The Boogey Man Band and Sand Dollar Lounge part company

Sunday, Oct. 10, 1999 | 10:24 a.m.

John Earl Williams sometimes refers to the joint as "the leash."

"Whenever we'd have a gig anywhere else on a Friday or Saturday, we'd finish at 9 o'clock and be ready for our 10 o'clock gig at the Sand Dollar," said Williams, rhythm and blues aficionado and front man for John Earl and the Boogey Man Band. "That would happen without fail. The place just kept pulling us in."

But a few weeks ago the leash was shed.

Wed to the old haunt on Spring Mountain Road for nearly 10 years, Williams and his six grizzled bandmates bade farewell with an anticlimactic performance the night of Sept. 18. There was no public acknowledgement that Williams was planning on leaving and few in the audience had any idea the show would be the last for the band at the unofficial Las Vegas blues headquarters.

"That's how it is in this town, in this business," Williams said while drinking a cup of heavily creamed coffee during a recent interview. "You don't give notice. You just leave. I had a handshake agreement and I didn't have to turn in a letter or any paperwork. When it was over, it was over."

The following Monday, Williams' wife, Shirley, who had managed the bar for all the years that the Boogey Man Band served as the Sand Dollar's house band, turned in her letter of resignation. An era had ended on the local music scene.

"We had taken it as far as it was going to go," Williams said. "It couldn't get any bigger for us there. We were in a different universe in a lot of ways, opening for John Lee Hooker (at The Joint) and Buddy Guy (at House of Blues), then coming back and playing for a couple hundred people at the Sand Dollar. It was a different world and we'd basically outgrown the Sand Dollar.

"It was time for a change."

But the split was not without strife. Williams' claim is that less than a month before deciding to leave the club, a dispute surfaced between Sand Dollar co-owner George Bradley Huffman (who manages the club and is a business partner with his father, George W. Huffman) and Shirley Williams over a bookkeeping snafu at the bar.

"There was a bookkeeping discrepancy, which has corrected, that had to do with the bar," Williams said. "It was a little thing, but instead of an apology there was a lot of mumbling about the money, that it should have been easier to find. It was ironed out, but there was no apology and Shirley had worked for them for 13 years. You just begin to wonder if it's worth it anymore."

But Williams insists there is no ill will between his band and the club ownership.

"Brad's (Huffman) a good guy," he said. "This all happened two or three weeks before we decided to go. We're very good friends with the family and I offered to help Brad book some bands and some charity shows if he needs help doing that. My main point is, it was a decision Shirley wanted to make and I wanted to make and we have no qualms with Brad."

Huffman, however, disputes Williams' contention that there was any argument over management of the bar.

"What he's saying is absolutely incorrect," Huffman said, adding that "there was more going on behind the scenes I don't want to get into" related to Williams' departure. "There are a lot of rumors and I'm not going to get into it at this time," Huffman said.

Said Williams, attempting to put a friendly spin on the dispute after hearing Huffman's comments: "Well, if he said it didn't happen, it didn't happen. I don't want mudslinging. It's possible it was a big misunderstanding, but to me it doesn't matter why we left. It was just time to leave."

Huffman also dismissed Williams' offer to help the club book acts, a role he filled while affiliated with the club. Huffman said that Williams, around the time of his resignation, had been telling bands and media outlets that the club would be dark for the foreseeable future.

"I find it strange that a person who would cancel scheduled acts and tell local media that the Sand Dollar would be dark would be willing to help book future acts and charity events," Huffman said.

"All I did was tell people they would have to renegotiate with (Huffman) after we left," Williams countered. "We didn't cancel anything."

What is certain is that the club will continue to provide live music, with the Roughnecks performing every Wednesday and Friday, the Moanin' Blacksnakes on Saturdays and an all-star jam on Mondays.

