Off the Wagon Dueling Piano Bar

In 2018 a reader wrote to Mountain Xpress about a full-size truck and a convertible circling downtown, each carrying a mannequin, both advertising the same bar loudly enough to stop a conversation in a passing car. The paper worked out which bar it was and called for comment. General manager Ben Reese did not apologize: they liked the advertising, they had no plans to change it, and anyone who minded was welcome to ignore them. Inside, at 22 N. Market Street, the pianists take requests nightly, no set list, pulling from more than sixty years of songs the room already knows the words to, and it fills wall to wall on a Friday. It runs long and narrow toward a back wall of exposed brick hung with rows of framed photos, a steel truss overhead lit purple for the stage. Out front, the storefront windows are framed like piano keys, black and white above the sidewalk, and Market Street itself is paved in brick underfoot. Patrons pack elbow to elbow at long communal tables that run the room’s length. The bar is veteran-owned, and cover runs ten dollars on weekends, five most other nights. The door does not bend on the 21-and-over rule. The cocktail list plays the same game as the piano — Crocodile Rock, The Devil Went Down to Georgia, One Last Orgy among the twenty names on it — drawn from a menu that lists its pours by spirit, vodka to bourbon, rather than by recipe. Go on a five-dollar night if the cover matters more than the requests; the songbook does not change.