Oasis In Cacophonialand: Maclaren's Irish Pub

Burgers, Blues and More

Twenty-five years ago, a pair of Tbilisi friends made it a point to drag me, a former Chicago blues musician, to every live music venue in the city, which wasn’t hard as they were all located on the same short street then called Perovskaya. There were very few bars anywhere else in the city.

The first bar we entered was Nali, full of locals, expat diplomats and aid workers cutting loose like frat kids. The band, Candy, named after the singer’s handle, were ripping up numbers from what I would soon learn was a generic Perovskaya playlist: Brick In The Wall, Sweet Home Alabama, Give Me One Reason and any number of Beatles songs. But this band also played The Rolling Stones and a couple blues standards. Their guitarist had a Bob Dylan bush of hair, a jaw leading strut and good chops, while Candy had lovely, accent-free pipes. But it was the rhythm section I was most impressed with.  

The drummer, David, was Danny DeVito’s doppelgänger in his bald head with a pony tail phase. Dato the bassist was solid and soulful with the expression of a hitman. I had never heard a pair on this continent slip so cooly into the pocket. They invited me to their Friday night gig at The Beatles Club where they kicked off a midnight show with the godfather of Georgia’s blues, Vova Mogeladze, a guitarist with Alvin Lee inspired fingers. This was also the most likely bar to get your wallet lifted and get hit by a flying chair - a fitting joint for their power trio blues.

Despite these guys being the most qualified blues musicians, fate hooked me up with a rock band who had a steady gig at the Dublin Pub. We got paid 15 lari a night (roughly five bucks), drinks not included. When fate corrected itself a couple years later, Dato, David and I formed The Natural Born Lovers with the masterful Tamaz Tkhinvaleli on guitar.  

We’ve played some off the wall gigs in our twenty years together, including a club in Gdansk, Poland with a total crowd of four, which included the barman/manager. There have been too many khinkali restaurants, a Hyundai showroom with dancing girls and a magician to unveil a new Tuscon, an Ureki Black Sea “resort” with another magician and a New Year’s weekend in the winter resort of Bakuriani for the Hotel Tbilisi, where management was kind enough to put us up in a defunct hotel fittingly called the White House, as it had no heat and no hot water. Talk about paying your dues to play the blues. 

It’s not all theater of the absurd, of course, even if the setting is. Nestled in the cacophonic black hole of Shardeni Street hookah cafes, tacky dance clubs and hustle bars where skimpy-clad babes prey on stupid horny tourists and drain them of their charge cards, is an oasis in the form of an Irish Pub, reminiscent of the old Perovskaya days. Since 2012, Maclaren’s Pub has been dishing up some of the best burgers in the city, along with smoky barbecue ribs and steaks and bar favorites like chicken wings and onion rings. 

They also serve live rocking music five nights a week, it's been our home base for years. "The best Irish pub with the best live blues in Georgia, and the only best Irish pub with the best live blues in Georgia!" It reminds me of a lot of the joints I used to play in Chicago: cozy little stageless places where the intimacy level makes the scene all the more intoxicating, if not a little weird sometimes. On night, a drunken Russian woman started twerking her ass against my groin while I was singing and as I stepped away, she moved in on Tamaz, but fell backwards onto the crash symbol and knocked my instruments onto the floor. Getting up, she glared me in the eyes and said in all defiance, “Excuse - eh- Moi!”

Occasional odd nights are a given wherever alcohol is consumed, otherwise it's always great vibes with the coolest staff in Tbilisi. They have been here for years -  no better sign of a healthy workplace, particularly in a city where service notoriously suffers and servers are routinely exploited.

The Blues has been a hard sell in Georgia, although in recent years we’ve seen more and more young people digging it. “I love the Little Walter song My Babe,” two young women recently said on separate occasions and when the band kicks into the tune, heads get a bopping. It’s been a long time since someone requested us to play Brick In The Wall at Maclaren's, or anywhere else.

Dig The Natural Born Lovers every Wednesday night at 10 pm. You should call to reserve a table. (@the_natural_born_lovers_blues)

MACLAREN'S IRISH PUB

5 Rkinis Rigi Street, Tbilisi 0105

2pm-3am

Phone: 555 65 46 46