"I think it's a positive for the club," Moanin' Blacksnakes guitarist Scott Rhiner said. "It's really rare to have one band playing one club for that long. Now they'll have more variety, and I know that every band in town has been calling the Sand Dollar to get booked."

There is little to dispute the fact that the stocky, harmonica-playing Williams reshaped the club's image soon after forming the Boogey Man Band in 1988. They quickly moved into the Sand Dollar, which at the time was little more than a pool hall and video poker bar.

"They had four pool tables and a bunch of slot machines," Williams said. "We built the place. We brought in all the staging and lighting and turned it into a blues club."

Guitarist Scott Rhiner, a member of Williams' band until 1996 when he split to form the Moanin' Blacksnakes, concurred that the Boogey Man Band and 170-person-capacity Sand Dollar became the center of the local blues universe.

"Especially after the (Fremont Street) Reggae and Blues Club shut down a couple years ago, it became the only place that features blues only," Rhiner said. "John was dedicated to doing blues there. It was a little hole in the wall that had no business at all until John and Shirley got there and made it into something."

The crowds have consistently stretched the club's capacity. "We've had a couple hundred people in there many times," Williams said. "It was bursting at the seams."

The 53-year-old Williams is used to crowds of any size, having played tiny clubs and opening for established stars such as George Santana, the Doobie Brothers, Bad Company, the Allman Brothers and George Thorogood. "I like playing live more than ever," Williams said. "It's just that the heavier I get, the harder it is to jump around."

A Texas native who was born in Lubbock and attended East Texas State University as a music major, Williams played road clubs in the South as well as California and Nevada before embarking on a three-month tour of Europe in 1974. He wound up staying for 11 years in Amsterdam, running a nightclub, a Texas-style steakhouse, and even operating a disco for a short time.

"The music went over great. People really loved it and I had an interesting experience," Williams said. "I learned a lot about people and became very worldly during that time."

However, suffering the excesses of a fast-paced musician's life in Europe, Williams finally returned to Texas in 1985. By then he'd met Shirley, who was running a casino in Amsterdam, and a year later they married. Soon after Williams heard that Rhiner (then Williams' brother-in-law) needed a singer for his Las Vegas band the Blues Kings.

The band morphed into the Boogey Man Band and settled into the Sand Dollar.

"It was a very comfortable place where we had a devoted following," Williams said. "But the advantage of a place like Las Vegas is there are so many opportunities."

Williams wrote and he and bandmates Art Groom (organ), Pete Savino (drums), Charlie Tuna (guitar), Sid Fisher (guitar) Rocky Peoples (saxophone) and Mike Rector (bass) play on a six-minute animated feature running regularly at the Fremont Street Experience that debuted Sept. 23. They continue to perform at area blues events such as the Lee Canyon Rhythm and Blues Festival Series in August and the Blews & Brews Festival at the Colorado Belle in Laughlin.

Local gigs are set at Pounders Sports Lounge (Oct. 22-23) and the Barking Frog (Thursday, Friday, and Oct. 21, 28 and 29).

The band is also working on a new CD and making plans to branch out in its live performances. Shirley Williams is working on bookings in the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento and Lake Tahoe, and Williams has played at the Flamingo Hilton in Reno.

But Las Vegas will remain his launching pad.

"I'd like to get out to the entire valley on a regular basis," Williams said. "Maybe play Boulder City on Monday, Summerlin on Tuesday, North Vegas on Wednesday and Henderson on Thursday and have a regular weekend gig. The Sand Dollar was great, but not everyone wants to drive across town to have drinks and listen to music. Sometimes you have to reach out and create your own scene."

That is Williams' chief forte.

"Anyone can play in a club, but John really created something," Rhiner said. "He built a scene. When I was in his band, we were all really aware of that."

Williams is a bit melancholy when he considers life after the Sand Dollar.

"I feel like I'm leaving a pet project," he said, "something we'd grown to love."

And something Sand Dollar devotes hope survives in his absence.

archive