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Davidson has revitalized the music base for the club, updated the venue's Web site and brought along more promotional avenues for the bands that perform. He's also started a new, weekly e-mail newsletter dubbed The Dirty Floor Rag.

The Regulars

Walk into the Double Door on any given day and it's apparent that there are far more regular customers in the house than there are regular performing acts. While some bands may play the venue a handful of times in a year, there are some patrons who have been coming to the club a lot more often than that.

Roy Williams, 66, can be seen every Monday, keeping an ear on The Monday Night All-Stars. The All-Stars have been playing on Mondays for the last 13 years, but Williams has been attending concerts at the Double Door almost since day one. "I'm sometimes here two or three times a week," Williams says, noting that the biggest change was when they started to serve liquor. "I've seen a lot play -- Pinetop Perkins, Kenny Neal. I was here when Stevie Ray was in here, but not his first time. I'll come check out who's here -- if I like the band I stay. If I don't like it I'll go."

The Monday Night All-Stars (see sidebar) continually draws one of the most consistent crowds to the club -- even though the band doesn't hit the stage until close to 11 p.m. "I don't know what it is, but people come late here," MNAS percussionist Jim Brock says. "It's one of the only places in the city where they put the music first. There's one TV, and it's very small and out of the way. The stage is really comfortable -- I don't know if it's because it's like a second home to me."

Another regular performer is Bill Hanna, who has organized a jazz jam on most Thursday nights for the last three-and-a-half years. Hanna, who taught in junior high and high schools for 30 years and still teaches five days a week at CPCC, has a quartet that often allows people to sit in or sing with them. "I like the fact that we can do our own thing here," Hanna says. "You've got a great sound system. It's got atmosphere. It's not a fancy place. There's a mystique."

The addition of jazz has been a welcome change for Hanna who, before the jam started, hadn't played the Double Door in his 48 years of performing around town. "I've taught students who still come up to sit in with me," he says with a smile. "It brings a tear to my eye to see how far they've come. Playing jazz is a marvelous thing. It keeps you young, and I'm older than dirt!"

The Walls

Walking into the club, it's impossible not to notice all of the items hanging on the walls. There's a horseshoe over the door, a trombone over the bar, a cymbal up front and pictures of many of the faces that have graced the stage.

"We don't even remember where half the stuff came from," Martin says. "There's a trombone that I won in a poker game. Most of the good stuff was taken home by someone. I'm trying to get some more neon signs here. The beer people used to bring you all kinds of stuff, but they don't anymore."

Most photos on the walls are signed, thanking the venue for a great night of music or, like Buddy Guy wrote -- a simple "Best Wishes." Davidson likens it to a museum -- artifacts of all kinds cover the walls, in addition to the signed walls of the upstairs green room, a tradition that started in the mid-1980s.

"Every band that comes through here has signed the walls of our green room," Davidson says. "It doesn't matter who you are ... we want you to sign our walls. Anthony Hamilton came by to do a photo shoot for his third album. He's never played here, but he signed the wall. If people want to stop by and check out the wall, we'll show them around to see who's written on the walls. At some point, I'd like to create a virtual wall on the Web site where people can sign the wall virtually."

Karres says he wishes he would have protected the signature of blues guitarist Luther Allison a little better, as it is now being encroached upon by various people's names and bands. Of course, new names are being added every night.

The legends

If you ask most people around town about the Double Door, chances are they'll claim to have been there the night Clapton showed up to play with The Legendary Blues Band back in 1982. "The joke is -- if everybody that said they were here the night that Clapton played, the place would have collapsed," Martin says. "There weren't that many people in here. People were calling their friends on the pay phone. To this day, any time Clapton is in town, we sell out. It's been 26 years. Clapton was a fan of the guys that were playing. He came to see them and play."