The Round-Up Saloon Music Philosophy

There are very few large gay country western bars still in existence. Maybe it’s not so different from “Big Box retail stores”. You’ve got to carry the merchandise the customer wants, and you’ve got to deliver it at a good price. A large Country bar has to appeal to a much broader and more varied audience than just the one segment of country music.

We have a generation of line dancers, three-step / shuffle dancers, waltz, and two-step / belly-rubbing dancers all competing for the dance floor, and deejay’s attention. We have old country, new/old remakes, young country, and even crossover country like Big and Rich. In short, there is a HUGE amount of music, all styles, speeds, and tastes to satisfy!

Satisfying all these tastes is not easy. We attempt to satisfy everyone at some point in the evening. The Round-Up is open seven days and nights a week, 8:00pm till 2:00am. That’s seven nights a week of COUNTRY MUSIC. Many gay “country bars” play country one or two nights a week. We typically start off each evening with slower, sometimes older country music. This is an attempt to give older/slower country its fair share of the dance floor. We tend to build the tempo as the evening progresses. Usually, by 10:30, our mixed crowd is arriving, and we pick up the tempo. If you request a slow, belly-rubbing love song at 11:30pm on Friday or Saturday, the deejay will likely say “sorry”.

When the 11:00 crowd walks through our front doors, they expect to hear “party music” playing, and they make a quick decision based on the music and the crowd, whether to stay or turn around and go out the door! It’s a little like advertising, you gotta hook’em with the first line, or you lose them! It is an “entertainment” industry, and customers demand to be entertained. We apply the same standard that any successful business relies on. Get their attention, entertain them! Moods play a major part in that decision. Happy or sad, customers seek out a place to make them happy and to forget their problems, meet or make some friends, and have fun for a little while. Music plays a critical role here. Up, down, fast, slow. The mood is set by the music.

The Round-Up gets a significant crossover crowd of young, straight, gay, and non-country customers who may be here because they like the music or they like the crowd. At 1:00 am on weekends, we shift gears for about 15 to 30 minutes of high energy music to satisfy the musical taste of this group. It is amazing how many of our regular customers jump out on the dance floor and show their “other” side! It’s called mixing it up, doing that “other” music! It might amount to 30 minutes to 1 hour of non-country per weekend, but that’s out of 42 hours of country music per week! We consider it a small price to pay for being able to satisfy a lot more musical tastes, and seeing the great time they have dancing!

So, that’s about it. I hope this answers your questions about the music we play, why, when, and how much. It’s not easy to please everyone, but we’re here 7 nights a week pumping out the country and doing our damnedest to keep you coming back and dancing your butts off!

We also have three different D.J.s who rotate weekends. They each have their own personalities and tastes in music. Each gives the Round-Up his own style and twist!

We are confident that you have your favorites, and that’s okay!

And hey, if you’re just here to listen to great country music, that’s okay too, so just enjoy, but remember, we can always teach you to dance when you’re ready to learn!