Music lounge upholds free spirit of St. Louis 

BY DAVE HOEKSTRA

ST. LOUIS--Like skylines in a rearview mirror, the larger-than-life characters that distinguished Route 66 are fading away. The old road recently lost Francis Marten, caretaker of the Our Lady of the Highway Shrine in Raymond, south of Springfield, Ill. The farmer with the big hands and soft heart died in June at the age of 88.

 Frederick (Senior) Boettcher owned Frederick's Music Lounge, 4454 Chippewa (old Route 66) in St. Louis from 1975 until his death from lung cancer in 2000. I didn't know Boettcher, but by all accounts he was the quintessential Route 66 individualist.

 Boettcher was a guitarist who performed in a trio around the now-defunct Gaslight Square district. Gaslight Square was St. Louis' 1950s-'60s answer to Rush Street. Phyllis Diller and Lenny Bruce played clubs in the district that had trippy names like the Crystal Palace. 

When Boettcher opened his own club, his hook was to have waitresses wear outfits from Frederick's of Hollywood. Boettcher built the club as an addition to his house because he didn't want to drive far to have a good time. "That sounds like something my dad would have done," says his son Fred (Friction) Boettcher, who now operates the music lounge. "Like he didn't want to go out in the rain to get a beer somewhere."

 Boettcher, 44, is keeping the free spirit alive. 

He is sitting in front of a Billie Holiday portrait and a poster advertising a Frederick's appearance from Chicago's Kelly Kessler & the Wichita Shut-Ins. His dining room table is cluttered with stacks of '45s and the book Oh Yuck! The Encyclopedia of Everything Nasty. 

Boettcher needs a cigarette. He gets up from the table and heads through a walkway into the club to fetch a pack of smokes from a cigarette machine. Boettcher is as thin as a twig. He has to duck under the branches of a black locust tree inside the bar. Beehives hang from 

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the tree. The tree was real, but it died after his father built the bar around it and sprayed the tree with green paint. "My dad wanted to save it," Boettcher says. "There may be a steel shank running through it. He also painted the shadow of a tree on the wall."

 All this could never happen in Chicago. Highbrow neighbors would form CULT (Citizens United to Liberate Trees). City Hall would write up an ordinance prohibiting people from living in a house connected to a bar with a real tree inside it.

 Frederick's Music Lounge books alternative country and rock bands into the club, which holds about 80 people. Boettcher hosts "Fishin' With Dynamite," a popular alternative country music show, Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on KDHX (88.1-FM) in St. Louis.

 The Chicago-based Drapes performed at Frederick's when I was in town. The power-rock trio did original tunes as well as a scorching version of AC-DC's "Walk All Over You." Country goth singer Johnny Dowd is a regular and Lou Whitney of the Morells tipped me about Frederick's. When bands are cooking and the lounge is closing in on last call, a bartender can turn on a Lawrence Welk-type bubble machine from behind the bar.

 "Freddy's reminds me of the old Bucket of Suds in Chicago," says Drapes vocalist-guitarist Kevin McDonough. "It's got that good/dirty vibe to it, between the place itself and Fred having his living room as a green room. It's a nice, intimate place to play. And Fred is like a character right out of a David Lynch film."

 The first time I visited Frederick's Music Lounge, I walked into Boettcher's house by mistake. "I usually have a sign on my door with a finger pointing [east] that says, 'BAR IS THAT WAY.' " Everyone who makes it through the lounge front door is greeted by a collage of more than 100 Stag beer bottle caps that spells out Fred's. 

Guests step down a couple of steps to enter the sunken bar. The main room is full of lattice work and a cut log canopy over the bar that appears to be made from the same cedar as the Red Cedar Inn restaurant, about a half-hour west of St. Louis on Route 66 in Pacific, Mo. (Detours, Dec. 31, 2000). Fred Senior also painted the murals of regulars on walls that surround the stage. On a nice summer night, visitors can adjourn to a backyard beer garden with cracked plastic tables, a concrete armadillo and ramshackle bubbling fountain.

 "My dad lived in this house and had a cinder block building added on for his automotive parts business," Boettcher says. "But for several years in the back of his mind he wanted to open his own club. He designed it. Him and his friends built it, as weird and goofy as it is. I've had it for the two years since my father passed away and made very few changes."

 Well, he did change the music policy.

 Fred Senior played piano and sang lounge classics in the club. When waitresses weren't wearing Frederick's of Hollywood outfits, they wore tight harem pants. "The thing for the guys was to be well-dressed," Boettcher says. "His trio wore matching outfits with red vests." 

