This thread is for the purpose of capturing all those great-yet-horrible stories of your life as a musician playing live music. These stories might include such things as:

- band mates who just didn't work out, and the story explains why...

- gigs where the accommodations did not meet your expectations or standards

- how about that time where you got booked at a place that was NOT the right audience for your music?

- crazy audience members / fans / groupies (try to keep it PG-13)

- nefarious club owners who tried to cheat you out of the agreed upon deal

- the night somebody's gear stopped working and what happened next...

- the guy in the audience who took an irrational dislike for somebody in the band and tried to stir up some drama...

- gigs with famous artists

- missed or seized career opportunities

- booking agent drama!

- band girlfriends and how they (sometimes?) undermine the band

- the time the club caught on fire or the police came or whatever...

- the time somebody spilled a pitcher of beer on your amp/drums

- the time somebody knocked your bass off the guitar stand and snapped the head right off

- and of course, we all want to hear about the time somebody stole your gear

- any other event, real or imagined, that has entertainment value

ready? set? GO!!

I was up in Canada With Easy Street and when we toured up there, we often hit a bunch of little cities in Ontario that hadn't been discovered yet. In one particular city, the name of which I don't remember, the stage was set up where the bar was about 40 feet and and 90 degrees to our left. (That becomes important later.) We set up, did sound check, all done by about 3 in the afternoon Monday.

Monday night we go down to play. I powered up my rig, which was 3 keyboards and a rack in those days. One of those was an Ensoniq Mirage (it WAS 1988 after all). Also a Korg Poly 6 and a Roland Juno 60. The Mirage required that an OS be loaded from a floppy, then samples loaded. And it was one at a time, so you had piano OR strings, but not both. I loaded up the piano to start the night with On The Dark Side. We played the song through. On to the next song, at which time ALL of my keyboards reset, meaning that I had to pop the OS disc back in and reboot the Mirage. I did that. Halfway through the second song it happened again. So I repeated the process. In the first 4 songs, I rebooted those keyboards 9 times.

I was frantic, trying to figure out why I was having problems and nobody else was. At break I got out sound guy involved. We traced and tracked and did whatever we could until I realized that I had taken my power from an outlet that was on the same circuit as the ice maker. Whenever that ice maker kicked in, the compressor drew so much power that my line level voltage was dropping to under 90, and my keyboards saw that as a power cycle. Who would have thought that an outlet over 40 feet away from the ice machine was going to be on the same circuit? So we ran some power from a different circuit and it was fine.

I thought I had heard all of the archetypal band stories, Eddie... but that one is new to me! I'm impressed that you figured it out!

A fairly recent story from summer 2016:
I was playing a private party in somebody's back yard after a couple days of heavy rain. The place where they wanted me to set up was all mud, a couple of inches deep. My rock and roller cart that I use to move gear from my car to the stage was useless. The ground was not level, so my speaker stands were precariously balanced and kept trying to tip over.

The post-rain sun was really bright, and I'm using a laptop to deliver my sound to the PA... but no matter how I positioned myself to the computers screen, I couldn't see ANYTHING. They had a cabana set up, but they wouldn't let me set up under it because it was for the guests. Nobody used the cabana the whole time I played.

The hardest part of doing a one man show is wearing all the hats at the same time. It takes practice, but eventually you can learn to play, sing, troubleshoot technical problems, adjust sound levels with quick hand moves between the instrument and the PA etc etc. Why people think its a good idea to strike up a conversation with me in the middle of a song is completely baffling, yet it seems to happen more often than not.

Pat, you are just such a friendly guy (I'm being serious here) that you invite conversation!

Now, I'm not going to get into this thread because I can probably cite something horrible in most of your suggested scenarios. I would rather make some new music than write a story about all the stories. But by all means, do have fun! That's how I take all that horrible stuff, as a chance to laugh about it years later.

Pat, you may be the only person who will be aware of all these artists names....


- The time we were playing for a Jimmy Carter fundraiser on the same bill as a bunch of Hee-Haw artists from the tv show. We finished our part and as we were getting ready to leave the stage Roni Stoneman walked out and said help me out boys. Without another word she kicked off the fastest banjo instrumental I'd ever heard and I thought we'd heard them all. No mention of key or anything...just wham! We all just stared at one another and caught up about half way through the song. She just laughed.

- We mostly played festivals or acoustic/roots clubs that pretty much catered to bluegrass but we were offered a gig for decent money in a small town in south GA and said what the hell. We drove up and it was a gravel parking lot in front of a cement block building. And, no BS, the stage was behind chicken wire. Fortunately they liked us and didn't bounce bottles off the fence.

- I played in bands long before Janice decided to join the party. Our best friend Randy Howard was a noted (grammy nominated) multi-intrumentalist (see our website) who I had played with since he was a kid. He kept encouraging Janice to sing and after she'd learned a few numbers he talked us into playing as a trio with him on a gig he was already booked at. We met him there and had no idea that the venue was a large outdoor festival. We got out of the car and Janice heard the announcer's voice booming across the field and she turned white as a ghost. This was her first time on stage When we were called up and stepped out into the lights and stared at the crowd her eyes were as big as saucers. But she did just fine and says now that she hardly remembers anything after that moment.

