By Amanda Dyslin
MANKATO — As two men sit and talk about 35 years of progress and change, history literally lies beneath their feet.
It was on this very spot on New Year’s Eve in 1972 — at the front of what is now T.J. Finnegan’s Pub on Front Street in Mankato — that Billy Steiner of City Mouse was on the verge of something. He was in the early stages of a band that would go through more than 30 members, that would become a Mankato country-rock staple at bars and festivals, that still is going strong today, playing about a hundred gigs a year.
Nearby — watching this young group play the second gig ever at his brand new bar then called the Hurdy Gurdy Saloon — Ron Doty also was at the beginning of something. It was a business that would evolve with the times, change identities as entertainment interests went from live rock to disco to comedy, that would last decades as various other bars came and went.
Doty’s bar wasn’t the first gig for City Mouse. The Hurdy Gurdy Saloon wasn’t Doty’s first bar in the Mankato area, either. He had owned Pappy’s Bar since 1971 until opening the saloon a year later.
But both Steiner, who turns 57 today, and Doty, 64, got started with their respective 35-year histories as a band and a Mankato bar owner around the same time. And, throughout the years, as City Mouse developed a following and played numerous gigs at the Hurdy Gurdy, these histories overlapped.
That’s why, a couple of months ago as Steiner and fellow band members realized City Mouse was turning 35 this year, their first thought was to celebrate the occasion at T.J.’s.
For the 35th anniversary show to be held Saturday, they invited as many of the 30 or so former band members as they could to join them on stage throughout the night — except, of course, for five who have died, including longtime member Gus Dewey. They invited friends and fellow musicians to jam with them, too.
Doty is inviting all the former employees and patrons of the bar clear back to the Hurdy Gurdy days. He’s even constructing a new stage in the center of the bar for the occasion, which he may keep for future live acts if the night is as successful as both men think it will be.
After 35 years, they have made quite a few friends, fans and customers who will want to help them celebrate, after all.
The good ol’ days
Both Doty and Steiner agree the 1970s era was a great time for the Mankato bar and music scene.
“Back then everybody wanted to be in a band,” Steiner said.
City Mouse — now made up of Steiner (harmonica), Dale Haefner (keyboards), Ron Arsenault (acoustic guitar), Mike Pengra (drums), Dave Pengra (bass) and Tim Waters (electric and pedal steel guitars and banjo) — started in 1971 as a duo with Steiner and Bob Drengler and played gigs all over the Mankato area. Shortly after the duo formed, they added Bill Denison and became a band, playing the “good time” music they’re still known for that blends blues, pop, folk, jazz and country.
About 20 bars existed at the time, and many offered live music seven nights a week.
“It was different then,” Doty said. “Now you couldn’t do that.”
The Hurdy Gurdy Saloon, which Doty opened in December 1972, offered live music all week and City Mouse often played there. That is, until the disco era kicked in with the release of “Saturday Night Fever” in the late 1970s. It was about that time that City Mouse started booking out of the Twin Cities and took the road.
“There were places to play,” Steiner said. “You just had to go out (and find them).”
It was also about that time Doty reevaluated his business and decided it was time for a change. He reopened the bar in the early 1980s as R.J. Noodles Co., a disco and pasta bar that offered a dance floor and a d.j.
Doty remodeled again and changed the name in 1984 to T.J. Finnegan’s Pub — the name of a business he owned at another location — and the live music didn’t return. (Incidentally, Doty got the “Finnegan” part of the name from his former dentist simply because he thought it was a cool-sounding name for a bar. The “T” and the “J” were just a couple of initials that sounded good with Finnegan.)
“Disco came and went so fast, and so did (R.J. Noodles Co.),” he said.
Instead of bands, he had a long-standing weekly comedy series that was popular for 20 years before it ended last year. Other bars he owned in the Mankato area did offer live music.
As for City Mouse, the band established its current lineup in 1986, and that’s about when they quit traveling full time. They developed a devoted following in the area and played as often as possible. The same is true now.
Also in ’86, Arsenault — who had been teaching up north and playing in a group called the Lost Walleye Orchestra — returned to the Mankato area and rejoined City Mouse. Arsenault, Haefner, Dave Pengra and Steiner formed an offshoot of City Mouse under the Lost Walleye Orchestra name. All four members continue to play shows under that name.
Whether performing as City Mouse or Lost Walleye Orchestra, the band’s loose motto has remained as the years passed: “You don’t quit playing because you get old; you get old because you quit playing.”
Steiner was inducted in the Minnesota Music Hall of Fame in 2002, and City Mouse will be inducted in April in the Minnesota Rock/Country Hall of Fame. Doty also was honored in 2005 by being inducted in the Minnesota Hospitality Hall of Fame.
Coming full circle
From the pictures hanging on the wall of the brightly colored seats and the striped wallpaper of the Hurdy Gurdy Saloon taken the day before the place opened in ’72, it’s clear how much T.J.’s has evolved.
From the black-and-white pictures Steiner keeps of the early days of City Mouse, members of which wear bell-bottoms and shaggy beards, it’s also clear how much the band has changed.
Yet, sitting across from each other where the stage of the Hurdy Gurdy used to be, Steiner and Doty talk about gigs and events like weeks have passed instead of years. The memories of the many faces of the bar and the band are so fresh they almost seem to step into them as they describe how much they each have seen,
how far they’ve come.
As the guys talk, men work at the back of
the bar with hammers and saws building the new stage for T.J.’s — yet another mark of change and progression for Doty’s one remaining bar in the Mankato area, his most successful business.
With smiles, both realize the past will meet the present on that new stage Saturday night as former band members and longtime friends join City Mouse to celebrate a special birthday.