After Fred Senior became ill in the late 1980s, he dropped the music policy and transformed the lounge into a supper club of sorts where membership cards entitled regulars to free premiums like a cold cut buffet dinner. There is no food at Frederick's today. But you can get a cold bottle of Stag beer for $2. A jukebox features Tom Waits' "Invitation to the Blues" and Ray Charles' "Born To Lose."

 Boettcher is also a guitarist. He plays in the Highway Matrons power country trio, the closest thing the house with a lounge has to a house band. Besides guitar, Boettcher is a self-taught spoon player. He'll play spoons on a couple of songs as a tribute to a traditional Ozark Mountain folk instrument. "There's no right or wrong way to play spoons," Boettcher says, seeming incredulous that someone would ask such a question. "Take them out, start swinging them around. I'd make sure they are a little larger than your regular coffee spoon."

 Boettcher begins to demonstrate. He used to conduct seminars around St. Louis called "Night of 1,000 Spoons." He holds a larger spoon in his right hand and a coffee spoon in his left hand. This creates variation in tone. Boettcher attached key rings onto the ends of the spoons with elastic ponytail holders. He explains, "Right away, I found out your hands start sweating and the spoons fly out of your hand. They could fly across the room and poke somebody's eye out."

 Then Frederick's would become Frederck's.

 Fred Senior was married five times. Boettcher grew up with his mother in Cape Girardeau, Mo. "I'd visit all the time and ended up waiting tables and tending bar in St. Louis," Boettcher says. "When there was an opportunity, I would come and work with my dad."

 Boettcher stands tall in front of a black and white portrait of his father behind the bar. The picture was taken in the lounge shortly after he was diagnosed with cancer. Fred Senior has a roadweary smile and he is toasting a can of Budweiser with a Bukowski swagger. 

"My dad could be a jerk when he wanted to, but he could be a generous and entertaining individual," Boettcher says, toasting a Stag with a Bukowski swagger. "He told stale jokes that he recycled over and over. He liked meeting people. He liked telling stories."

 He would be proud.

 IF YOU GO

 Frederick's Music Lounge is open from 6 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. daily except Sunday. Those Darn Accordions will appear at 10 p.m. Aug. 27, and the fabulous roots rock of the Morells will fill the room at 10 p.m. Aug. 30--the same night Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band are in St. Louis. My two favorite bands in the same town on the same night. Yikes! Cover charges range from $4 during the week and $7 on weekends. For more information, call Frederick's at (314) 351-5711.

 ROUTE 66 ROUNDUP:

 An autographed picture of late Country Music Hall of Famer Roger "King of the Road" Miller hangs on a crooked piece of time near the bar at Frederick's Music Lounge. Fred Boettcher explains, "A friend of mine was working as a secretary for an entertainment lawyer in Nashville. She met Roger Miller. She asked him to autograph a photo for me as a Christmas present. Roger signed it, handed it to her and said, 'Is this all you're giving him for Christmas?' I know she didn't make that up. That sounds just like Roger Miller."

 Miller was from Erick, Okla. (pop. 1,053), along old Route 66. Miller used to joke his home town was so small, "the town drunk had to take turns." I visited the tiny town during my 1991 journey from Chicago to Los Angeles on Route 66. Miller is one of my favorite American songwriters:

 Who else would write a song called "The Last Word in Lonesome Is Me."

 The Roger Miller Foundation has been formed to get the project off the ground. A beautiful 73-year-old brick building has been purchased at the downtown intersection of Roger Miller and Sheb Wooley Boulevards on Route 66. (Entertainer Wooley married Miller's cousin). Miller's widow, Mary, and his son, singer-songwriter Dean Miller, serve on the museum board. The museum will feature Miller's clothing, rare photographs, rare recordings, videos, sheet music and hand-written lyrics (I'd visit Erick to see those). "We hope to open in the spring of 2003," says Erick mayor Gayla Dunlap. "We're working on grants. There may be a benefit concert in Nashville."

 The main objective of the museum is to pump life back into rural Erick, about 30 miles east of Amarillo, Texas. "Erick is not an industrial town," Dunlap says. "We're mostly a farm community. We farm peanuts, cotton and wheat. We're trying to get our town built back up. By placing the museum downtown, we're hoping to get people off the interstate. Then people will see they can put in a business of some kind that would go with a tourist attraction."

 For more information, contact Dunlap at her Town & Country Insurance office at (580) 526-3500. Detours fans who have any stories, memorabilia or other information to share can contact Mary Miller at dangme@rogermiller.com. Roger Miller Museum T-shirts and "King of the Road" baseball caps can be purchased at Rogermiller.com, with proceeds going to the museum initiative.