Smilin' Dave

A couple of months ago the great Dan Epstein asked me to be a guest on his Substack page titled, Jagged Time Lapse Substack. Dan is a great writer and his knowledge of music is above and beyond anyone’s I know. Anytime I have a music question I go to Dan. Anyway, he asked me to write something music based, so I wrote about the time I worked in a dive bar and they hired this guy named Smilin’ Dave to play. I feel enough time has passed and so I thought I’d post it here. I know some of Dan’s subscribers began to follow me because of this piece. To them, thank you. If you don’t follow Dan, you should. It’s great.

Burton Place was a small tavern with a square bar at the center of a small room giving it a slight resemblance to the famed TV bar “Cheers.” Unlike “Cheers,” it lacked the glib one liners and hope. Everyday the same patrons sat at the same spot, drinking the same drinks as “Love Shack” and “Right Place Wrong Time '' repeated so often on the jukebox that the songs became white noise. As evening approached the daytime regulars stumbled out and left their stools for the coked up big tipping Italian waiters from restaurants along Wells street, actors from Second City and various souls seeking meaning in the act of emptying bottles.  

I was hired at Burton Place shortly after I turned twenty-one though the only experience I had pouring drinks was mixing vodka/tonics for my parents when I was a kid. I had three shifts a week, one of which was on Monday nights where I bartended, waited tables and cooked. I don’t know how I pulled it off;  I’d take orders, mix drinks, run to to the kitchen to throw burgers onto the small grill as I dropped baskets fries and wings into the fryer, then back to the bar to serve more customers while having to run back in time to flip the burgers, pull the wings out of the fryer toss them in sauce, and run them out to the drunks who desperately needed to coat their bellies with grease so they could continue drinking. As far as my memory serves me, I didn’t fuck up too much. 

Business Burton Place was thriving so the owners rented the upstairs apartment and converted it into a bar. The new addition looked more like the bar your uncle would build in his home. The lighting was too bright, the street lights blared through the  windows, and on the sparse white walls hung a few neon beer signs to give it that “authentic” bar look. The regulars took one look at the new bar and continued to hide in the dark corners of downstairs.

I was given the Wednesday night shift in the upstairs bar. Most shifts were spent alone. Occasionally, actors from The Second City would stop by, mostly because I gave them free drinks. Chris Farely would linger longer than the other actors. He’d sit at the corner of the bar and we would discuss God, Catholicism, sin and the afterlife. Then, when the booze kicked in he’d venture downstairs to become the loud Chris Farely the world soon would know.

One Wednesday I was setting up the bar as the setting sun streamed through the windows when a man walked in with a portable electric piano and a suitcase. He looked as if a costume designer for a 70s sitcom read the description of “Hip Cool Guy.” He was dressed in a vest over a loosely fitting white shirt, a scarf, an earring in one ear and a paddy cap on top of his feathered blonde blonde hair. “Hello,” In an animated voice he said, “I’m Smilin’ Dave.” He punctuated the sentence with a big grin, “I’m going to be playing music here on Wednesday nights.”

“Oh fuck,” was the best my internal voice could do to articulate how I felt. I’d been to enough piano bars to know that this meant cheesy songs, bad jokes and the clientele of newly divorced lonely people who were relearning how to have fun. Plus, like all  twenty one year-old males I believed I was the only one on earth who knew good music and for me that was anything, Punk, Post-Punk and Grunge. An evening of listening to covers of “My Way,” was going to be a violent assault on my identity.  

I helped Smilin’ Dave figure out where to set up his equipment. When he finished he opened up the suitcase which was filled with various handheld percussion instruments like tambourines, maracas, tiny drums and other things you shake, rattle and hit with a stick. He picked one of them up, gave it a shake and said, “So my fans can play along.”

“Oh cool,” I said while wondering, fans? What kind of fans would a guy who plays in dive bars possibly have?

At 7:00 PM sharp, Smilin’ Dave was behind the piano playing to an audience that solely consisted of me. He’d occasionally glance my way to see if I approved as I forced an approving smile. By 7:30 people started to rapidly flow into the bar. I didn’t know where they came from, and they surely weren’t the usual Burton Place crowd. They were office dwellers, corporate yuppie types with power ties and pantsuits who demanded drinks like pirates on shore leave. As they got drunk they hollered, whistled and sang along as if Smilin’ Dave was Elton John playing Dodger’s Stadium. 

I watched in perplexed awe as they jumped around banging on instruments like they were the apes from 2001 A Space Odyssey.  I couldn’t help but think, is this what working in corporate America does to people? Is the life of cubicle dwelling, abiding office etiquette and pretending to give two holy fucks about stats, profit margins and the Johnson & Johnson report so oppressive that one must release their frustration like they were speaking in tongues at a snake handler tent revival and the songs of Billy Joel were the hymns? 

