Dueling Pianos Keep the Walls at
Nines Ringing with Song & Laughter

By Rob Young
Special Features

It was nine o'clock on a Saturday. The owner stood behind the bar
washing glasses. A loud group of women were there to celebrate Lynne and
Patti's severance from a local company. Three cocktail waitresses bustled
about the room with trays full of drinks, while the son of a prominent
local business owner was buying rounds for anyone and everyone. A few off-duty
Saginaw Township police officers sat at a table across the room nursing Bud
Lights. A young couple sat in the corner; the guy was singing and dancing,
the girl looked embarrassed.

Jimmy B. wore all black. A fedora cast a shadow across his weathered face, as he sat with his back to the bar.  Directly across from him sat Billy McAllister. They were looking each other in the eye, as they had been all night. Several spotlights shone down on them from atop a sturdy-looking stand. They were in the middle of a duel at Nines FireHouse Pub in Saginaw. Dueling pianos, that is. The concept is simple. Two piano players sit face-to-face. They take requests and work for tips. Custom says that when requesting a song, you write your request on a piece of paper, karaoke-style, and then roll your tip up in that piece of paper and put it somewhere amongst the mess of cables and songbooks that clutters the space between the players' keyboards. Eventually, one of the players will unfurl your request, throw the money into the tip jar and begin playing your tune. Rare is the request that at least one of duelers can't play.

But that doesn't mean they're going to play the whole thing. A tip can be
trumped at any time. If you don't want to hear "La Vida Loca" for the
umpteenth time, you need only tip the piano players more than was
originally paid to hear the song. Money talks.

Jimmy B. explains: "Oh yeah, we yell right out, 'STOP THAT SONG!' One of
our biggest things going is the competition between Michigan and Michigan
State -- the fight songs. We might get ten bucks to start the fight song,
but it'll take eleven bucks to stop it. Sometimes the tips get pretty high
[to stop and start the songs]. It's almost like a basketball game."

Although Nines has only been putting on dueling piano nights for a few
months, they've managed to bring in the crowds to hear them play. "It's a
way of being different from everybody else," explains Nines co-owner Peter
Barrera, "People seem to like it. They have quite a following. Of course
you have regulars and you have one-timers, but hopefully the one-timers
come back."

The dueling line-ups change from night to night and weekend to weekend. Saginaw's Noel Leaman is responsible for getting the duels started at Nines, and now they draw regularly from a group of roving duelers. Jimmy B. and Billy McAllister, two of the regular duelers at Nines, are seasoned veterans. McAllister lives in Perry and travels around the state to perform. Jimmy B. has been dueling full-time for three years. He's from Flint, and he drives to Saginaw frequently to duel at Nines. "This is all I do. I've played in Port Huron, Rochester, Pontiac, Lansing. They've even flown me to Albuquerque to play Banana Joe's for two weeks." At Nines, Jimmy B. and Billy McAllister run a tight show. The last chord of one song becomes the first chord of the next. Sometimes, Jimmy B. or Billy will engage the crowd while the other bangs out the intro to the next song. They encourage interaction and they encourage sing-alongs. Often, they'll not sing a familiar chorus, hoping the crowd will pick up where they left off.

On this night, Lynne and Patti's party, who seemed more interested in
socializing than in dueling, dominated the crowd. "Tonight is a little
frustrating. The crowd is here to party with themselves," Jimmy B. remarked
during a break between sets, "But I think when we go back they'll be ready
to rock."

Jimmy B. was right. As the night wore on and one drink became
another, the women - along with everyone else in the still-crowded bar -
began to warm up to the piano players. One woman stuffed a dollar bill down
Billy McAllister's shirt to request a song. Another held his harmonica up
to his mouth for him during a rendition of Billy Joel's "Piano Man" -
doubtless a staple of dueling piano nights everywhere.

Things took off from there.

The women were now into it. "Take This Job and Shove It" was dedicated to
Lynne and Patti. Jimmy B. got up on a chair and mimed out the I'm a joker,
I'm a smoker, I'm a midnight toker verse of Steve Miller's "Fly Like an
Eagle". The crowd mimed along with him. The requests were flowing, and the
merriment flew into high gear.

As co-owner Paul Barrera views it, the chemistry that Dueling Pianos
creates amidst a crowd is as simple as it can be complex, drawing upon a
basic need for entertainment and mingling the complexity of mood that flows
through individual members of an audience.

"Every night is different and the beauty is that rather than merely
listening to a band or trying to talk over a loud band, this type of
entertainment is more interactive and involves the audience."

Dueling Pianos provides a unique niche' in the mix of nightlife in the
tri-cities.  If you've yet to experience this phenomena, be sure to make it
a point - there is an unmistakable feeling of good will when everyone in
the house is 'drawn into' the act.