Nov. 18, 1977 nightlife: The legendary Belle Starr

 

When Dwayne Hall wanted to make his Sportsmen’s Tavern the honkiest, tonkiest place in town, this was his inspiration. 

Nov. 18, 1977 Nightlife

Belle Starr 

          The countryside hath charms. Nobody knows it better than a city dweller on the run from industrial perfumes, photochemical sunsets and the expressway grand prix. One of Buffalo’s blessings is that the urban sprawl doesn’t go on forever. Hop in the car and drive for an hour and you’ve left the tract houses far, far behind.

          Pastures, streams and woodlots seem to have a salubrious effect on concrete-choked sensibilities. So do fresh air and the absence of ambulance sirens and the fact that all the stars are visible at night. Roll it all together and you’ve got a natural high.

          That’s the magic that starts to work on visitors to the Belle Starr in Colden even before they hit the door. Nestled among the rolling hills and happy hollows 25 miles south of the city on Holland-Glenwood Road off Route 240, it’s a roadhouse gone rustic, a barn that was born to boogie.

          And boogie it does. Bob (Obie) Obenauer, whose conceptions have helped shape the place for the past four years, books live bands with one purpose in mind – getting people loose to good-time music.

          Muddy Waters and James Cotton have played the blues there. Texan Rusty Weir and Tennessee’s Winters Brothers have rocked the rafters. Mixed between the name attractions are up-and-comers like Fat Chance or Chuck McDermott & Wheatstraw. Tonight there’s a Pennsylvania country-rock crew called Cambridge. Saturday and Sunday, it’s bluesman John Hammond.

          For the fans crowded up close to the stage and the speakers on the main floor or clustered at the second-floor railing, the music can be felt and savored. Between sets, the musicians themselves can be approached. The casual atmosphere seems to inspire memorable performances as well.

          Ex-Byrd Roger McGuinn and partner Gene Clark felt so good on their first visit last week that they turned in what, by all accounts, was an extraordinary evening.

          “The people went nuts,” Obie reported.

          Now that winter’s setting in, the big-namers won’t be as prevalent. Nearby Kissing Bridge starts making snow Monday if the air is cold enough and, since the Belle Starr attracts a sizable after-ski crowd from KB and Glenwood, Obie’s determined to keep the cover charge low. Big attractions can mean a fee of $2.50 or more at the door. Smaller ones allow the tariff to drop to $1 or $1.50.

          There also are thoughts toward promoting the place as a stop for cross-country skiers. Behind it is a thick woods interlaced with trails used during the summer by a horseback riding stable. Meanwhile, the club may be surrounded by snow, but it’s rarely socked in. The turn-off for Holland-Glenwood Road is between Colden “village” and the ski areas. If the skiers can make it, so can everyone else.

          At one time, the Belle Starr was a cow barn. Then it became a restaurant, with meals being served in the old cattle stalls. After that, it became a party barn for skiers, which was the way it was when Obie discovered it in 1972.

          Obie conceived the barn as a relaxed alternative to the structured partying in the city. He introduced it by bringing out Buffalo’s biggest raves at the time, the House Rockers, for a summer. It worked. It worked so well that former Sheriff Amico’s stalwarts spent their weekends at the Belle Starr too, ticketing cars parked illegally on Holland-Glenwood Road.

          Since then, relations with the deputies have improved and the parking lot has been expanded twice. So has the interior. First the upstairs was revamped into a balcony. In went a sound booth, a game room and the auxiliary bar. Then an addition was built on the rear, allowing room for extra restrooms, foosball and pool tables, and a summer patio.

          The Belle Starr’s reputation for good times remains unchanged, however. The area’s first wet T-shirt contests a few years back have been followed up with boogie nights that oft-times rise to joyous heights, fueled by the availability of $5 pitchers of mixed drinks, among other things.

          The hardest part is retaining enough caution to sustain the drive home. Having a friend with a home in the area is invaluable. Chances are the friend is in the crowd too.

          Obie no longer is co-owner of the bar. Instead, he’s in charge of promotion, working with current owner Jack Lockhart and his assistant Mike McNally. Aiding Obie’s efforts is former Buffalo progressive radio deejay Hank Ball, who spins records between live sets from the bands.

