Ace In Houston

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The Beer Barn

This was a club that me and many of my friends went to all of the time to play shuffleboard and pool. It was a very rough club. We were only about 16 at the time but we knew the owner of the club. She would let us drink and hang out.

She added on a room with a stage and a dance floor eventually. She had mostly local rock bands and a few country bands. Country was not popular yet. This was in 1977. The movie "Urban Cowboy" came out in 1980 to make the big country push in the metropolitan areas.

Needless to say I was ecstatic when I heard that she had booked the "Ace in the Hole Band" to play the club I was hanging out at! I had been seeing Ace playing in the hill country. For them to play in Houston was a major event.

The band included, George Strait (singer), Mike Daily (steel guitar), Terry Hale (bass), Tommy Foote (Drums) & Ron Cable (lead guitar)-(recently deceased).

The stage was very small and the band could barely fit on it. The dance floor was about 20 feet by 15 feet. No room to dance! But I would give anything to be able to dance to George & Ace like in the old days!

They continued to play here for a year or two. Even though George was not well known, we always had good crowds because the club was about a 1/2 mile from the high school me and my brother graduated from. So there was plenty of friends and family to fill the honky-tonk. My brother was more of the celebrity here.

   Ace in the Hole played a political fund raising event in Memorial Park for candidate Bob Kruger. My dad was one of the first to have a video camera with sound in the late 70's and recorded the session. Of course the sound quality was bad due to technology and with the wind blowing it pick up a lot of distortion.

   I have a 5 minute clip of this concert with no audio on it. If you are interested in the video Email me or visit this page. Video quality is more like 8mm film, but definitely a rare clip. It runs 4 minutes & 45 seconds It includes, George, my brother, Ron cable, Terry Hale & Tommy Foote. George is wearing a baseball cap and faded blue jeans. His hair is a little long. The video was recorded somewhere between 1976 & 1977.

   Located off of 59 & Gessner, I became rather fond of this club. I learned a lot of dance steps here even though the dance floor was rather small. We always had a good crowd. Between sets we would go backstage and play darts with George and the band, Or go out back and do other in between set things. 

   Ace played here on a routine basis for a good while. It seemed like I was there at least once a month. At one of the later dates I had the board man record the show. It is a bit distorted but not a bad recording over all.

   Use to be located on Westhiemer and then moved to Westheimer and Hwy. 6, this was one of the boom clubs of the Urban Cowboy days. 

   This was pretty much the big time when you could book a club like this. I seem to recall some booking problems with this club, but can't remember the details. Anyway Ace played there about 10 times that I can recall. I remember the last time they played there because the girl I wanted to marry left for Texarkana to train show horses instead of staying with me. It was a rough day.

   Gilley's, the famous club from Urban Cowboy fame was one the early stops of "Ace" during the release of the first album. Remember the trailer out back of Gilley's where Debra Winger stayed in the movie? This was the backstage dressing room at the time. I saw them play here 4 or 5 times. 

    Always crowded with the country music boom. As I recall, eventually George had problems with the management and things became to difficult to play there any longer. Although I never rode the bull, I had a girlfriend that did. Kind of sounds like the "Movie".

   The thing that stands always stands out in my mind about Gilley's is the time I saw the program director for KIKK outside of George's bus trying to get in. That's because my father, having the biggest record distributorship in Houston, would send copies of George's first recordings to KIKK to be listened to by the program director. Needless to say he would never play the records or make any return calls to my dad. So it was a great moment to see him outside of the bus trying to get in with no success, as I calmly walked by him onto the bus. It's funny how the worm turns, isn't it?