All this country music is giving me the honky-tonk blues

A little more than a year ago, there were exactly zero honky-tonks in Fortitude Valley. I know this to be a fact, because I counted them twice.

Now, there are two.

And I sense a disturbance in the Force.

Country music is far from a niche interest in Brisbane. Credit: Markus Ravik

The signs were there. The old Orient Hotel, a classic live music venue where I recall seeing Powderfinger in their grungy formative years in the mid-’90s, had a surprising rebrand about a decade or so ago.

It became Johnny Ringo’s and my initial hopes it was a bar celebrating half the Beatles led to disappointment.

The mechanical bull was the first giveaway something had gone awry. The drawling twang from the speakers was the second. Inner Brisbane finally had a country music-themed bar, thus ensuring I’d never set foot in there again.

Still, I was grateful it was there. Everyone deserves a place to go and feel at home, and I was happy for Brisbane’s small country music fraternity to have a place of its own.

But it seems I underestimated country’s appeal. Unbeknown to me, that small country music fraternity is actually quite a behemoth.

Not that long ago, the name Luke Combs meant absolutely nothing to me. Then, to my surprise, the country star sold out Suncorp Stadium earlier this year. Twice.

Save for Johnny Cash, country music has never been a love of mine. A visit to a chaotic Nashville a couple of years back did little to endear it to me, especially with the particular brand of American patriotism country tends to manifest.

There are now two “honky tonks” in the Valley, which some might argue are two too many. Credit: Markus Ravik

Somehow, though, the genre seems to have grown here at home from a niche interest for older or rural fans, to the bona fide mainstream.

Brisbane really is a big country town, as Spotify attested late last year.

In late 2023, Honky Tonks on Wickham Street opened its doors in the long-abandoned ANZ Valley branch.

Then, just a couple of months back, country music took pride of place in the Brunswick Street Mall –Chattahoochee Joe’s Honky Tonk (not to be confused with the Chattanooga Jazz Bar a couple of streets away in Cathedral Village) was open for business.

And the beat of the Valley (not to be confused with The Beat of the Valley) changed, yet again.

It used to be the centre of Brisbane’s alternative music scene, where you’d see the likes of Regurgitator and Custard in their prime, before having a beer with them at Ric’s.

The 2000s’ Fortitude Valley Special Entertainment Precinct, designed to stop residents complaining about the noise after they moved into the neighbourhood, turned the Valley into Brisbane’s mainstream nightlife destination.

Whatever the era, big hats and banjos would have been unthinkable. But here we are.

Country, it seems, has become the music du jour for much of our younger generation. And, to borrow from a favourite of some of our rural cousins, I don’t like it.

Am I so out of touch? No, it’s the children who are wrong.

Still, since these venues have filled the Valley with the sounds of country music, I must admit to having my head turned a couple of times. The joys of opening myself up to different music genres became clear to me some time ago.

It may never be a genre I fully embrace, but I suspect there will be a Valley hoedown in my not-too-distant future.