there the last Friday night when the full Pigs crew was in session. After the music, we all stayed around to watch the Twins lose a tight game against the Tigers. The world was in sync and we had just experienced the last Friday night with the Pigs at the Viking.

As the song Big Yellow Taxi says “No, no, no, don't it always seem to go,
that you don't know what you've got till it's gone”.