The Can-can Do-do Man

WALLA WALLA - The line stretched out the door outside Charles Smith's wine tasting room on Spokane Street Saturday night.

The 20s, 30s and 40s somethings who came for the weekend's hottest spring release party were carefully checked against the reservations list, carded, wristbanded and let into the chic brand-new outlet near the heart of downtown.

Waitsburg's own Sharon and Larry Clinton were on hand to help see the guests in. Sharon, of course, works as Smith's business manager.

Except for a corpulent bouncer, the introduction to Smith's venue had all the trappings of a night club, an atmosphere that continued inside the former warehouse space, equipped with colored lights and a $30,000 sound system.

The place was remodeled using minimalist esthetics. Look up and you see the heavy white-washed trusses that have held up the roof for decades. Look at the side wall and see the distressed brick, complete with a blind window, a pane left broken. Look at the enormous counter made from six-inch-thick refinished beams.

Then look behind it to the back wall and the opposite wall for the modern architectural planes that make it work by contrast: the solid dark gray-green surface with the list of wines and merchandise, the giant sliding doors separating the tasting room from the offices of K Vintners and Charles Smith Wines.

With names like Boom Boom, Velvet Devil, Skulls, Old Bones, Eve (you know, the one from the apple), Kung Fu Girl and Holy Cow "tattooed" on labels that recall Grateful Dead album covers, Smith is as far from his industry's main stream as you'll get.

Going to one of his events, I discovered, is like hanging out with your garage band friends at a New York art gallery loft.

A taste of things to come forWaitsburg? Read on.

Partiers in their heart-of- Saturday night getup mingled on hangar stools around "tables" made of palleted cases of wine. As mid evening came, a sold-out crowd of 200 packed the space, lights began to dim and Smith himself appeared, his big hair released from a rasta tam, dressed in baggy jeans and a plain brown T-shirt, working the crowd like the rock band manager he once was in Scandanavia.

Smith grew up in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains outside Sacramento. Son of a Welsh mother and a French father, Smith had his first interaction with grapes crushing his father's fruit every year for his family wines.

Ending up in Denmark after following a girl there, he spent nine years managing rock bands and traveling throughout Europe before returning to the United State in 1999 and opening a wine shop on Bainbridge Island.

On a road trip, he passed through Walla Walla and met a young Frenchman named Christophe Baron (now of the Cayuse label).

Finding a common passion for great Syrah, Christophe suggested Smith move to Walla Walla and make wine. In 2001, the self-taught winemaker made Walla Walla his full-time home and released 330 cases of his first wine, the K Syrah Walla Walla Valley.

He never turned his back on his rock-band roots. Instead, he infused his new enterprise with much of what he liked and learned about the music business.

I spoke to Charles before he got ready to pump up his audience for the night's act.

He's excited about opening the Anchor tavern in Waitsburg. It won't look anything like his tasting room in Walla Walla, but it will reflect his unmistakable zest for, some would say, raunchy fun, while keeping it affordable, well-mannered and accessible to local patrons.

If anything, he wants to tap the Americana roots of the American Legion Hall, the town and valley that surrounds it. That may come with saw dust, old-time blues acts and burlesque like the show that excited the crowd in Walla Walla like a night at the Moulin Rouge.

It will most certainly come with pin ball machines, hearty snacks, $1 beers, and the crack of Monday Night Football helmets over a stateof the-art sound system and big-screen TV.

"It's going to be your dream bar," Smith explained to me over the din of the crowd before the start of the show.

His personal interest in being at the Anchor, whose renovation is overseen by Jim German, is underscored by the buildout of a small apartment above the bar to be Smith's crash pad.

If his spring release party is any indication, Smith's promotional savvy and following will undoubtedly bring success to the Anchor and business traffic to Waitsburg, where Smith had a home until last year and still owns the old Bull's Eye/Morgan building.

Finally, out they came: the Seattle-based Atomic Bombshells, dancing up a nimble storm and teasing their adult cat callers with some tasteful striptease, which, though suggestive, got no more provocative than nipple pasties and swirling tassels.