Smilin’ Dave sang a lot with Billy Joel. Every other song was motherfucking Billy Joel. I’m not judging Billy Joel. Honestly, I have no opinions about Billy Joel’s body of work and admittedly have enjoyed some of his songs. However, twenty-one year old me couldn’t stand Billy Joel. I was into edgy music, remember? 

To make Billy Joel matters worse, Smilin’ Dave played “Piano Man” at least five times that night, which is one of Billy Joel’s songs I surely hated. Smilin’ Dave cleverly changed some of the lyrics to adapt to his surroundings, “Now Matt at the bar is an actor and he gives me my drinks for free,” he’d sing with glee as he lifted his glass to toast me. I didn’t know how to respond the first or fifth time he did this, so I just went about my business. 

Smilin’ Dave mixed in a couple ballads and the corporate cave dwellers would slow dance and sing along and then he’d bring back the energy with “Uptown Girl,” or “We Didn’t Start The Fire,” and the Yuppies would spasticity dance and shake their toys.  Even twenty-one year old me with all my pretensions and judgments had to admit,  Smilin’ Dave knew how to work a crowd. 

At the end of the night my ears rang and my brain was exhausted from sensory overload. I had hoped Smilin’ Dave’s evening would have failed so I could go back to my quiet Wednesday nights, but the $300 dollars in nontaxable income informed me otherwise. 

“You did pretty well, tonight, huh?” Smilin’ Dave said with an air of pride. 

“Yeah,”  I agreed.

“Hey,” Smilin’ Dave said with a serious tone, "You know when I sing “Piano Man,” and I toast you?” He picked at the label of his beer as he continued, “Do you think you could return the toast? I think the people would like that” 

“Yeah,”  I said. To which Dave grinned and excitedly replied, “Awesome!”

So five times every Wednesday Smilin’ Dave sang, “Matt behind the bar is an actor he gives me my drinks for free,” then he would raise his glass to me and I returned the toast. Every time the crowd would look over to me and cheer. Smilin’ Dave would grin and then wink at me as if to say, “see, they love it.”

One Wednesday night the upstairs bar was booked for a private Christmas party for a floral company called, Rose’s Roses. Smilin’ Dave came in a little more chipper than usual and rhetorically asked, “You know what this is tonight, don’t you?” Before I could answer he said, “Rose’s Roses is a front for a high end escort service and their clients.” 

For some reason I thought Smilin’ Dave was bullshitting me. 

When the guest for the party began to arrive one woman with very large breasts in a small tight dress gave me twenty dollars to keep her purse behind the bar, as did another woman who also had her abundant cleavage on full display.  I thought, oh shit, Dave was right. When the male clients began to show up they could be best described as the cast of Goodfellas. They had thick Chicago accents, nice suits, heavy amounts of cologne and they tipped like, well, mob guys. Tens and twenties landed on the bar as I made sure to keep the drinks coming as the scene from Goodfellas where Pesci shoots at the floor and yells at Spider, “Dance the drink back here,” played on a loop in my head. 

It was a strange sight to see these hardened men, who hours ago may have been tossing a body into Lake Michigan dancing around and singing to Billy Joel. Maybe like the pent up corporate workers they, too, had some steam to blow off.

At the end of the night when I fetched the ladies purses they again tipped me twenty dollars. Some of the mob guys also tossed money on the bar and said, “You did good tonight.” 

After I tipped out the barback and cooked, I walked away with $600. In 2023 $600 in one night bartending would be a killing. 1991 Matt I felt like he had just pulled off the Lufthansa Heist. 

Smilin’ Dave sat down at the bar and said, “You didn’t believe me, did you?”

“No I didn’t,” I said with a chuckle. 

“Smilin’ Dave wouldn’t steer you wrong my friend,” he said with a huge smile. I cracked open a beer for Smilin’ Dave and as I handed it to him I noticed sitting in his left nostril an Indiana Jones sized boulder of cocaine. I now knew how Smilin’ Dave was able to spend hours passionately singing Billy Joel tunes.

Smilin’ Dave sat in the quiet of the room as I tidied up the bar. After ten minutes I grabbed him another beer and handed it to him. For the first time since I had met Smilin’ Dave, he wasn’t so smiley. “One of these days I’m going to sneak one of my own songs into a set.” 

“Oh yeah,” I said as my curiosity peaked?

“I did once,” Dave said quietly, “But people like to hear what they know, ya know? He looked at his beer then smiled, “At least I make my living playing music. Not many can say that, that’s for sure.” 

I had a few more Wednesday nights with Smilin’ Dave and then without explanation he was gone. For years I thought of Smilin’ Dave as some sort of hack with a monkey grinder act. However, as a middle-aged man who’s had a life of creative ups, working shit jobs to pay the bills, including being a corporate office dweller, I began to see the entire Smilin’ Dave differently. He was a man providing much needed relief and fun to people who needed it. He was also an artist, struggling between survival and creating. Smilin’ Dave may not have been doing one hundred percent of what he wanted to with music, but as he said, “At least I make my living playing music.” I just hope he slipped one of his own songs into one of his sets and got the reaction he was hoping for.