Scottsdale calls itself the West’s Most Western Town and then spent seventy years bulldozing the evidence, so the country bars that survive are worth knowing by name. There are two real ones in Old Town, a family dance hall on the Shea corridor, a celebrity honky-tonk in the entertainment district, and, twenty-five minutes north, a stretch of Cave Creek Road that does the whole thing without irony. This is the circuit, starting with the free lessons.
The lesson nights
Handlebar J on Becker Lane, behind the Shea strip, is the school. The Herndon family has run it since 1975, the Herndon Brothers Band is the house band Wednesday through Saturday, and the free dance lessons have been the entry point for generations of Scottsdale first-timers. Wednesday is the Arizona two-step lesson at about 6:30 before the band; a second weekly lesson, line dancing on Tuesday as of this writing, runs in season and pauses over summer. No partner required, no cover, ribs up front. If Ray Herndon is home off tour, you are at the best free show in the state.
The Buffalo Chip in Cave Creek runs its own free lessons a couple of evenings a week, Sunday and a weeknight around seven, with a line-dance floor and a couples floor side by side. Harold’s Corral, a few doors down, teaches a free country lesson on Saturdays from about 7:30 to 8:30 before the band. Between the three you can learn the two-step, the basic line dances and enough swing to fake it in a month.
Old Town’s two real saloons
Rusty Spur Saloon. The 1921 Farmers State Bank on Main Street closed in the Depression and reopened as a cafe in 1951; the liquor license and the name followed by 1958, and it has been Scottsdale’s saloon ever since, dollar bills stapled to every surface and the old vault chilling the beer. Live country plays every day of the week, no cover, starting in the afternoon, and the weekday matinee crowd of snowbirds and regulars two-stepping in a room the size of a garage is the most honest Western thing in Old Town. John Wayne drank here. Nobody redecorated.
Dierks Bentley’s Whiskey Row. The Phoenix-raised country star opened his Old Town honky-tonk on Saddlebag Trail around the Fourth of July 2013, and it is the entertainment district’s country wing: Southern food and a rowdy-friendly bar early, then a full country club late, built around a 360-degree stage that hosts local bands and the occasional surprise set by Bentley himself. Line dancing happens when a band and a floor agree, most reliably on the Thursday live-music night; it is not a lesson hall. Go once. Our nightlife note puts it in context.
The Cave Creek run
Cave Creek is the town Scottsdale used to be, and Cave Creek Road between roughly the 6100 and 6900 blocks is the best country bar crawl in Arizona.
Buffalo Chip Saloon. Larry Wendt took over the 1950s saloon in 1998 and made it what it is now: live bull riding in a ring behind the bar on Wednesday and Friday nights, gates around six, two or three rides an evening, ten dollars cash at the door. Live music most nights, two dance floors, a mechanical bull in between for a few dollars, and a Green Bay Packers allegiance that fills the room on fall Sundays. An arson fire gutted it on Thanksgiving morning 2015; the town more or less demanded a rebuild, and Wendt reopened about a year later in a building framed with salvaged antique lumber so it would look like the old one. It does.
Harold’s Cave Creek Corral. Johnny Walker opened the Corral Bar in 1935 for the crews building Bartlett Dam, with a mahogany bar bought out of Tombstone’s Crystal Palace. Harold Gavagan bought it in 1950, put his name on it, and made it wild; the tall tales about house lions and a pistol at last call are told as history and should be enjoyed as tales. Today it seats several hundred, runs live bands Wednesday through Sunday on a big stage and dance floor, gives the Saturday lesson, and is the Valley’s Pittsburgh Steelers bar, which makes the rivalry with the Packers room down the block a real Sunday event.
The rest of the strip. Big Earl’s Greasy Eats, a 1950s gas station turned burger joint with the pumps still on the patio, is the daytime stop. Cave Creek Rodeo Days in late March puts a PRCA rodeo and a parade on this road, and every bar on it is a rodeo dance that week.
The lost ones
North Scottsdale had a trio of cowboy roadhouses that defined the genre and are all gone. Pinnacle Peak Patio, 1957 to 2015, cut the necktie off any man who wore one and hung tens of thousands of them from the rafters over a two-pound porterhouse; patio homes stand there now. Reata Pass, 1958 to 2012, served steaks on an 1880s stagecoach stop and was run for decades by the Cavalliere family. Greasewood Flat, 1975 to 2015, was the open-air burger-and-beer yard next door where bikers, cowboys and CEOs shared picnic tables around fire barrels until the land sold. Rawhide, the fake 1880s town, closed on Halloween 2005 and moved to Chandler. When someone says Scottsdale used to be more Western, this is what they mean. The dive bars note has the survivors that don’t wear hats.
The rodeos
The Parada del Sol Rodeo has bucked across town since 1956 and runs at WestWorld in March, the week after Western Week puts the Pony Express, the parade and a Western-themed ArtWalk in Old Town in late January and early February. Since 2024 the West’s Most Western Rodeo has added a September pro rodeo in WestWorld’s air-conditioned Equidome. Cave Creek’s is in March. Each ends at a bar on this list; our Western heritage note covers the horses.
Boots and etiquette
- Boots. Saba’s has dressed the town since 1921 from Old Town; Porter’s is the old Phoenix saddlery name on Main Street. Buy smooth soles if you plan to dance; rubber sticks.
- Hats. Rancher Hat Bar on Scottsdale Road builds a custom one while you wait. Take it off at the table at Handlebar J; keep it on at the Chip.
- The floor. Line dancers own the center, two-steppers travel counterclockwise around the outside, and nobody stands and talks in the lane. Fast couples pass on the outside.
- Tip the band. Cash in the jar between sets. Every band on this list works for it.
- Ask. A “would you like to dance” is normal and a “no thanks” is final. That is the whole rulebook.
The Saturday
Lunch at Big Earl’s on the patio. Harold’s at 7:30 for the lesson and the first set, then down to the Chip for the mechanical bull and the second dance floor. Rideshare back down Cave Creek Road, the only way to do it right, and finish at the Rusty Spur, where the band is still going and the room is still 1958. Our live music note has the other six nights.