- Gigs with famous artists? Well, we shared the bill at different dates with Alison Krauss, Del McCoury, Vassar Clements, Blue highway, the Seldom Scene, etc., and parking lot pickings with many more. I always had what the hell am I doing here vibes when picking with the luminaries.

Bud

Wow... I could write a story on practically every one of those points....

Since I've already covered the story of my guitar getting stolen 2x and recovered both times.... I'll tell you about the time the police walked up to the stage and stopped the band.

It was at a little honky tonk out on the middle of the NC countryside. Just a few weeks before, at this same club, a biker rode his Harley into the club, pulled out a gun and started shooting at the band. Apparently, the singer had hooked up with the dude's old lady.... but that wasn't our band.... just told that to let you know this was a rough place.

So yeah.... we're playing.... about halfway through the set, and these 2 cops walk up to the stage and flag the band down.... telling us to stop playing.

They asked who the leader/manager was, I said that would be me...and they said... You're under arrest, come with us. I asked them what the charges were and they replied... broken seal violation. I said What? They said open liquor bottle in the band's van setting on the motor cover in plain sight.

I said... it isn't mine and I didn't ride up here in that van, I drove my own vehicle.

They said...OK... who owns the truck? The bass player said I won the truck. They said YOU'RE under arrest. So the bass player says, I won the truck but I didn't drive up here in it either.

The cops are getting frustrated and cut right to the point. OK wise guys, who's bottle of Jack Daniels is setting on the motor cover....somebody's going to jail tonight.

The sound tech speaks up.... Sir, that would be MY bottle of Jack. So they escort Dave out the door in handcuffs, get the van opened and confiscate the bottle as well. The lighting tech says to the cop, hope you enjoy that Jack.... the cop gives the light tech a dirty look.... they load Dave and the bottle and head to the jail.

We go back inside and finish the gig. After the gig, I have to ride to the county seat and get Dave out of jail.

Turns out that Dave took one for the band.... the bottle really belonged to the drummer. Dave told me this later on the ride home.... he took the rap so that we could finish the gig and get paid.

That club went out of business soon after due to the police presence because of the trouble that was going on out there.

Broken geetar....

Another place we played had started an open mic thing on Sunday afternoons. So we had played there the weekend and they asked if we'd be interested in hosting the open mic.

We agreed. Not much money but the club was a good place to play.

So a buddy of ours comes in with his Gibson Hummingbird and plays a few songs then sets it on the stand. We go on a break.... next thing we know... there's a crash and this guy is laying in a tangle of cymbal stands and ..... yep... the hummingbird is in pieces. He was drunk as a skunk... could barely stand up and had gotten on stage thinking he was going to sing a song.... grabbed for the mic stand, missed, lost his balance and fell backwards into the Hummingbird and drum kit.

The Hummingbird was damaged beyond repair.

The drunk starts apologizing to everyone and ...I got to give it to my friend.... he held his temper well. The drunk promised to pay him for the guitar to which my friend says that was a $900 guitar.

A few weeks later, we were back there for a Wed night college nite... my friend comes up to me and recounts the story.... he tells me the guy met him at the club one night and peeled off 9 crisp new 100 dollar bills and asked was he sure that was enough to cover the guitar, and again apologized.

Cool ending.

Mine is mild compared to others. my wife sings and a friend plays guitar and sings, I did the sound and on this occasion had to guard the tip jar as the only money was the seed money I put in but several folks were eying those few bucks hungerly . Or invited to play at a festival only to find our spot was facing an empty parking lot closed to the crowd and lastly, our friend ,who plays great,really fine guitarist, tends to go off on improv riffs that were not part of practice without notice. It was fun but doomed from the getgo.
Wyndham

This is one that I posted on another thread:

I was pulled out of music playing retirement by a dear friend. She wanted to put a band together for her church's social. Myself and another friend agreed. We practiced twice a week for about a month and got down enough songs for the gig. At the gig another church member saw that we didn't have a bass player and volunteered for the job. My friend said that would be great. It wasn't! All he knew was a Johnny Cash tonic fifth bass line in the key of A. We didn't do any songs in the key of A. We had three part harmony in Hotel California in the key of E with him playing tonic fifth in A. Talk about awful. I will never play out again............for anybody!

One prior to that was when we had a very important Christmas gig. Several people mentioned that their daughters were getting married next year and they were looking for a wedding band. Wouldn't you know it, the drummer never showed! it's always either the drummer or bass played ain't it!

Fortunately a friend was there who said he has a daughter that plays drums and they lived close by. She played that gig that night and she was fantastic, even though she was only 15! She play drums for us for 5 years with her father always coming to the gig. That way it was legal.

As I looked at your suggested scenarios, I also could tell a few tall tales to each of those. Here's a couple. We had booked a weekend gig in Sarasota. We get to the club early to set up and do a sound check. Just as we were about to start the lead singer looks over and says Hey Tom check this out. Through the front door we see a van and matching trailer pull up and out gets five guys in matching western shirts and cowboy hats. The singer goes By God it's the Good Ol Boys. Exactly like the movie The Blues Brothers. They walk up to the bandstand and demand we tear down because they were booked there that night and had driven a long way. We also had driven a long way and the club owner informed them they had the wrong weekend. When they turned to leave I yelled out OK Boys Rawhide in A. We actually played a pretty respectable version for the sound check and it became a story that we laughed about for years.

