by Sam Soule for pdxguide.com
May 2006

I can be up for some really bad blues.

In small doses, a bunch of wanky, sub-par musicians struggling through a 12-bar blues jam can be downright charming. Like kids on a playground, trying to act tough.

This past Wednesday, a calendar listing for a group calling itself Blues Train performing at the 9th Avenue Public House seemed like just the ticket.

"Blues Train," I thought. "That's so bad, it's good."

So I rolled up onto the 9th Avenue Public House shortly after the appointed start time of 7:30 p.m. The building was cement brick and warehouse-looking, painted a dull red with green faux-columns, surrounded by decidedly more hang-dog looking light industrial structures. Warm-toned blues music drifted out from therein. Locking my bike, I still had hopes Blues Train would be terrible, but they were dwindling.

Upon entering the 9th Avenue Public House — which is, in fact, the retail/service face to the Yamhill Brewery (the production facility inhabits the rest of the building) — those hopes were quickly dashed.

Set up on the floor with a window to the Yamhill Brewery factory directly behind them, the band worked through a set of covers ranging from Johnny Adams to Curtis Mayfield — though their true strength lay in their smoking instrumental renditions. The band represented itself as a solid "Bourbon Street"-style blues outfit specializing in workmanlike funk and soul grooves. Made up of five particularly well-seasoned, middle-aged white guys — including a guitar player who picks with a lazy style to match his slight vocal drawl, a drummer who lays a solid foundation of rhythm and an organ player who blasts a fat B3 Hammond — it is, in the end, the two gray-hairs on jamming sax and trumpet who really put fire to the Blues Train furnace.

No, this was not bad blues, and I was not disappointed.

Noting the thick smell of hot grease in the air, I took a stool at the bar. An old four-top electric range oven stood in plain view in the kitchen. I ordered a hamburger and began to survey the surroundings.

The 9th Avenue Public House turns out to be a space of odd and charming secrets. At one turn you find a piano. At another, a small organ. A boar's head and a rack of bull horns constitute the main room's defining ornamentation. Then, it gets weird. Off of the cluster of tables and benches situated in front of the bar, a small, darker space for quiet seating angles away; in the far back, a fortune teller sits waiting to reads palms and tarot cards at five buck a prophecy. Really.

However, I decided to take a more traditional approach to divine the mysteries of the 9th Avenue; I talked to the bartender. After finishing a wonderfully charred and dripping bacon burger ($5), all was revealed.

The 9th Avenue has been open for just five months. Sidewalk seating, lunch hours and a much larger adjoining performance space are intended for the summer. Currently, the bar is open 3 p.m. -12 a.m. and is closed on Sundays. The 9th Avenue serves only Yamhill brew from five tap handles. The menu is mostly sandwiches (good and cheap); the hummus and pita plate looked especially bountiful. There is free wi-fi. The palm reader is in house four or so nights a week. She impresses the bartender, and he is surprised.

Regarding Blues Train, the bartender reports that the band has been playing the 9th Avenue on Wednesdays evenings for the past three months. On my visit, the small but enthusiastic crowd included a blues DJ from the local community radio station, KBOO. According to the bartender, "[Blues Train] are just a bunch of old guys who have been at it a while."

And it shows.

I'll have to take my hunt for bad blues elsewhere.

The opinions expressed within are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of pdxguide.com or The Columbian Publishing Co.