Arkey Blue's Silver Dollar Saloon: A Legendary Music Venue in Bandera, Texas
By: Shaun Stalzer
Published: August 24, 2014
Updated: October 10, 2024
Located at 308 Main Street in downtown Bandera, Texas, this nightclub has hosted a number of local and national artists, including Robert Earl Keen, Willie Nelson, Charlie Robison, Johnny Bush, and Jay Hooker. The building was constructed in 1921 and opened as a social establishment called The Fox Hole. In the 1940s the dance hall became The Silver Dollar. In 1968 the venue was purchased by singer–songwriter, Arkey Juenke, who was born in nearby Gillespie County. After Juenke graduated from Fredericksburg High School, he began performing at Lost Valley Ranch, located east of Bandera. By 1968 Juenke had changed his name to Arkey Blue and bought the Silver Dollar Saloon where he still performed with his band, the Blue Cowboys, in the 2010s.
Arkey Blue also has had several of his own songs featured in movies, including “Daddy’s Sick Again” from the cult classic The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) and "Living on Credit" and “Misty Hours of Daylight,” from the 1975 Peter Fonda film Race with the Devil. In 2005 Arkey Blue was the first person to be inducted into the Bandera Music History Project Hall of Fame and he was named its Songwriter of the Year in 2011. The Hall of Fame proclaimed Arkey Blue’s Silver Dollar Saloon to be a “Legendary Venue” in 2012. Named one of the top three honky-tonks in the state by Texas Highways magazine, the saloon celebrated its fiftieth anniversary as Arkey Blue's Silver Dollar Saloon in 2018 and has remained a popular live music venue for locals and tourists into the 2020s.
Bibliography:
Bandera Bulletin, May 2, 2013. Bandera County Courier, August 4, 2005; September 1, 2005. Geronimo Treviño III, Dance Halls and Last Calls: A History of Texas Country Music (Plano: Republic of Texas Press, 2002).
Time Periods:
The following, adapted from the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition, is the preferred citation for this entry.
Shaun Stalzer, “Arkey Blue's Silver Dollar Saloon,” Handbook of Texas Online, accessed March 09, 2026, https://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/arkey-blues-silver-dollar-saloon.
Published by the Texas State Historical Association.
TID:
XDA05
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- August 24, 2014
- October 10, 2024
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