Suburban cowboys

On a recent Friday night, two bargoers stood under the neon red-white-and-blue sign outside Toby Keith's I Love This Bar & Grill. Here, on a St. Louis Park boulevard, they looked like a pair of suburban cowboys, having donned the proper regalia of wide-brimmed hats, heeled boots and shiny, oversized belt buckles. Soon they were joined by another bargoer who looked nothing like them. Kyle Dolder, 30, wore a starched white polo with blue jeans and black laceless Vans. While his two new friends work cattle and landscaping jobs, Dolder sells medical devices and owns a condo in downtown Minneapolis, as well as a place in Las Vegas.

Yet here they were, united by the sounds emanating from a country megabar. If anything, the two cowboys were the exception to the rule at a place like Toby Keith's, where baseball caps far outnumber cowboy hats.

"This place was made for these guys," Dolder said. "But I like this place, too. I love First Avenue as much as I love coming here."

The Twin Cities bar scene moves in cycles. For a time, glitzy nightclubs were the style du jour. Then ultra lounges. After that, down-and-dirty party bars.

Yee-haw: Now it's country bars. Some say the economy dictates the scene's direction. In tough times, what's more casual than country? Be they rootin'-tootin' cowboy bars (Toby Keith's) or just cowboy chic (Cowboy Slim's), the current wave of country-themed bars is only growing. While most of these places are located in the suburbs, downtown Minneapolis will soon get two of its own.

This should come as no surprise. Minnesota is home to one of the nation's largest country-listening audiences, with Clear Channel's K102 often ranked No. 1 or 2 in overall ratings. In fact, country bars are nothing new to the Twin Cities. Remember the Rush (aka Rodeo) in Cottage Grove? And the Country Bar & Grill is still chugging away at the corner of Lake and Lyndale.

Beyond their decor -- wagon wheels, whiskey barrels and cattle skulls -- what makes these bars country? On a capacity night at Toby Keith's, you might see a couple dozen cowboy hats among a crowd of 800 people. At Cowboy Slim's in Uptown or Wild Bill's Sports Saloon in Apple Valley, you'll find even fewer.

10,000 Facebook fans

When the corporate brass behind the Toby Keith's chain scouts a new location, they look for two things: a top-ranked country radio station and a strong suburban market. They found both in St. Louis Park, home to K102 and the Shops at West End.

The bar's June 4 arrival was heralded by an enormous amount of fan support. Its Facebook page counts about 10,000 followers. Bargoers seem impressed with Toby Keith's attention to being unpretentious: Beer is served in Mason jars, bouncers are called "regulators" and the Twinkies are deep-fried.

At 15,000 square feet, the bar is one of the largest in the Twin Cities, which can be a gift and a curse. Slow nights make the place look like a ghost town. But free CD-release parties for rising country stars, such as Lee Brice and Jerrod Niemann, have produced capacity nights with more than 1,000 people passing through the doors.

Josh Knudsen, 25, said he can count the number of days he hasn't been to Toby Keith's. "I'm country to the heart," Knudsen said, wearing a dusty brown cowboy hat on a recent night. Knudsen admitted that he rarely wears his hat in downtown Minneapolis, fearing taunts.

Cowboy state of mind

Just off Interstate 494 in Plymouth sits Cowboy Jack's Saloon, which was -- by most accounts -- the first in this new wave of country-themed bars. Its opening in early 2009 spawned Cowboy Slim's in Uptown and Cowboy's Saloon in Circle Pines. Jack's sits across from a strip mall that houses Golf Galaxy, Party City and Leeann Chin. Not exactly the Wild West.

On a recent night, women in halter tops and bright summer dresses streamed into the bar. Inside, the dining room looked like the set of an old John Wayne movie, with worn wooden floorboards, whiskey barrels as tabletops and rifles in place of door handles.

"I like this place because it doesn't matter what you're wearing," said Angela Renner, 32, of Maple Grove. She was wearing a brown dress, but jeans and boots are more her style, especially when she and her friends ride in on their motorcycles. "That's our horse," she joked.

Renner said her riding partners pay more attention to the music. One of them, a buff, soft-spoken man named Ryan Patterson, 38, has traveled to Nashville the past two years to attend the CMA Awards. Wearing a tight cream-colored V-neck, designer jeans and black dress shoes, Patterson didn't fit any country stereotype.

"I think [downtown] needs to be cleaned up," he said.

A castle built for a cowboy

Cowboy Jack's and its sister bars are owned by one of the nightlife scene's major players, Chris Diebold, who has holdings in almost a dozen bars and restaurants.

In July, Diebold broke ground on his most ambitious project to date: the fourth and largest bar under his successful Cowboy banner. This one, also named Cowboy Jack's, will be located in the old 14,000-square-foot Steak and Ale off I-494 in Bloomington.

On a recent Tuesday morning, Diebold walked through the cavernous, multi-room space as his crew sledgehammered walls and pried apart ceiling panels. "I believe there is a revival happening on the Bloomington strip," he said. "Years ago, this was the place to go."

While he specializes in cowboy bars, Diebold himself is more biker than cowboy. He's a hands-on businessman with a knack for building bars on a budget. Much of the wood used at the original Cowboy Jack's he found in an old barn in Detroit Lakes. He's also a motorcycle enthusiast and regular at the motorcycle rallies in Sturgis, S.D.

Diebold's brand of cowboy bar has more to do with comfort and price than live music and mechanical bulls. Comparing his bars with Toby Keith's, he said, "That's not at all what we do. We're a restaurant. They're a different niche. They do what they do and we do what we do."

Downtown: the new frontier

While the suburbs have welcomed the country aesthetic, the downtown bar scene has been harder to crack. That's about to change.

Peter Hafiz -- owner of Sneaky Pete's, the Gay 90s and Deja Vu -- says he will open a country-rock bar in October or November in the old Sawatdee/Koyi Sushi building on 4th Street near 2nd Avenue N., which he owns. The ever-provocative bar owner said the concept will be "Sneaky Pete's on steroids." He wants to call it Spank the Donkey.

Is downtown ready for cowboy hats and two-stepping? Maybe. Skeptics wondered the same thing about Toby Keith's coming to the West End. The romping-stomping bar has become one of the upscale shopping center's biggest hits.

Matt Grams, 36, was one of the cowboys standing outside Toby Keith's a few weeks ago. With his white straw hat and custom belt buckle, he looked like a well-dressed rodeo hand (in fact, he attended a rodeo the week before). "This is who I am," he said with a country drawl.

Grams is a loyal bargoer. He spends a few nights a week at Toby Keith's, even though he lives an hour west in Hutchinson. If the drive weren't enough, his job as a dairy farm herdsman means he must wake up at 4:30 a.m. most days.

Could he have that same commitment to a country bar in downtown Minneapolis? Long starved for options, Grams said a downtown country bar doesn't sound like such a bad idea.

"I'll try it out," he said. "Oh, yeah, you bet I will."