Raise a glass to Eddie's return

"This is going to be the bar," he said, extending his arms out wide to demonstrate how far it would stretch.

The stage and dance floor tucked into a far corner were still works in progress last Wednesday. The covered patio was beginning to take shape one cement block at a time.

As a pair of electricians installed the wiring for the half-dozen 60-inch flatscreen TVs yet to be mounted to the walls, two other workers started assembling the side bars. Shiva couldn't help but smile.

Before month's end, he hopes to open Eddie's, the third chapter in his 40-plus-year career as a Tucson country bar and nightclub owner.

"This is the American dream," said Shiva, who came to the United States from his native Iran when he was 17. He opened his first bar in California at 23.

Shiva moved to Tucson at the urging of Mo Farhang, a fellow Iranian emigré who ran the Maverick King of Clubs country night club on east 22nd Street for decades before selling it a few years ago.

Shiva said he had fallen in love with country music because of his wife, an Oklahoma girl (the couple has now been married 47 years).

Moving to Tucson confirmed it. "When I came to Tucson, Tucson was all about country music," he said.

Shiva opened the country rock club Somerset on east Speedway in 1974, and it quickly became one of the city's hottest nightclubs.

"The Maverick and the Somerset were just about the only nightclubs in town," said Shiva, who ran the latter for 16 years. "We did very good. We were jam-packed every night," he said.

"He taught me how to run a bar," said Farhang, who was a barback and Shiva a bartender when they met in California.

"He came out to visit me, and I told him he should stay," said Farhang, who now owns a carwash not far from where The Maverick stood before it was destroyed by fire in 2002. The club later reopened at 6622 E. Tanque Verde Road.

Shiva's next venture was Eddie's Cocktails on East 22nd Street, a quieter neighborhood joint that featured burger night on Wednesdays and steak night on Sundays. The Dust Devils, a solid country and rock cover band, provided the soundtrack and drew a sizeable crowd on weekends.

"I brought some country rock bands from L.A., and when I bought Eddie's I went straight with classical country music. People like it," he said.

Last summer, his landlord pulled the plug on Eddie's after 25 years in business when he sold the land to developers. They demolished the old building and put up a QuikTrip mega-gas station and convenience store.

Shiva said his customers immediately started asking when he would reopen and where.

The new Eddie's is on the east side at 8150 E. 22nd St., smack in the middle of a bustling automotive plaza. It's bookended by auto repair shops doing everything from oil changes to motor rebuilds, body work to custom rods.

The spot is perfect, Shiva says.

"When the shops close at 5, we have the whole parking lot," he said, looking out into the noontime crush of cars waiting to get into the half-dozen neighboring shops. "And they are closed on weekends, so the parking lot is completely open."

Shiva has called on some of Tucson's favorite country bands to provide live entertainment several nights a week.

"This is all I know how to do," Shiva said last week, his shock of thick black hair and lack of wrinkles belying an age he declined to disclose. "I want to retire, but they won't let me. We've got some loyal customers. I have customers who have been with me since Somerset; we got old together."

Just then, one of those customers came through the front door, looked around and asked "When we going to open this place?"

"See what I mean?" Shiva said. "Tucson has been very good to me."

If you go

Eddie's, 8150 E. 22nd St., near South Sarnoff Drive.

• Hours: Once Eddie's opens, hours will be 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. daily, including holidays.

• Live entertainment: Dust Devils Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays; KC Monroe Band on Thursdays; and monthly Saturday night appearances by Chuck Wagon and the Wheelchairs, Chance Romance and Midlife Crisis.