It’s designed to look like an old Texas saloon and no detail goes unnoticed. The walls are cluttered with memorabilia of old outlaw legends like Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, and (obviously) Waylon Jennings – just to name a few. When you are bartending for the pig roast, oink oink All of the Country Music in this bar.Ĭountry music is at the forefront of what this bar is about and it shows up everywhere you look. And I want to tell you all the reasons you will love this bar as much as I do. At the time I wasn’t even sure that one existed. When I first found the Waylon I was specifically looking for a country bar in New York City. But I have to ask…where are Loretta Lynn and Merle Haggard fitting into what I deem to be the greatest music in the world? You may not find them on mainstream radio much anymore, but you absolutely will at the Waylon. And there are those couple catchy Florida Georgia Line songs that you might find me singing along to. I’ll pause for a second to say that when iconic Nashville bars like Tootsies are closing the night with Blink 182’s “All the Small Things” (an actual real thing that happened to me while I was there), I find myself wondering what the hell happened to Country music.īefore I offend any of their fans, I want to say that I DO LIKE Carrie Underwood. Even in a city like Nashville, country music is now synonymous with Florida Georgia Line and Carrie Underwood. To find an authentic country music bar anywhere in the world can be difficult to do. I got to know the bartenders, the regulars and the managers, as you tend to do when you’re a nightly fixture, and ending up behind the bar only seemed natural.īirthday celebration shenanigans with my best girls This New York country bar is the real deal. I would put my $5 in the Jukebox, sip my Jack & Coke and listen to the only songs that made me feel connected to this big crazy city. And it was my favorite bar before I ever started working there.Įvery night I used to go in after I would finish with my other bar job in the neighborhood.
This isn’t shameless promotion or a way to suck up to my bosses (I swear) it’s just straight up, hands down my favorite bar in the city. Even though it feels a tiny bit strange to write a blog post about a bar that I work at, it really does deserve it’s own spotlight. But it didn’t really seem right to put it on a list with other bars in the neighborhood, especially given the word count I could devote to this particular bar. When I was putting together my list of favorite midtown bars to eventually put in a blog post, The Waylon went right at the top. Ready for our party bus from the Waylon to the Garth Brooks concert at Yankee Stadium That was until I found my home away from home at The Waylon Bar in Hell’s Kitchen. It was all I could do to make this hectic city feel like mine. In the last fives years, I’ve worn out and had the soles replaced on them twice, clinging to them like a baby blanket. When I moved to New York City back in 2014, the first thing I had shipped to me from the few boxes I had stored away at my sisters was my cowboy boots. I used to ride in the bed of my grandpa’s pickup truck, with his Camel Country radio station sticker on the back and the middle window slid open, while my sisters and I sang along to every single song on the radio.
While other kids were watching Disney movies, I was watching Coal Miner’s Daughter on repeat. I got my first pair of cowboy boots when I learned to walk, and I danced around the kitchen using a mop as a microphone, singing along to the Judd’s farewell tour cassette tape with my sisters until it wouldn’t play anymore.
It’s one of the few constant things that have defined me my whole life and one of the only things I’ve inherited from my family.
The only real positive connection I have to my childhood is country music.