          Ball is one of several ex-Buffalonians Obie takes credit for attracting to the hills. Another is Warner Bros. Records promotion manager David Cahn. Ball, who now lives in a hollow not far from the bar, looks like he’s there to stay, what with his military field jacket and his freshly-purchased four-wheel-drive truck.

          “I grew up in Amherst,” Obie says, “and until I was 20 years old, I didn’t even know these hills were out here. But then I came and looked it over and said to myself: ‘The city’s awful. I’m going to live out here.’ I don’t expect people will come out here every weekend. From one week to another, we see entirely different faces, people who’ll decide, wow, let’s go for a ride. The way I figure it is that everybody needs a little adventure once in a while.”

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IN THE PHOTOS: Above: The only halfway decent exterior shot of the place I can find online. Below: Gusto photo of Obie at the Belle Starr bar.

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FOOTNOTE: When the Belle Starr caught fire one night in August 1980, rumor had it that the powers-that-be, who viewed it as a public nuisance, decided to let it burn to the ground. 

         Obie booked a few shows in other venues for a while, then went further into the country. He bought 320 acres outside Ellicottville and turned a vast barn on the property into an enormous antique shop. He died in February 2022. Jack Lockhart went back to college, became a social worker and retired to Palm Coast, Fla., where he passed away in December 2022.

It seems like everybody who partook in the revels at the Belle Starr, myself included, has fond, albeit fuzzy, memories of the place. For a little taste of it, there's a bootleg set from John Lee Hooker recorded off the sound board there in 1979. To get the full Belle Starr effect as you're listening, line up a long row of shot glasses and top them off with tequila.

For a deeper immersion in the good old days, here's a lengthy feature article from 1996 in which former Buffalo News feature writer Lauri Githens takes full measure of Belle Starr nostalgia:

Legend of the Belle Starr: 

The fabled times of a blues bar like no other

John Erwin of Buffalo is one of thousands of Western New Yorkers who can do something that is simultaneously sweet, stupid and funny.

Erwin, at age 30, can swear on a stack of Bibles that he partied at the Belle Starr in Colden.

"The Belle Starr? Lemme tell you somethin'," he says, swaying slightly, then steadying himself on the bar at the Lafayette Tap Room. "I saw an Allman Brothers show there." He begins a gentle, shuffling boogie in memory of that sacred, Southern-fried night. "I loved that place."

Well, of course you did, John. Forget that this "memory" means you were -- what, 14? -- when you went there. Forget that the Allmans never played there. Details, schmeetails.

You were there. Fine.

Sigh. You know what we're getting at here, right? This small, odd quirk of local lowbrow culture?

Fifteen years after flames lighted up the nighttime sky over Colden, announcing the end of the area's rowdiest-ever roadhouse, everyone now likes to reminisce about the Belle Starr. Whether they were there or not.

It's the old false-retrieved-memory thing. We do it well, in Buffalo. And why not? When one is denied regular injections of civic pride, one learns from infancy to defiantly proclaim, "I was there!" – at O.J.'s 2,003rd yard; at the Bills' humiliation of the Oilers – even when they were in utero, or in kindergarten, at the time.

But this bar, this huge, beer-stinking party barn that existed on Holland-Glenwood Road from 1970 to 1980 . . . it packs an oddly emotional memory wallop like very little else.

You doubt this? Walk into any bar or party now. Approach some folks. Say the words "Belle Starr." Watch what happens.

First, the displays of emotion. Hearts are clutched. "People's eyes get all misty, don't they?" marvels local bluesman Billy McEwen, who played in various house bands there.

Then, the stories. Such stories. The night Gregg Allman did this! The night Joni Mitchell did that! The night Jimmy Page showed up and jammed with Muddy!

Then, the fun. A) when you learn that many tales (like that last one) contain no truth whatsoever, and B) when you realize the storyteller was in a diaper when the Belle Starr was around. As former devout patron Mary Alice Crump puts it: "The best stories come from people who were about 6 when the place burned down."

