New Cedar Stump
By Rocky & Kristine Fields
There’s a place in Arlington, WA that’s been there for years. In fact, for as long as I’ve lived in the area, I’ve seen this place off I-5 Freeway for what seems like forever.
The building has undergone some changes, it’s closed, reopened, changed ownership, added this, upgraded that, etc. But, most recently, the New Cedar Stump opened their doors, so we stopped in to visit a few friends.
Formerly The Stump, the place looked about the same as the last time we’d been in, nice big dance floor, bar to the left, pool table in the middle, but somehow it felt different, better, nicer.
We found our friends, said our hellos and sat down to order some grub. It was a Thursday night, and they had 2 for $2 tacos as their evening special. We asked around, they were real good.
Thinking they would be small for the price, the Hubby ordered eight. A short time later, here comes the waitress with her arms full of plates of tacos! These were gigantic tacos! Two filled up one whole plate, and they came with sour cream and salsa. They were really good! Needless to say, we ended up taking five of them back home with us.
Music filled the room, coming from a DJ booth way in the back of the room. Yes, karaoke!
More on the Country side, the music suited me just fine. There was a small rotation at first, so I began taking notes.
David got up and did a pretty good job of singing “She’s A Lady”. Then a Country song started playing. The host adjusted the mic and stand, made a few adjustments to his board, and called up another singer. Ben took the stage and told us all how much he liked the New Cedar Stump by singing “I Love This Bar” and it was a hit!
The host threw in some lights and fog during his performance making it very interesting to watch. I could tell this host knew his stuff, so I went up to ask him a little bit about himself and this place.
I was right, the place had recently reopened and the karaoke hadn’t been going but a week or two at this point. His name is Russ and he used to play a lot of gigs in the area until he moved to Portland about five years ago. He recently began working here again, and is finding everyone to be welcoming.
Russ knows how to mix his singers, and put out great sound, and a fantastic light show. It’s not often that you see a great light show during karaoke. Russ is able to multi-task like a pro, which is tough. I could tell that he was a seasoned karaoke DJ and that he really enjoys his job.
He’s got a song selection that’s hard to match too. Years of karaoke CDGs has gone into one system. He’s got almost any song you can think of. Russ plans on setting up a computer-browsing system for the singers, since there’s no way that all of his selections would fit into one karaoke book!
Karaoke at The New Cedar Stump is only on Thursdays for now. The show begins at 8pm and goes until it ends, basically. Not a lot of people are aware that they’ve got karaoke here, so if you want to take your friends out to a new location, we suggest checking it out.
They have an outdoor smoking area in the back, plenty of parking in the front, and our waitress was super friendly, and very prompt.
We’ll keep you posted as to the upcoming events, changes and additions as we get them. But for now, we think the New Cedar Stump is worth taking a look at.
Find the New Cedar Stump at 19711 Smokey Point Blvd. in Arlington. You can also “Like” their facebook page and receive regular updates about who and what will be playing. Please tell them you read about them here when you “Like” them!
