When The Beat Goes Country -- Western Wannabes Come Out Of The Closet

IT'S LATE AT NIGHT and a voice croons through the smoke in a piano bar up north in a no-man's stretch of Aurora. It's Steve Ridler, lips planted on the mike like a snowflake on a cheek. His voice is low. Intimate. Confessional. Forlorn. He's singing an ever-lovin' country-western song.

People press in around him, some of them singing along. Darin Bailes clasps his hand to his heart and closes his eyes to the lyrics. He knows this song, as if he's lived it. The words spill awkwardly from his lips. Laura Patterson sings along, too. Her head is bent and her hands are flying. She is an interpreter for the deaf and is signing at the bar. Steve smiles. It's very touching, this rhapsody of dancing fingers. Who would have guessed heartbreak could be so lovely?

This is The Cascade, a lounge in every sense of the word. There's a piano. Bar stools. Dance floor. Regulars. They love Steve. They buy him drinks. They lip-sync his songs. They hope for a dance. But for five hours he will stay seated, singing song after heartfelt song.

That's what country music does; it sucks you in and holds you under in life's unrelenting current. Hard luck washed over with hope. Love swept away by loss.

Country music wears its heart on its sleeve, with no apologies to those who might snicker. If they do, so what; they just don't know what they're missing. There's Steve, now joined by his brother Jeff, core members of The Ridler Brothers country band. Two

good-looking guys with enough charm to melt the coldest heart, of which they have met many along the way.

Jeff takes the microphone and motions Steve to join him. They start humming an old classic, "Love is a Many-Splendored Thing," but add a country twist. In sweet, clear (BEGIN ITALICS) a cappella, (END) they burst into song: "Divorce is a money-spending thing."

People laugh and hold their drinks up in salute. The Ridlers play on. This song is straight out of their lives. But that's getting ahead of the story. It's late now, time to call it a night and brush the frost from car windows outside.

THAT A PIANO BAR featuring country music would fill up on a Monday night tells you something about the pull of this lovelorn music. Country has always had bedrock supporters, but it's reaching beyond them now in ways that are making cynics sit up and take notice. Country has burst out of the jukebox and onto the main stage, both here and across the nation.

Last year, to the surprise of just about everybody, Garth Brooks' "Ropin' the Wind" became the first country album to debut at No. 1 on national pop charts. In January, when NBC aired a Brooks special, it was among the 10 highest-ranked shows of the week. In contrast, a Michael Jackson special aired by CBS that same night sunk to a remote 66th. Last September Brooks released "Beyond the Season," a (BEGIN ITALICS) Christmas (END) album that bounced right up to No. 2. By October, it had already sold out in several Seattle record stores.

Country fans are coming out of the closet.

Some say it's because country's down-home message dovetails with the national emphasis on "family values," but you don't have to look further than the Republican Party's failed election effort to dunk that idea. No. The popularity probably has more to do with country's changing sound, at a time when baby-boomers are finding less to relate to in rap, rock and grunge. When the choice is between pop artists like Madonna ("Erotic, erotic, put your hands all over my body") and country singers like Travis Tritt ("Can I trust you with my heart?"), some listeners are opting for songs they can sing along to without having to send their kids from the room first.

Plus, there's a young new crop of country stars. The whiny hillbilly hits of yesteryear have been replaced with melodic ballads, harder-driving rock beats and more sophisticated arrangements. The result?

Neo-twang.

Whereas Hank Williams Sr. once hit the charts with "There's a Tear in My Beer," his son Hank Jr. now sings "Fax me a Beer." Country is coming of age and it's going mainstream.

"Groups like the Eagles would be considered country today," says Tim Murphy, vice president of programming at country radio station KMPS. "It's amazing how many people we run into who say, `I really don't like country music but I like what you guys play.' OK. Fine. Whatever you want to call it."

Murphy calls it just desserts. After years of respectable but unremarkable ratings in the greater Seattle area, KMPS finally broke through to No. 1 this year, eking past longtime leader KIRO. Several top-40 stations are hovering in the wings, but they've lost the dominance they enjoyed only a few years ago.

