Remembering Club 68
by J.P. Pennington

My good friend, Greg Martin of the Kentucky Headhunters, sent me a jpg photo of an old bar sign that brought back many vivid memories. He also reminded me that his band used to open for us there. Can you imagine that? Greg suggested that I write down some thoughts about this place to share with our fans. Here 'tis!

People often asked me where my favorite place to play was. It's not an easy question to answer, considering the fact that we've been blessed over the years with the opportunity to play a lot of unique, as well as, prestigious venues. But, one place that always comes to mind is Club 68 in Lebanon, KY. Club 68 was unique in that it was centrally located in the midst of five or six dry counties, making it the only place to legally buy and drink alcoholic beverages. As a result, Lebanon became, for many years in the '60s and '70s, a sort of Wild West town right there in South-Central Kentucky.

What stands out the most is that the crowds were always big and always wild. It was so popular that people would have to wait outside until someone either chose to leave or was thrown out for one reason or another, in many cases for fighting. It seemed to me that the various counties that were represented on a given Saturday night all stuck together and always looked for a reason to distinguish themselves by fighting for their county against another county, especially later in the evening when the alcohol was beginning to take its full effect. I remember seeing 50 or 60 people fighting at once. Thankfully, the band was usually exempt from any aggressive behavior, although I was threatened on one memorable occasion with "an ass-whipping" because some drunk guy thought I was flirting with his date from stage. If the truth be known, I probably was!

Another interesting fact about "68" was the range of ages of the audiences. People anywhere from 60 on down to 14 or 15 years old would be groovin' to the music side by side, both nursing their favorite bottle of brew. Obviously, the club had its own set of rules as far any age or I.D. requirements went. Also, the choice of libation was not necessarily restricted to alcohol. On many occasions, you could see joints being passed around the room. To this day, I've wondered how they got away with that. Maybe it was the fact that Lebanon's mayor, Hylene George, was the owner of Club 68 and the packaged liquor store next door. Talk about your monopoly! I suppose he could get away with anything he wanted to. We never asked any questions. We just felt lucky to be there. More than once, while we were in the middle of a slow, quiet song, Mayor George's voice would blare out over his tinny, house p.a. system, advising owners of certain cars that "if you don't move it, it's gonna get towed!" We always got a great laugh out of that - so did the audience. He was always good to us, though. He paid us better than anyone else at the time and always had two roasted chickens and a case of beer waiting for us when we'd get there in the afternoons to set up. Nobody else did that for us in those days. Maybe it was his way of making sure that we were happy, because we drew consistently huge crowds.