Pure. Metal.

Rest assured, piano bar skeptics, we’ve been told that there will be metal. Piano bar metal.

“Yeah, hell yeah. I’m from Texas,” Pete’s Dueling Piano Bar owner Corey Urbach said. “There will be a picture of Vinnie Paul up on the wall. As a matter of fact, there’s a very good picture of Vinnie with with (Dimebag) Darrell that we have when they were on stage together. We had Gwen Stefani’s band up. They just rolled in and performed. They’re not going to do that at New York-New York.”

Pete’s opens at Town Square on Friday. We stopped in last week when the pianos were still in cardboard boxes (Pianos come in boxes? Who knew?) to try to figure out just how this place would be different from other piano bars that tend to skew a little, how do we put this? Billy Joel-y?

“There are some really pretty Billy Joel and Elton Joel songs that, they don’t really lend themselves to the party,” Urbach said. “We do it a little bit differently. These guys know what songs to play and what songs not to play.”

The idea is to put the focus on the entertainers, and to keep the energy up. Urbach says that they look first for guys who can move a crowd, like a DJ. Then they’ll take the talent and send them to Texas, where Pete’s originated, and put them through dueling piano boot camp, eight hours a day.

There, they learn their chops, but they also learn to keep the music raucous. In other words, save your $20 and your burning desire to hear “All Out of Love” on a Friday night.

In addition to two bars on opposite ends of the room and a standing-room rail cordons off a central seating area, Pete’s spills out onto a patio. Which will finally allow your dream to come true of serenading strangers to a piano version of “Walk.”

“It’s like comparing Green Day to Donnie and Marie,” Urbach said.

By Jason Scavone

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