The trend has not gone unnoticed. This year, one of the region's oldest and biggest rock 'n' roll clubs, Parker's, switched over to a country format and draws hundreds of people for dance lessons and live western music. In Tacoma, Leslie's Too went country this year, followed by C.I. Shenanigans.

If you're still not convinced of country's popularity, consider this: In a recent survey commissioned by the Ziploc sandwich bag company, 1,000 Americans were asked this pressing question: "With what famous person would you most like to share a sandwich?" Although George Bush won with 12 percent (the vote was taken before the election), the top 10 picks included Garth Brooks - who (BEGIN ITALICS) tied (END) with Jesus Christ.

OF COURSE, IT WASN'T always this way. For years, the bulk of country music was restricted to rural, redneck America. It gave voice to their values and struggles, in a way most rock music ignored. When, for example, the Beatles declared "God is Dead," country fans recoiled - turning instead to singers like that Okie from Muskogee, Merle Haggard.

So what if Haggard's music reinforced country's hokey image; the songs were real and honest and dang me if anyone said otherwise. Country fans turned inward, driving down the back lanes of life, their radios turned on and their voices raised in song: "Your Cheatin' Heart, will make you weep ..."

No wonder, then, the American landscape was divided into two distinct camps: Those who loved country and those who thought it was the looniest thing ever to wail over an airwave. "Dropkick Me Jesus Through the Goal Posts of Life"? Most people cringed and declared their love for every kind of music EXCEPT country.

That sentiment has persisted, although country got a slight boost in the early 1980s when John Travolta and his 10-gallon hat filled the movie screen in "Urban Cowboy." For a while, mechanical bulls were all the rage, as western wannabes climbed on, hung on and lost their chili dinners on the sawdust floor.

The western look faded, as did the music. It would take another 10 years and a pudgy guy named Garth to push country music into the mainstream. Now you can hardly find room on the dance floor.

IT'S THURSDAY NIGHT AT The Riverside Inn in Tukwila. The parking lot is jammed. The Ridler Brothers are pulling them in. In country parlance, the two men are what's known as "hat hunks."

Steve is tall, blond and packed just right in his faded blue jeans. Jeff is all shoulders beneath a sexy gray Stetson. Their charisma does not go unnoticed. Woman outnumber men here, all ruffles and boots and mile-high hair.

Jeff plays his guitar and leans into the lyrics; (BEGIN ITALICS) "There's lots of curves in the road tonight. You can handle 'em wrong, and you can handle 'em right." (END) Technically, this is a stemwinder about long country roads, but where curves are concerned, you can never be sure.

People pour onto the dance floor, like lemmings. The tables look barer than a bachelor's refrigerator. Where country music is concerned, people love to dance; the two-step, the cha-cha, the shuffle and tush push. It's beautiful to watch, but with so much dancing there's not a lot of drinking, and water will cost you a buck.

Which is not to say there are no rowdies here. There are plenty of roughnecks roaming the barn-size room. Still, there are unspoken rules: Take your fistfights outside and be nice to the ladies.

"If you do something wrong in this bar, if you go up and grab a woman, you're in deep trouble," warns Perry Champion, a short muscular man who was once a cowboy in Texas and, until recently, managed The Riverside Inn. "We treat women with 100-percent respect, although some of these Bellevue boys come in here and it's a different story."

"Yeah," agrees Ricky Johnson, a cowboy friend from Texas who now works for Boeing. "They come in here thinking it's a freak show."

Johnson curls his lip beneath a big mustache and tall white hat. He removes it and points inside. "Jerry Jeff Walker gave me this hat," he says, pointing to the singer's autograph. "He knows my dad. They grew up together in Texas."

Johnson replaces the hat and turns to some friends. Slowly, he drops into a crouch and pantomimes an overhead lasso. His audience whistles and laughs. Johnson is a regular. He is also a cowboy. That cannot be said of most people in this club. Tukwila ain't Texas by a long shot. But you do get ranchers from Enumclaw and farriers from Monroe and other people who work the land. But, with country's growing popularity, you're just as likely to get secretaries, lawyers and other western wannabes.