Tim Switala, former rock critic and member of the 1980s band Pauline and the Perils, has a beautiful analogy:

"You know the night U2 opened for Talas at Stage One? And they got introduced as 'V-2'? It was snowing, John Lennon had been murdered, so there were maybe 12 people there, at best. But to this day, dozens of people swear they were there."

And so it goes with this old party barn. But the question we ask, and mean to answer, with the help of those who really were there, is this: Why? Why, 15 years later, do people furiously insist on a connection with the Belle Starr -- when dozens of Buffalo clubs have disappeared without a trace of regret?

Because since its burning, muses Robert Peter Obenauer, 50, owner of Ellicottville Trading Company and Antiques, no other Western New York place has ever made patrons feel so welcome, so free, and so far from the madding crowd. And never has this been felt more acutely than midway through the hardscrabble, high-tech '90s.

And he would know. For back in the day, Obenauer was known simply as "O.B." -- the only local band-booker in the heavy metal and disco-soaked '70s to hungrily pursue and present ancient blues legends and country-stomp bands. Often on the same bill.

Which was the Belle Starr's chief thrill. The music.

The Dixie Dregs. The Fabulous Thunderbirds (featuring a blistering but unknown guitarist named Stevie Ray Vaughan). New Riders of the Purple Sage. The Flying Burrito Brothers. A baby-faced kid named George Thorogood and his band the Delaware Destroyers. James Cotton. Muddy Waters. Jeff Beck.

"I pick up the phone, and this English voice goes: 'Lissen mate, I 'eard about your club. Mind if I drop by when I'm done 'ere?' " It was Beck, calling from backstage at the Aud. He limoed his way out of the city, into the Colden hills, and jammed far into the night.

Slowly the word spread, and musicians began to accept Aud gigs in Buffalo just to play the Belle Starr after hours. Gregg Allman, during Colden visits with then-wife Cher, made it regularly. So did bandmate Dickey Betts.

While patrons grooved on the music, the bands marveled at something else. The atmosphere.

The Belle Starr became famous in music circles as a country-freak's retreat. The road out there would be long and winding, and, in the winter, downright foolhardy, bands were warned. But once they arrived ...

"Oh, they just became entranced," says McEwen. "When we'd see Muddy Waters pull up in his station wagon, it was almost traumatic for us, because we knew it meant staying up for days. We loved him, but he would just never leave."

Adds Ron Mendez, a blues harpist and promoter who now runs the annual Belle Starr reunion party each November: "It's amazing when you think how incredibly far people would drive to get there. They'd come in from Toronto. I know people who'd set out from Albany just to make it here by dark."

The jams would kick in around sundown and wind far into the night, the notes hanging in the trees and bouncing off the hills until dawn. The neighbors hated it. But the bands played on.

"It was such a beautiful setting, tucked back up on that hill," says former bouncer Ed Perkins, 41, now a part-time bodyguard for Jim Kelly. "It was so laid-back that it was almost . . . mystical. The rules stopped applying. People dropped their inhibitions. People dropped their clothes."

Ah. Another facet. The people. Never before, and never since, such a mix. Bikers. Cowboys. Skiers. Blues fans. Party girls. Roadies. Rowdies.

Kind people:

"(The band) Old Salt would drive in from Rochester, and leave their St. Bernard in front of the bandstand when they played," says Mendez. "That dog would lie there peaceful as all get-out. Couple of hundred people in the joint, not a one disturbed him. No one doused him, or tried to ride him. Just let him be. That's how it was."

Hard-drinking people:

Even in the '70s with the drinking age at 18, the booze intake was staggering. "We had an industrial dumpster out back, and we'd fill it to the brim (with empty bottles) in a single weekend," says a still-awed Perkins.

Hard-playing people:

For example, Mrs. Edgar Winter. "One night Edgar's up there playing," chuckles Obenauer. "And we turn around, and there she is, walking around the downstairs bar, shirt off, naked, jiggling around. Trying to help serve drinks, in fact."

