Northwest Dance Halls

Ratskeller's Inn
Sherman Avenue
Coeur d'Alene, Idaho

Some of the bands that performed at this place during those great years of NW music were:
 
 

The Band-Aid Society
The Cascades
Daybreak
Eskape
The Morning After
Paul Revere and the Raiders
The Thin Red Line
The Van G's
West Coast Boys
Westgate Entrance
 

Others ?

The Ratskeller's Inn was located on Sherman Avenue and featured a band most every weekend. The summer crowd
was great!

One feature band that played there every year, sort of a big event then, was the Cascades (Rhythm of the Falling Rain).

Rats, also featured Coors Beer!  Back then, we couldn't buy it in Washington State!

We played there a couple times as well, but had to set-up on floor level with no buffer zone to the crowd.  It kinda reminded me of the scene in the Blues Brothers movie with the chicken wire!  We always made it through!

Steve Strange, Spokane, WA, March 2010

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My band "The Band-Aid Society" played there on two different weekends back in 1968.  I remember the management  was glad to know that everyone in the band was old enough to drink legally.

Since the gig was a Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night gig, we saved money by sleeping in our cars.  We only did that the first weekend.  The next time we played there we stayed at a cheap motel just to get some decent rest.

Wayne Erickson, March 2010

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I saw Paul Revere and the Raiders at the Rathskeller when I was a kid.  It was a favorite spot for us underage guys from Spokane in the early 60's...... And yes, Coors was the exotic brew at the time. A departure from the requisite Olympia, Rainier and Lucky Lager of the day.

John C. Strawn, March 2010

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I was on stage at the Ratskeller Inn  with my British Columbia (Cranbrook, BC) band “The Thin Red Line” when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in July, 1969. One of those “where were you when…” moments you never forget.

We stayed in a cheap motel near the club.  One afternoon, we returned from breakfast to find our room overrun with cops, ambulance attendants and firemen.  It seems a maid, mistaking for a dead body the sleeping form of our horn player in a bathtub full of tepid water, had called the cops in a panic.  In those days, believe me, the last thing a “long-haired, hippy musician” wanted to see in his motel room was a bunch of crew-cut, curious cops.

David Hoole, Vancouver, BC, September 2011

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Last Update:  22 September 2011
Credits: Steve Strange, Greg Clayton, Wayne Erickson, John C. Strawn, Dick Van Guilder, Mike Nikula, Mark Nerby, David Hoole