"These guys, they act tough. They talk tough," says Champion. "But they're weenies. I'm not very big, but I can drop anybody in here." He squares his shoulders and offers a make-my-day grin and there is no reason not to believe him.

Johnson comes up beside him and the two men look like bookends. They got the boots. The buckles. The crisp shirts and tight pants. Plus, they got more scars than a wily coyote.

"This one," says Johnson, pointing to a white jag on his left jaw, "is from a bull that hooked me. He spun left and I caught his horn."

Champion eyes it closely and starts shaking his head. He motions to the front door. Johnson follows and they walk outside. Before you can say "whoa cowboy," Champion has unlatched his belt and is dropping his pants. Not to be outdone, Johnson follows suit. Shirttails flapping in the cool night breeze, the cowboys point to scars all over their wiry legs.

Then, just as quickly, they buckle back up and nod as a woman walks past. "Thanks," she says, unsmiling. "That was real nice."

BACK INSIDE, THE Ridlers are cranking things up. Steve has jumped off the stage and is winding through the crowd, singing into his headset. He is a handsome man, cocky and charming as hell. He weaves his way to the back, sidles up to his manager, and lowers his voice between beats: "Get me a whisky, man." Bart Leland laughs. What the man wants, the man gets.

Steve and Jeff Ridler have been performing together since high school in Snohomish, where they debuted at keggers and parties. Then, after graduation, they jumped on their 10-speed bikes for a trip across country and a brief taste of Nashville. They were invited on stage, but weren't an overnight hit; they returned home, teamed up for construction work and were quickly overtaken by life.

"When we got back, this terrible thing happened," Steve says during breakfast at the Cook Book restaurant in north Everett. "Women got into our lives."

Steve met a woman while cruising Colby Avenue in Everett. Jeff met a woman at a country dance. Both Ridlers got married, both had children, and both got divorced at about the same time years later.

Steve shakes his head, pulling a picture from his wallet. It's a color snapshot of his son. Jeff leans over to look at it, then jumps up from the table. "And here's mine!" he says, yanking his sweatshirt up over a white T-shirt. Blazoned across the front is a picture of two of his kids. People stare, their coffee mugs held at half mast. Jeff sits back down with a laugh.

Both divorces are final, but that doesn't mean they're over. In true country fashion, divorce stories still make their way into Ridler Brother tunes. When Jeff isn't listening, Steve tells this story on his brother: One of their tunes, "More Than a Sad Song," is all about Jeff's divorce, including the night he broke his hand pounding on the front door, trying to get back in.

(BEGIN ITALICS) "You know more than just my hand broke

pounding on your door last night..." (END)

Steve sighs. "Divorce," he says, "is a great thing to write about."

LAYNE DRETKE AND Cole Putzier know something about the country scene and aren't overly impressed. Dretke is a blue-eyed, blond hay hauler from Pasco. Putzier is a paint contractor from Auburn who once worked with Dretke on an Idaho ranch. "This is nothing but a big-city facade," Dretke says, looking around The Riverside one night. "Besides you and me, how many people here have ate cow balls for dinner?"

Putzier frowns. "I can honestly say I never did that."

"You didn't?"

Putzier shakes his head. He is (BEGIN ITALICS) quite (END) sure about it. He turns the conversation back to the bar scene.

"A lot of these people, if they had to work on a ranch, wouldn't have any part of it," he says. "And the truth is, most cowboys are so uncoordinated they can't dance anyway."

Dretke butts in: "The truth is, most cowboys aren't proud to be cowboys."

Putzier: "That's not true."

Dretke: "OK, they're not proud of what passes as a cowboy."

Just what passes as a cowboy is hard to define, now that so many people have added Wranglers to their wardrobes and swaggers to their walks. The country club scene is so popular that it even swings on Sunday. That's when several hundred people will pack The Riverside for jam night to hear their friends sing some old country hit while the Ridlers play backup.

In Seattle, at the Little Red Hen, country karaoke has taken off and you'd be amazed at what people can do to songs like "All My Ex's Live in Texas."

