Hidden Treasure

Wayne Myers has been in four major motorcycle accidents in his life, two of which required his removal from the scene via Life Flight. One of those somehow spiraled into Myers’s becoming a karaoke DJ.

In fact, that’s what he’s doing at the moment — DJing a karaoke night at the nondescript Chez Lounge (10308 S. Main), a gem of a drinkery that’s figuratively invisible even though it’s literally right out in the open.

A 30-plus-year-old dive that time seems to have forgotten about — which is absolutely a good thing — Chez is the kind of place with an original poster from the Rockets’ championship years on display without a hint of irony. There’s a checkered-tile dance floor, a couple of electronic slot machines, a lone pool table, less than two dozen bar stools and tables combined, and that’s about it.

The exterior is equally bare, consisting mainly of some white walls and a neon sign with a few of the letters burned out. The drinks are cold and the people are nice, very much like a still-undiscovered version of Alice’s Tall Texan (4904 N. Main).

A model Chez Lounger full of all sorts of noteworthy nuggets of information, Myers has been coming here for more than 15 years. He’s older, cordial, talks slowly and wears button-up shirts but doesn’t button them up all the way.

Still, he’s only the second-most interesting person in the room, because nobody — nobody — has ever been as interesting as the man not really named Tony Ray.

This gentleman is a portly, friendly-faced
sort. He’s nondescript, mostly, save for the
smile lines that bracket his mouth and the
shoulder-length hair that looks far healthier
than it probably should.

As it is, he is sitting quietly at Chez’s bar. He answers questions candidly and freely, like about how he started drinking at age 13:

“Back in the day, they didn’t question young
people,” says not-Ray, who gives his real age
as 58.

“Plus I already had a moustache,” he adds
without a hint of irony.

Here’s how his family thought he was dead
for three weeks when he was 16 and went on
an impromptu trip with a friend:

“My buddy asked me to go to Mexico with him one day. I told him I needed to pack some clothes, but he told me don’t worry about it, he
had some clothes there. So I went.”

And how he used to pick cotton. And the
time he shined B.B. King’s shoes. And how he
knows America is going to be attacked by
nuclear weapons soon. The one thing he
doesn’t talk about is his name.

“Tony Ray” is but one of the aliases he uses nowadays. He says he has to do so because some of the people who he used to run with — the ones who aren’t dead — might try to get to
him, even though they’re in prison.

He too has been going to Chez Lounge for
years on end. It seems like everyone there has.
The bar gets an annual boost in traffic from the
Rodeo each March, or from one of the bimonthly live shows it books.

However, like all four Houston bars that
have been open more than six years, it exists
almost solely because it’s cultivated a
meaningful, organic relationship within its
surrounding community.

“Everybody knows everybody — it’s one of
those types of places,” says manager Toni
Thurber. “Ask Eva [the bartender]. She’s been
here for 34 years.”

Of course she has.
_____________________

LAST CALL

Michael Franti & Spearhead

The Wire is, inarguably, the greatest television show of all time. We’ve written that before, and we’ll write it again. It’s not even close, really. And that’s how we know that Michael Franti, the funky, dreadlocked, rumble-tumble-voiced front man for Michael Franti & Spearhead, is a genius. (His “Oh My God” track is on The Wire official soundtrack.) Which is why you should drop everything to make sure that you get out to his show this Saturday at House of Blues (1204 Caroline). We mean, if he gets deemed a genius through his association with The Wire, you do too. You do want to be a genius, right?