Ranch Romance, with Jo Miller & Her Swell Pals, at the Eastlake Zoo, Seattle, WA, March 12, 1989

This poster advertises an early lineup of Jo Miller’s Ranch Romance at the Eastlake Zoo Tavern, just south of the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, on March 12, 1989. 

Ranch Romance, whose name came from a 1930s Western pulp fiction magazine called Ranch Romances, was a Seattle Country, Swing, and Bluegrass band active between 1989 and 1999. Lead singer and guitarist Jo Miller (b. unknown) and upright bassist Nacy Katz (b. unknown) were joined by Barbara Lamb (b. unknown) on fiddle and Lisa Theo (b. unknown) on mandolin until the two left in 1991 after the band had toured in support of k.d. lang, who was promoting her Absolute Torch and Twang album. The band then welcomed Nova Karina Devonie (b. unknown) on accordion and David Miles Keenan (b. unknown) on guitar, mandolin, and banjo. The band performed several times at South by Southwest in Austin, Texas, and were also popular in California and Canada. They released three albums: Western Dream (1990), Blue Blazes (1991), and Flip City (1993). Thanks to an old interview with screenwriter Barbara Turner about life on the road and women musicians, Jo Miller was cast as herself in the 1996 film Georgia, starring Jennnifer Jason Leigh and Mare Winningham as sisters breaking into the Seattle music business, and the whole band cameos as a club’s house band in one scene. 

The Eastlake Zoo, now known as the Zoo Tavern, is a cash-only dive bar located at 2301 Eastlake Avenue East in Seattle, Washington. The building was constructed in 1902 and was purchased by a neighborhood group in 1974, which assumed the name Intergalactic Tavern Co-op (ITC), within which members’ share of the tavern’s ownership was determined by how much they worked at the bar, while executive roles were rotating positions. Howard Brown is the only living early member, having joined in 1978 and, after leaving briefly in the late 1990s, returned in 2007 and has been a fixture at the Zoo ever since. The tavern, which sells only beer and wine, is decorated with animal heads, a paper mâché dragon, dartboards, and posters from past events, including the annual “Guitar Outlaws” ensemble performance, which was cancelled in 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, for the first time since 1991.