Today, 725 Main Ave. houses the Derailed Pour House. But anyone passing by the old building on an afternoon in the 1980s and ’90s probably would have caught a glimpse of “the world’s ugliest girl” through the window of what was then known as Farquarht’s. (S)he would have been in fishnet stockings playing bass.
Ralph Dinosaur and the Fabulous Volcanoes, the Farquarht’s house band, epitomized an era of the late and beloved neighborhood bar whose loyal former clientele keeps mum to this day about the debauchery that characterized it.
Opened in 1973 by Toby and Mary Lou Peterson, the 700 block watering hole reigned as a favorite music venue for more than 20 years until Farquarht’s heard its last note – from a cross-dressing Dinosaur – before tearing out the stage to run it exclusively as a bar and restaurant.
The stage was set up along the front windows, which gave people a taste of the show from the street, said Dinosaur, 62, whose real surname is Donnen.
“I’d either get the thumbs up ... or another finger.”
Next Saturday, the Veterans of Foreign Wars at 1550 Main Ave. will host a Farquarht’s reunion. Its former patrons are expected to show up to watch Ralph Dinosaur and the Fabulous Volcanoes resurrect what former Farquarht’s frequenter Gary Penington calls the “old feel” of the place.
Penington, who helped organize Saturday’s reunion, ran the Community Concert Hall at Fort Lewis College, and he sometimes helped the Fabulous Volcanoes find their way onto high-profile rosters with bands like the Beach Boys.
Donnen and his band, originally based in Grand Junction, initially found their way to Farquarht’s by playing a Memorial Day party near Dunton Hot Springs in 1982. Word of what Donnen called “the wildest party” he’d ever played reached Farquarht’s owner Toby Peterson, who hired the band without ever having heard them.
By this time, Donnen had already begun playing dress-up at shows “for shock value.” If someone tossed a bra onstage, he put it on. At the peak of those days, he had more than 50 brassieres – in addition to the dresses, slips, stockings and nightgowns female fans kindly passed along.
“A lot of us girls donated lingerie to Ralph’s wardrobe,” said Lori Gaughan, a reunion organizer and Farquarht’s waitress from 1984 to 1991. “I had a white lace slip that itched me, but it didn’t itch him. ... It looked better on him than on me.”
Amidst a divorce in 1995, Donnen moved with his 4-year-old daughter from Grand Junction to a trailer midway between Durango and Bayfield.
“She was in on it,” Donnen said. “When I couldn’t find a babysitter, I’d put her in a backpack onstage. I would give her earplugs, but Social Services would get called.” Years later, Donnen even sported one of her dresses onstage by mistake. These days, he accessorizes differently.
“That was in my devil-may-care days,” he said. “Sometimes I think back and cringe. I have a girlfriend now. Now, we’re gentleman rockers and play mostly covers. In Grand Junction and Durango, they like predictable.”
Mary Lou Peterson, whose husband and business partner Toby died in 2010, said music left Farquarht’s because the business “wasn’t making any money,” and things had begun to change by the mid-’90s.
“When police started watching the bars closer for drunk drivers, which is a good thing anyway, people quit coming out,” she said. And slam-dancing had begun to infiltrate Durango, she added. “We were getting older and didn’t go for the new types of music.”
Farquarht’s eventually shut down for good in 2008, long after a lack of rock and blues music had driven away much of the old crowd. Eric Albi, a doorman from 1992-97, said his position went away when the music did. He remembers the Fabulous Volcanoes’ last show there.
“People drank hard in those days,” said Albi, who first found his way to Farquarht’s as a 23-year-old Fort Lewis College student. “I think our clientele got older and stopped drinking as much.”
But Farquarht’s marked time for many during that 20-year period.
“I had to reinvent myself when I outgrew the college crowd,” Donnen said. “I turned 50, then 60. I went through doubt that I hadn’t done enough. Places change, the scene changes. Getting older, no one can prep you for that.
“I’m happy for the legacy.”
jpace@durangoherald.com
