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END OF AN ERA
THE PIANO MAN
Neon Cactus closes just shy of Bruce Barker’s 25th year at Rusty Bucket
BRAGGING RIGHTS
Purdue ranked 13th
in the nation on
BestColleges and
Campus Pride’s 2020
listing of Best Colleges
for LGBTQ+ Students.
Additionally, Purdue
was listed as the best
college for LGBTQ+
students in the state
of Indiana.
P
20 PUR D U E A LUMNUS
Barker began his piano playing career providing background dinner music at Captain’s Cove in Lafayette. As the
evening wore on, patrons would start handing over $5 bills
with their song requests. Barker’s friend was the manager
for a new nightclub on the Levee, the Neon Cactus, designed
with a piano bar. Barker met with owners Jim (M’70, MS
EDU’73, PhD EDU’79) and Sheila Cochran, who hired him
right away. He started at the Cactus on November 3, 1995,
and left the world of dinner music behind.
“When I first started, I always thought it was such an
amazing honor that people would plan part of their weekend around me,” Barker says. “That they would choose to
spend their money coming to hear me play and sing. That
was an amazing gift. I try to honor that by always making
sure I give them their five dollars’ worth.”
For a short time, he played Jake’s in Chauncey Hill on
Thursday nights, which the Cochrans also owned, and the
Cactus on Fridays and Saturdays. Playing three nights a
week wasn’t enough to pay the bills, so he also worked 40
hours a week as a fire extinguisher technician. Realizing he
was a significant draw for the nightclub, Barker quit his day
C A R L A B E R NATH Y (L A’83)
iano man Bruce Barker (hhs’94) never
touched a piano until his second semester,
freshman year. Assigned to Terry Courts
residence hall, Barker walked past the
lobby piano countless times. In February
1988, he decided to sit down at the bench
with his Walkman and teach himself to
play a song by ear — “All Cried Out” by Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam.
“It took me seven hours,” Barker says. “I went through
four sets of batteries and skipped two meals. But the next
song only took an hour to learn, and the one after that
took 15 minutes. I keep whittling my time down, and that
inspired me to play more.”
A member of the Purdue Varsity Glee Club, Barker says
his voice had always been his instrument. He performed
his first Elvis concert for his parents at age 4. From then on,
Barker always wanted to be an entertainer. “It was the one
gift God really gave me,” he says, “to sing and make people
happy.” And that’s exactly what he’s been doing at the Rusty
Bucket piano bar inside the Neon Cactus in West Lafayette
for nearly 25 years.
