A new bar is making a fast impression on the Vegas music scene, but not necessarily for the right reasons. Barely open a month, the Sin City Saloon (252 Convention Center Drive) has been hit with allegations of racial discrimination stemming from an incident following a March 1 performance by UNLV band RnR.
According to drummer Renaldo Elliott, RnR was told not to get “too urban” by Sin City operations director Sonny Zurita after Elliott described the group’s music as being “like hip-hop, but with a live band.”
Despite what Elliott relates as a decent turnout for the show, Elliott says Zurita told RnR “that we weren’t welcome to play there anymore. I don’t know [Zurita] ... but it just seemed kind of funny that he was feeling that way once there was a little bit of color that walked in,” Elliott says.
Another Las Vegas band, Corner Stone, has heard rumors from other bands in town that its show was canceled after the bar discovered lead singer Randall Logan is black. “From what I was told by the promoter who booked the show for us and a member of the band RnR ... the manager was unhappy with the amount of black people that showed up to watch the band,” Logan says.
Zurita counters by arguing that the Sin City Saloon simply caters more to a classic-rock crowd established during its days as Famous John’s bar, which he says jells easily with the new bar’s rockabilly vibe. He adds that he was unaware of rumors that he discriminates. “I don’t know why they would say something like that,” he says. “I mean, look at me ... I’m of Peruvian descent ... the race card makes no sense.”
Patrick Riesgo, who has been helping Sin City Saloon with its booking, says he has never witnessed any racist behavior at the bar, calling the confusion “a music genre issue” and terming the situation with RnR a misunderstanding.
Logan says promoter Mark Hornsby, who booked for Sin City prior to the alleged RnR incident, pulled his shows from the venue, starting with Corner Stone’s March 8 gig. “The promoter was very unhappy with the manager’s attitude and made, in my opinion, a commendable judgment call to pull all of [his] shows,” Logan says.
“[Mark is] an awesome promoter ... but [he was booking] the metal, the screamo, the indie. It was hard for [our] clientele to understand, so I figured, rockabilly makes sense,” Zurita says.
Hornsby declined to comment.