The Sawdust Lounge Presents: On Tonight’s Stardust Stage…
turns a neighborhood bar into a stage where bartenders, regulars, dreamers, die-hard fans, woo-girls, and passing strangers all get their moment in the spotlight.
Part poetry collection, part barroom variety show, James Allen, The Sawdust Sage™, mixes humor, heart, music, and hard-earned observation into short pieces that feel like stories overheard between songs. Pull up a chair, listen closely, and meet the people who make an ordinary watering hole feel like a second home.
Part of the Barrooms, Beers & Backyard Barbecues collection,
this companion title shares the back-porch humor, small-town storytelling, and everyday wisdom found throughout this corner of James Allen’s work.
Where It Started
The idea for The Sawdust Lounge Presents: On Tonight’s Stardust Stage… started one night while I was hosting bar trivia.
There was a guy at the bar who refused to actually play. That didn’t stop him from answering the questions.
Out loud.
Loud enough that most of the room could hear him.
And, just to make things more interesting, he was usually wrong.
Anyone who has spent enough time in a neighborhood bar knows the type. In fact, spend enough nights in one and you begin to realize the place has an entire cast of characters. There’s the bartender who knows everybody’s story, the regular who occupies the same stool every Friday, the die-hard fan, the woo-girls, the self-appointed expert, the philosopher, the storyteller, and the stranger who wanders in, says something unforgettable, and disappears.
That night behind the trivia microphone planted the seed.
What if all those characters had their own stage?
Eventually, that stage became The Sawdust Lounge.