Rocket 88 guitarist Willie Schoellkopf, a clerk in U.S. Magistrate Carol Heckman's office, snickers at the memory. He adds his own: While playing with Blue Ox one night, he closed his eyes during a long, intense jam. When he opened them, he was jolted back: "Here's a guy hanging from the huge beam from the ceiling. He's upside down, swinging into my face, and screaming."

In fact, seeing patrons skip across the beam utterly nude, when truly inspired by the music, was not uncommon. Nor was the sight and sound of Harleys being roared onto the dance floor, spun in circles and ridden out into the night. Or the bassist who leapt from the second floor, screaming, dressed as a Japanese kamikaze pilot.

"Whatever," shrugs Obenauer. "They were just happy."

This is not to say it was all Peace-Love-and-Miller-High-Life, way out in the Colden hills.

There were more than a few drug busts, on the part of ever-eager sheriff's deputies who staked the place out often and long.

Depravity so flourished in the parking lots and seven upstairs bedrooms that it is hard to describe even obliquely. Obenauer recalls stumbling across bluesman John Lee Hooker and a girl so young that Hooker, still in his hat, never missing a beat, shrugged sheepishly and mumbled over his shoulder, "I got a glandular disorder, man."

And there was the one night when a guy put his dog up on the bar and . . .

"Let's just say the dog followed him around all night after that," deadpans McEwen. "For all I know, they're still together.

"Ah, it was a good bunch of people," sighs Perkins, after laughing a spell. "Not angels. We had our fights ('A lot,' says Schoellkopf dryly), but not as many as people would think, for that kind of place. One fight and you were out. No coming back. We couldn't afford to let it turn into a brawling roadhouse."

Well, not quite, say rescue crews and firefighters who were called to the scene weekly.

"God, it was a pain in the neck," says Colden Fire Chief Lee Wohlheuter. "I was friends with John (Lockhart, the owner), but my gosh, every single weekend, we had fire call and first aid up there for the fights, and the accidents coming and going."

Counters another veteran South Towns lawman: "Ehh, I don't know (if) it was that bad. A lot of DWIs. A lot of neighbor complaints. Beer cans on the lawn. Some fights. But they kept a lid on. Most nights, anyway."

This, says former doorman Craig Cwick, was done by releasing the pressure valve every so often.

Sometimes that meant Cwick, now a lawyer in Hamburg, leaping on stage to sing Doors and blues numbers (hence the nickname that occasionally is hollered at him in courtroom hallways to this day: "King Bee!").

Sometimes it meant bartender Dickie Franklin's treasured pastime of rubbing his bald pate with gel, pouring Bacardi 151 rum on it, lighting his head afire, and calmly going to wait on customers. "He'd come up with his head a mass of blue flame, and go: 'Hi. What can I get you?' like he was wearing a hat or something," chokes Obenauer, pausing to let the laughter spend itself. "Oh, God. For 10 years, it was all like that."

Until the night of Aug. 20, 1980. And tales surround this night, too.

Wohlheuter saw the glow in the sky even before he heard the call go out on the radio. When he arrived, the barn was a sheet of flame, roaring out of control. So were the crowds who began lining the road.

"They were lined up along the yellow line, the patrons and the neighbors," Wohlheuter recalls. "One side was cryin', the other side was laughin'."

Sheriff's Department Arson Squad investigator Bob Ruhlman, 18 years on the job, firmly disputes perhaps the bar's most famous tale.

"The samples we pulled from the place showed nothing flammable. And we did find a direct short in a 220-volt line. The official cause is still undetermined – but there's not a shred of evidence it was arson."

Besides that, other workers note, the contents insurance had been allowed to lapse months before, in a cost-cutting move.

With little saved but the now-ironic sign that hung on the roof – "This Place Cooks," which now rests in Obenauer's shop – the Belle Starr was gutted. Patrons, many of them weeping, poked through the remains.

Lockhart purportedly left for his hometown in the middle of the state. And the Town of Colden, relieved to have the place gone, never allowed commercial building there again.

It is now little more than an open field in front of some woods. Occasionally, kids will drive by in cars.

But late at night, mostly in the summer, a neighbor grins, you can cock your head and hear, hanging in the trees, a high rebel whistle, and the slide of a bottleneck on an old blues guitar.