Whisky River giving Junior a new way to keep sane

CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- You have to look really hard for clues that Whisky River, a new nightclub in town, is owned by someone famous in racing.

That is, unless you know more about Dale Earnhardt Jr. than he usually lets on. Then the place immediately begins to make sense.

Don't come looking for racing memorabilia or a Martinsville-style hot dog. For that matter, don't come looking for any food at all (at least not yet, although a kitchen with presumed bar-food menu supposedly is in the works).

Junior cozies up to the bar.

But if you are looking for that rare combination of country and rock-n-roll music, a little live music mixed in with a whole lot of dancing and people-watching and partying in a laid-back atmosphere, then this might just be your place. Oh, and don't forget the mechanical bull, which the nightclub's Web site promises to produce "the best eight seconds of your life."

Earnhardt invited the media for a look-see on Tuesday, when he explained why he is getting into the nightclub business and talked openly about how important it is for him to pursue interests outside of mainstream racing to protect his own sanity.

Of the club, he said simply: "I think it's a bit of Southern gentleman and a little bit of Carolina country."

A humble Web site

Check out the Whisky River Web site and you'd never know Earnhardt is one of the owners. There is no mention of it. There are no pictures -- or at least there weren't as of Wednesday morning -- of Earnhardt mugging for the camera.

The place is described as thus: "Nestled between the rising steel of Uptown Charlotte and the Bobcats Arena," Whisky River promises to be "Charlotte's crown jewel of nightlife and entertainment." For the right price, "your group can select just a portion of The River or you can rent the entire place."

Junior, at heart a simple guy who seems to most enjoy many of life's simplest pleasures, just wanted to own a place where folks could go and have a good, hassle-free time. His definition of that is having perhaps a few drinks and mostly listening to music. Yet he is smart enough to realize that many of his patrons won't have the same exact interests as himself.

"We wanted the bar to have a Carolina, country feel to it, but we didn't want to be known strictly as a country bar. I wanted to kind of weasel myself into a spot that was available, that nobody had covered. We play a little rock-and-roll, more rock-and-roll than country," Earnhardt said. "So it's old rock-and-roll and Southern rock early in the evening. Of course later in the evening you get into dance music. Everybody wants to dance on the dance floor, so you get into that kind of stuff later and it turns into more of the traditional sense of club.

"For the most part we tried to stay more Southern rock. It's kind of a challenge to deal with because you don't get a mass audience showing up to a bar like that. You get the locals or the regulars, the after-work guys, but you can't pack a bar with 1,300 people playing Southern rock all the time. We're just trying to give people a fun place to go. It's really more about who comes than anything." (Continued)