Sing us a song you're the piano man...a song that you will definitely hear when you visit a dueling piano bar.  Billy Joel's famous tale of a nightclub piano man has inadvertently turned into a nationwide dueling piano bar craze.  City by city, the dueling piano bars are starting to open up.  Cities like Las Vegas, Texas, Minnesota, and Joplin Missouri have had dueling piano bars for years but now the idea is starting to catch on everywhere.

A dueling piano bar is typically a small nightclub that centers around two grand pianos positioned back to back with two pianists facing each other.  The pianists play songs based on requests from the audience.  Patrons write their requests on request forms or any piece of paper they can find and put them on top of the pianos.  The piano players then get to work on playing as many requests as they can - usually starting with the requests that have cash attached to them.  Cash tips that accompany the requests range from $1 to $100 depending on how badly the patron wants to hear their song - or how drunk they are.

Most of the big chain dueling piano bars employ a handful of dueling piano players who tour the country, playing all of the chain dueling piano bars.  Most dueling piano bars on a given night will staff 3 dueling piano players who take turns.  This works well for dueling piano bar patrons as they have a better chance of hearing their request.  If the two piano players that are onstage don't know a request, it's possible that the third pianist will.  I was at a dueling piano bar one night that started off with two older black piano players performing for a solid white young audience.  They were completely stumped by the requests that they were getting.  Eventually a white piano player got up there and was able to perform the mostly white requests.  It was kind of sad because he ended up having to stay up on stage for almost the whole night since the black piano players didn't know any of the modern white songs.  Most dueling piano players that play in the dueling piano chain bars are dorky little middle aged white men who spastically pound out songs with minimal vocal ability.  But, that's where drinking a few extra drinks will help you.

The chain dueling piano bars like Howl at the Goon and Ernie Belch's rely on heavy advertising dollars and cheap cheap labor.  The talent quality suffers, but at least they get rich off of you.  It probably won't be long until they start sending illegal immigrants to their cheesy "piano schools" - yes, they have dueling piano schools - and saving even more money.  Get your La Bamba requests ready!

A dueling piano bar is a great place to go for birthdays, bachelorette and bachelor parties, and other special occasions.  The dueling piano players will typically embarrass the guest of honor using a number of different comedy shticks.  For example, if it's a man's birthday the pianists might ask the man to stand up on the stage and then ask girls in the audience to dance on the man as if he were a stripper pole.  A dueling piano show is usually slightly risqué, and involves a little dirty humor.  If you are easily offended by rated R - X comedy material then you will probably be offended and should go elsewhere for your entertainment.  Another popular gag that you may encounter in a dueling piano bar is when you first walk in the piano players will stop what they're doing and turn to you and say "hey everybody, NEW PEOPLE!" - to which the audience is trained to respond with "OH SHIT!".  Obviously most dueling piano bars are age 21 and over.

National Dueling Pianos
Kansas City Dueling Pianos
Florida Dueling Pianos
St. Louis Dueling Pianos
Arkansas Dueling Pianos
Omaha Dueling Pianos
Nebraska Dueling Pianos
Iowa Dueling Pianos