At Parker's, free dance lessons draw a good crowd on weeknights, and come Friday and Saturday, the place is overflowing with swirling skirts and silver boleros. Bands like the Island Cowboys, two brothers from Samoa who accent their music with a nice island sound, have loyal followers who shout out requests from the floor. Then the promenade begins. Like a large, slow whirlpool, couples circle the dance floor, all in sync with the warm, even beat. Some couples are so smooth they appear to be floating, their heads unattached to their bodies, their bodies unattached to their feet. The man always leads, but as the old saying goes, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, only backward and in high heels.

Anyway, the whole floor swirls. Older men two-step with younger women, young men with older women. Partners always change; there are no wallflowers at country clubs.

Of course, you don't have to lock arms with a stranger if that doesn't blow your skirt up. Line dances are enormously popular, too. Ever since Billy Ray Cyrus released "Achy Breaky (Heart)," which features its own choreographed steps, line dances have surged. There's the Boot Skootin' Boogie, the Tush Push, Locomotion and too many others to name. All you have to do is get in a dance line and perfectly execute 50 to 90 steps that include pivots, slides, shuffles, boot slaps, duck walks, half-turns, full turns, stomps and something called the chugga chugga. It's easy - unless you miss one step, in which case you will experience something similar to the running of the bulls at Pamplona.

But you have to start somewhere. For Eileen Ray, the country craze caught up with her in late 1988. She had lost her husband to cancer and was still grieving when a friend insisted that she get out of the house. "I kept saying, `It's not time, it's not time,' " says Eileen, a 58-year-old woman who lives in Granite Falls. "When we got there, I looked at her and said, `Oh, no. Not country. I don't even like country music. It's so hokey.' My impression of a country dance bar was where people didn't know their left foot from their right and all the songs were terrible - the poor man lost his wife, lost his kids, lost his job. That sort of thing."

It didn't take long for that grim outlook to fade. Eileen Ray started taking dance lessons and going to clubs three and four times a week. It was a big joke among her four children, who said, "Oh, Mother! You don't even like country music."

"I wasn't only hooked, I was addicted," says Eileen. "Every single night I was out that door. I met more people in the first three months than I had met in the last 10 years."

Among them was a cowboy, a good-looking guy, and you can guess the rest. He and Eileen got hitched. But as with any good country song, their story ended with real-life drama. "It didn't work," she says. "He didn't want to dance!" So, with a nod to Tammy Wynette, Eileen Ray got a D.I.V.O.R.C.E.

Country music and divorce seem to go hand in hand. Deric Boggs is a young guy who went to counseling (BEGIN ITALICS) and (END) took country dance lessons to try to save his marriage. He got a divorce anyway. His friend, John Cobun, is also separated from his wife, following a certain breach in trust. Now, he's doin' time in a country bar, trying to learn to dance so he will have something in common with his wife. "I want to show her my other side," Cobun says. "I even went out and bought Wrangler jeans, a shirt and boots. I felt like a fool."

But he wants her to know he's doing it for her, the love of his life. So, there he goes. He's going to try a (BEGIN ITALICS) line (END) dance. Oh, geez. As Vince Gill would say, "This is sadder than a one-car funeral." Take him back, little lady. (BEGIN ITALICS) Please, (END) take him back.

BACK AT THE CASCADE Lounge on Aurora, it's lonely now. The parking lot is deserted but for an old van and a jeep that police have pulled over in their big white sedan. The flashing red and blue lights splash over the lounge, now empty but for a last bit of smoke.

Steve Ridler is tired. It's been five hours of life's saddest songs, and the yearning looks they inspire from fans. He lowers his head just a little and wonders about it all. There's an old joke that goes something like this: What happens when you play a country song backward? You get your job back, your kids back, your house back, etc.

Well, there are times when he wishes he could get his life back, too. He loves his work, but how do you stay out every night and still have time for all the things you sing about; finding love, keeping it, and all the living in between? He misses his kids and they miss him. Just that afternoon, his son had passed before him like a blur, a little blond boy singing his heart out for an album the Ridler Brothers were recording for Christmas. Then, the little man was gone.

Steve passes a hand beneath his cowboy hat. Maybe he'll quit some day. Or, maybe, he'll just write another country song.

Linda Keene is a staff writer for Pacific magazine. Harley Soltes is Pacific's staff photographer.