Best Blues Club
Knuckleheads Saloon
Plenty of people were outraged when the Grand Emporium's Roger Naber and Herb Palmer sold their gritty, nationally famous blues haunt. Let it be known, then, that the torch has been picked up -- by a biker, no less. Roots, Americana, zydeco and the blues have a new home at Knuckleheads. In a remote corner of the old northeast, surrounded by the motorcycle-repair facilities of F.O.G. Cycles, Knuckleheads owner Frank Harris has set up a to-die-for barrelhouse blues club, complete with an outdoor boogie-woogie stage decorated by a McDonald's Playplace sign. (There's also a cozy indoor stage for blues wailin' in inclement weather, which this town gets plenty of.) Now, instead of going to midtown, great acts such as Billy Joe Shaver and Jimmy Thackery steer their tour buses to this quaint, industrial part of the city, where they rock out like junkyard dogs in heaven. Hoist a glass for the late, great R.L. Burnside next time you go.
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