After 28 years, Bottle & Cork's no longer just 'greatest rock 'n' roll' bar

The News Journal

Wailing Waters performs at Bottle & Cork during the Dewey Beach Music Conference last year. The venue's slogan will change in September. It will read, "The greatest rock and country bar in the world."

If the steady stream of country music sellouts at the Bottle & Cork hasn't made you think that the Dewey Beach club has gone country, this certainly will.

Effective in September, the music venue's iconic (and boastful) slogan below the venue's silhouetted dancing couple logo will no longer read, "The greatest rock 'n' roll bar in the world."

"We're going to change it to, 'The greatest rock and country bar in the world,'" says Cork co-owner Alex Pires, who also began hosting concerts at the 4,000-person Hudson Fields near Milton this summer. "I'll be honest, I didn't see country being this big when we started with it. It surprised me."

For more on country's boom in southern Delaware -- and the genre's struggles upstate -- look for a story on delawareonline.com later this week and in Sunday's edition of The News Journal.

Over the past decade, country has grown from an afterthought on the Cork's summertime band lineup to a centerpiece. Combined, the Cork and Hudson Fields is on pace for seven sellouts this summer, six of which will be country shows.

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The Cork, which is a 1,100-person capacity club, began booking up-and-coming modern country acts years ago, hosting everyone from Miranda Lambert, Eric Church and Jason Aldean to Old Dominion, Jake Owen and Lady Antebellum.

As those artists grew in popularity, Pires began crafting ways to bring them back even though they had outgrown his club.

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His first solution, pairing up with Live Nation for the Delaware Junction Country Music Festival in Harrington in 2015, only lasted one year. This summer, he turned to Hudson Fields, which hosted sold out concerts by both Old Dominion and Cole Swindell.

Contact Ryan Cormier of The News Journal at rcormier@delawareonline.com or (302) 324-2863. Follow him on Facebook (@ryancormier), Twitter (@ryancormier) and Instagram (@ryancormier).