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Start Here

Welcome. I’m Riley Epperson—a public relations strategist, author, and Texas honky-tonker.

This site is dedicated to the people who keep Texas honky-tonks and dancehalls alive: owners, managers, bartenders, waitstaff, musicians, sound crews, dance teachers, dancers, regulars, and the customers who still understand why these rooms matter.

Texas honky-tonks are not ordinary bars.

Texas dancehalls are not generic event venues.

They are places where music, movement, work, memory, hospitality, and community come together. They have their own rhythms, expectations, language, and unwritten rules. Yet much of the public relations and marketing advice available to them was created for corporate restaurants, national entertainment brands, or businesses with completely different cultures.

That is the problem I am working to correct.

What You Will Find Here

This site covers practical public relations for Texas honky-tonks and dancehalls, including:

  • Building a room people want to return to

  • Turning first-time customers into regulars

  • Creating stronger live-music nights

  • Improving relationships between venues and musicians

  • Helping bartenders build trust and influence

  • Strengthening dance floors and dance communities

  • Preserving authentic Texas culture

  • Measuring which public relations tactics actually work

  • Separating meaningful results from vanity metrics

  • Communicating during difficult nights, conflicts, and crises

This is not public relations written from a Manhattan conference room.

It is public relations written for the floor, the bar, the stage, the front door, the parking lot, and the people doing the work.

Where to Begin

Read The Books page for an overview of the Keep ’Em Coming Back series.

Visit Texas Honky-Tonk PR to understand the philosophy behind the work.

Explore the latest articles for practical ideas you can use inside a real venue.

You do not have to use every tactic at once. Start with the part of your room that needs the most attention. Improve one relationship, one customer experience, one music night, or one measurement at a time.

A healthy honky-tonk is not built by one advertisement. It is built through hundreds of moments that give people a reason to come back.

The Mission

The mission is simple:

Help Texas honky-tonks and dancehalls become stronger without stripping away the culture that made them worth protecting in the first place.

Texas culture does not survive because people admire it from a distance. It survives because people participate in it, understand it, support it, and pass it forward.

Pull up a chair. There is work to do.

Riley Epperson
Public Relations Strategist. Texas Honky-Tonker.

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