The dueling piano community in Central Florida is all abuzz with the announcement of a new dueling piano bar opening on Church Street in Orlando.   Slated to open later this summer, Baby Grands Dueling Piano Bar is taking over the 6,700-square-feet space that was formerly the Olive Garden…mere steps away from where Howl at the Moon used to be.

Howl at the Moon on Church Street was wildly successful, drawing a steady flow of downtown regulars in the waning years of Church Street Station’s glory days.   I know, because I was one of those regulars, and it was my first exposure to dueling pianos as a concept (my mom suggested that I audition, something I actually did many years later).

Baby Grands is opening in a city not without its share of competitors.  Howl at the Moon operates over 10 locations around the country, and its International Drive venue has been one of the company’s flagship stores for at least six years.  Pat O’Briens in CityWalk and Jellyrolls at Disney Boardwalk also do nightly dueling piano shows.  I’ve also heard there are a few bars in the Lake Mary area that have been experimenting with the format on weekends.

To its advantage, the entire 55 West area of Church Street has slowly been making a comeback in recent months.  The area already boasts 377 of the most centrally located apartments downtown, Amura Sushi, Panchero’s Mexican Grill and Gino’s Pizza & Brew.  Now, in addition to Baby Grands, they’ve announced plans for a new bar called Blend in the old Sharper Image space and Mad Cow Theater is moving into the old Hooter’s space.  And apparently Baby Grands will be be serving food…something that most other dueling piano bars (including Howl at the Moon) do not do.

The question on everyone’s mind is:  who is behind this new venture? The Orlando Business Journal reports that the principals own restaurants, bars and other franchises in Florida, New York and Virginia.

More importantly:  Who’s going to be playing there?   There are a limited number of experienced “A” duelers in town (I’ve met or played with most of them) and without exception, all of them have steady gigs at one of the already-established venues.  Will the new bar be able to attract talent from the other clubs?  We shall see.

One thing is for certain…lips are sealed tight.  If anyone is jumping ship, they’re keeping mum about it.  But I peeked in the space, and build-out has commenced.  Banners are flying in the windows and this week’s “Best of Orlando” issue of the Orlando Weekly featured a 1/4 page color ad for the new club.  Baby is on her way.

Baby Grands Dueling Pianos
54 West Church Street Orlando, FL 32801
(407) 849-1911

Update:  10/31/2010 Dueling Pianos Return to Orlando Church Street Station

Piano bar on tap at 55 West – Orlando Business Journal

Baby Grands Dueling Pianos in Downtown Orlando « Pulse of Central Florida.

Doug is a master of ceremonies.

For those of you who just can’t get enough Diggz, here are some upcoming dates you can catch me playing at Howl at the Moon in Orlando:

March
17 Wednesday Happy Hour 6-8pm St. Patrick’s Day!
23 Tuesday 8pm-2am

April
1 Thursday 9pm-2am April Fools Day!
3 Saturday 7:30-2am
5 Monday 8pm-2am My Birthday!

Rob Volpe from Howl at the Moon stops by to talk about his Internet show, The Orlando Show, his American Idol audition, and the two play a game that Ryan thought would have gone much better.

Video Stream:

Audio Only:

CS 72: The Orlando Show Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

So I was just thinking of a couple of “Firsts” for me at Howl at the Moon last night. It was my third shift since my “official” training ended. I was paired up with Joe, who I hadn’t played with in a couple of months.

Joe’s the “Head Chief” of all the entertainers at howl. He travels a lot, much of which is to help ensure some level consistency of entertainment throughout the chain (I think there are like 10 of them around the country). He auditions and hires (and I can only assume, fires) entertainers. But his home is in Central Florida, so the Orlando Howl is his home base. He also happens to be one entertaining mo-fo. It must be the shaved head.

When I started training, I played almost exclusively with Joe for the first couple of months. He’s primarily a guitar player, but this guy’s no slouch on the keys. Or the drums. Or the Bass…and his vocal range….fughettabout it. He’s a regular one-bald-man-band. He taught me the ropes. The basics…like…”hey, asshat….the audience is THAT way!” (I had a bad habit of looking at my partner instead of the audience…one I’m still working on).

But, like I said, Joe travels a lot, so just about the time I figured out which direction the audience was, he passed me off to Ken, who taught me the importance of smiling a lot. Two very important things to know in the dueling piano business, when combined it sounds very simple, but is so very true: Smile at the Audience! Sounds simple enough, huh? If it were only that easy.

So firsts for my third shift:

1. First time doing a “call-down”.
So “call-downs” are when someone has a birthday or anniversary or whatever they’re celebrating. Usually their friends will write their name down, wrap it in some $ and stick it on the piano. So the player calls them down to the stage and (hopefully) a funny bit will ensue. Technically it’s “UP” to the stage…we should call them “Call-Ups”.

There was a girl having a birthday. I’d never done a “call down” before…I’ve always passed them off to my partner. But here was $5 in front of me and I figured I could give it try. I was going to do the BOLOGNA song (I learned it from Ken, but I don’t know where it came from originally…I imagine it’s been around for years and years in varying versions). Basically it’s a parody of the Oscar Mayer jingle involving a penis and a vagina. You get the idea.

So I call this girl, Heather, up to the stage (ahem…Call-UP?) and she looks very nervous. And I don’t know why, but at the last second I changed the song to “You’ve Lost that Loving Feeling”. Don’t know why…never done that song as a call down…just did it. Anyway…it didn’t flop…wasn’t particularly entertaining, but I broke my call-down cherry. Heather didn’t even know she was my first.

2. First time playing Bass
I’ve held the bass. I’ve tuned the bass. I’ve even played along to songs before my shift once or twice. I’ve played the drums a couple of times during shows (not well). But never the bass. So we’re towards the end of the night, and we had some band requests. They were songs I didn’t know on piano, so Orin takes off the bass, hands it to me and says, with a grin, “learn it, NOW!”. So I played bass. I didn’t play fancy bass. But after some fumbling, I was grooving to “Love Shack”. And then “Don’t Stop Believing”. There was a third song in there too, but it’s already left my memory. Now I need to actually buy a bass and get some real practice time in, but for now it is good to know that, in a pinch, I can fumble my way.

3. First time leading the hand signals for “Joy to the World”
I’ve watched. I’d never done. Which was really stupid of me…I’ve seen it done by others dozens of times, but never actually physically done it myself. Joe played it, so I did it. If you’d have told me a year ago that I’d be getting paid to stand on the tops of two baby grand pianos, and lead a hundred drunk people to grab their balls and boobs, I’d have said that’s just crazy talk.

So those are just a few of the firsts from last night. I played a couple of songs that were new, but those weren’t the highlights of the evening.

Sure, nothing compared to Sunday night’s Captain Crunch Smugfest on the Drew Show. We had comedian Tom Rhodes in the studio. The podcast is up at www.drewshow.com if you want to check it out.