My friends suggested trying out this country bar in SF so we drove in from San Jose to see what SF's version was. Since we frequent The Saddle Rack in Fremont and also Stoney's in Sacramento we have certain expectations but since this was our first time at Jaxson, we tried not to have high ones. We were correct in our assumptions.
We heard Sunday night wasn't too crowded and we wanted to see how well they did their line dances. Door man was very nice as he greeted us at the door. As I didn't order the drinks but my friend did, I don't know how well the service was but the drinks were good. The venue is not very large. The dance was floor was tiny but at least it was a wooden floor. The dancers would occasionally spill onto the concrete area at the end of the bar but it was danceable. We saw the DJ up in his little tower and I promptly asked if there was a clip board that I can add my song/dance requests to. He said he would be putting up a little white board and we can add our requests there.
The dance instructor then greeted the crowd though he had to shout even with his mic on since the music was on blast. He was very good. He taught the basic Watermelon Crawl and another easy dance. He did teach an intermediate dance that I didn't know called "Simmer On Down" by Rachel Erin Chidley to the song "You Broke Up with Me" by Walker Hayes. That was really fun and he taught it very well. In between the lessons, the regulars would either Country Swing dance ( not on beat or very well) and even though there was a line dance that would go to the song, there was no room or the Swing Dancers wouldn't give you the room to do it.
My friend and I noticed that the white board was finally up and we made sure we added a few easy popular ones that they do at the other clubs to the list. We recognized a couple of dances (very easy) that were on the list and we made sure we listened for them since there were on the top and may be played soon. Unfortunately that was not the case. At this point we had been in the club for hour and a half and the songs on the top of the list were still not played. We talked to a couple of regulars, who we knew from the other clubs, and were told that the DJ would play songs at his discretion. Oh boy. With another 3 random songs from the previous decade and still not one from our requests that were played, we decided to chat the DJ up. Apparently he doesn't know any line dances so he doesn't recognize the names. We had put the names of the song that are the same titles of the dances so we didn't know why he couldn't just play the song! At this point, it was another hour that went by and he did play a couple of songs we knew, American Kids and Double D. The floor was crowded but we danced on the smooth concrete so it wasn't bad. After I'm looking at my phone and we had been at the club for 3 1/2 hours and he only played 1 song out of the list we gave him. Since its a Sunday night and we live in San Jose, we decided to call it a night.
This would be a fantastic place to come Sunday's if they would only have a better DJ. He mixed the end and the beginning of the songs so you couldn't tell what was being played next. He randomly played songs that were not on the list and not from the current decade. Not a great first impression and even though we told him we were new to the club apparently that didn't matter. I would think you would want to play songs requested on the white board that you put up. If not, why bother putting up the board? Why not play to the new crowd? We love learning new dances and maybe we would have been able to share a few of ours.
Apparently, after we left around 11p, our friend, who recommended us to come up, said he finally started playing the songs on the list and even did a Hip Hop line dance called New Thang. That dance travels so I'm sure that would have been fun to watch.
My feeling is that I give a place another shot so we may check it out again on a Sunday night. Hopefully they find another DJ who actually knows how to play to a line dance crowd. read more