1on1: Dale Earnhardt Jr.

When Dale Earnhardt Jr. invited the media for a preview of his new Charlotte nightclub last week, he also subsequently offered a glimpse into his life away from the track.

During a nearly 30-minute question-and-answer session with a group of reporters, he touched on why he's so excited about his new bar -- named Whisky River -- and a variety of other subjects, including why folks so quick to criticize him for what he does away from his Sprint Cup Series obligations need to shut up and get a life (more with Junior).

After all, like it or not, that is exactly what Earnhardt is doing.

Q: Did you help design the Whisky River bar?

Earnhardt: The structure of the building and the shape of the room itself was not up to us. It was pre-designed and we came in and sort of looked at what options were available as far as where you could move into and we chose this one. It fits really well. It's just enough room. It's not really too big, but it's not really a cramped area, either. It has some open areas and some nooks and crannies where you could go get in the dark and hide out if you want to. It's got some good corners and areas to stake out and chill out for the night.

Q: What's your biggest influence in the place?

Earnhardt: [The color] orange. Anything orange. I got to work with a friend of mine on the design and she went after a lot of the stuff that you see -- as far as how the walls look and columns and stuff and the cow hide. I wanted the orange bench in the VIP booth and the fiber optics on top of the bar. It came together pretty good. ... Everyone seems to enjoy it.

Q: Whose idea was it to have the mechanical bull?

Earnhardt: We were really torn down the middle because we wanted the bar to have a Carolina, country feel to it, but we didn't want to be known strictly as a country bar. Number one, I didn't want to compete with [Charlotte's popular country-and-western bar] Coyote Joe's. That's a place I've been to before and I enjoy it. I didn't want to compete with those guys. I wanted to kind of weasel myself into a spot that was available, that nobody had covered. We play a little rock-and-roll, more rock-and-roll than country. It's old rock-and-roll and Southern rock early in the evening.

Of course later in the evening you get into dance music. Everybody wants to dance on the dance floor, so you get into that kind of stuff and it turns into more of the traditional sense of club. For the most part we tried to stay more Southern rock. ... The thing about this place is, we made it more regional. It doesn't give you a shady feel. You don't feel like someone's ripping you off or anything crazy is going on. Hopefully when you look at the people who come in here, you feel the same way.

Q: Who do you want to come?

Earnhardt: If I'm going to a bar to have fun, the things you don't want to run into are troublemakers, slobbering, messy drunks, and that typical kind of stuff. You want to avoid controversy. You want to have a good time and have your friends with you. You've always got a buddy who's on the brink. You've always got one of those guys where someone's just got to look at him wrong, so you're always watching him all night. You want to go to a bar where you don't have to worry about that kind of stuff. Hopefully we'll establish that sort of reality over time. It just takes time.

We've just got to keep people from acting like fools and keep people from wanting to start fights. Everyone wants to come in and have a good time. Normally you need to have good dance music playing later in the night, when it's typically the prime time for ignorance. If you got the good dance music, then you keep everybody busy and having a good time. (Continued)