Back in the Nineties we had won the Reginal Finals for the Colgate Country Showdown. We had to travel to the Florida Panhandle for the state final. We played the contest in the afternoon at this huge festival. 50,000 people was the crowd estimate. We ended up coming in second behind a really cute blond girl who sang to a karaoke backing track. That's the Music biz. Anyway we're packing up when I overheard the promoters saying that they were in big trouble. The headliners that night were The Mark Wills Band followed by Lonestar. Turns out the opening band Clifton Chenier, a zydeco band from Louisiana were stuck on the road with a broken down bus. I butt into their conversation and tell them we can fill the slot. They asked if we could fill an hour and I said we play 4 sets a night 4 nights a week. No Problem. The singer had the flu and had to be talked into it. It went great and it paid for the trip. So instead of being bummed about the loss we were pumped about the gig. Backstage later I got into it with John Rich after I told him to quit whining about the caterer, but that's one better left untold. I played in bands for fifty years so I've got more than a few.

I had that happen once in a country band. It was the Friday night, the first of a 2 night stay in a place we had never been before. We started an hour late and played straight through because I had to sit down and quickly program a dozen or so drum patterns on a drum machine so we could play at all. Nightmare. 2 waltz tempos, a couple of shuffles, swings, straight 4/4 beats..... dialing in the tempo for songs where I never even thought about how many BPM the song was... I was picking up headphones between songs, starting a pattern and singing in my head to dial in the right BPM. The owner came over later and said that he was very impressed that we were able to pull that off. I went out the next day and bought a memory cartridge so I could back those patterns up just in case. We found another drummer during the day Saturday for that night but I backed that Roland 707 up and might even STILL have those patterns, and this was like 1985!! I still have that 707, too!! Man I have old gear. I still have the Ensoniq ESQ-1 that I bought in 1989.... AND play it every year at the reunion shows!

Isn't serendipity great!!! This i snot a horror story. 180 opposite.

The Motown band I was in traveled from Cleveland to West Palm Beach to play at a rib cookoff in April of 1993. For SOME reason that defies ALL logic, they booked a rib burnoff on Easter weekend, Thursday through Saturday, with a rib vendors only party Wednesday night before the festival opened. West Palm Beach is populated by old people who have retired, many of them Jewish, many of them Catholic. Jews don't eat pork at all, Catholics were at the tail end of Lent, and in those years the practice was to not eat meat all all during Lent. That aside, the common thread of serendipity starts here. Right next to the Holiday Inn where we were staying was a shopping center with a bar. Now for some reason, all these years later, I remember that we were playing at John Prince Park, and that bar was called Racers. The singer and I went into that bar Wednesday night and saw that there was a guy named Paul Ferguson doing a MIDI based solo kind of gig. He played keys, guitar, bass and sang, and the software did the rest, much like the BIAB crowd does now. We struck up a conversation with him and joined him for a few songs. Just for the heck of it, we pulled out Gladys Knight's "Neither One Of Us". He put his bass on, I played keys, and our singer sang. Paul tapped in a drum pattern in just a few seconds, and the three of us KILLED the song. After a few more, our singer and leader was talking to the bar owner. We invited him to come to the party Wednesday, and he did. After hearing a set, he pulled the two of us aside, and in that 10 minute conversation he fired his band for that weekend, agreed to rent us a PA system, and hired us in for Friday and Saturday. So we played the burnoff, moved our gear to his bar, moved back to the burnoff, and then back to his bar. A very good country band from up here went with us, and both nights they came up and down to join us as we winged songs for 2 solid nights. A ribber came up and played harp, and was great. A ribbers wife came up and sang and we wouldn't let her off stage! SO our 5 piece band got our burnoff money and $450 each night for those 2 nights in the bar. AND with all the people coming up and down, only playing 75% of our show! It was the first time any of us ever played Achey Breaky Heart! :GRIN:

AND it was a week of vacation in Florida for us.

However, the horror stories far outnumber weeks like that!!

great stories, guys! Don't stop now, I want to hear them all!

One thing that's different about this thread and the one from my home town is that when everybody has played at the same places, sometimes all you have to say is the name of the club and and everybody already knows the story

I remember the weekend we drove up to Pean'n'Peak ski lodge in Clymer, New York, battling snow squalls all the way. We pulled in about 2pm on Friday afternoon and went it to get our rooms. We put our luggage into the rooms and went to start loading in, only to find another band already setting up. Unlike the Good Old Boys story above, this was a case of us BOTH having signed contracts to play that weekend! We tracked down the manager and went to his office where both bands had valid contracts. I said "Well, we could split the weekend and each play one night since they are already set up. Or, you could just write us a check for the amount of the contract you signed and we will leave and free up these 5 rooms, since it is nor Friday after 3pm and too late to book other work, so our weekend income can't be replaced." He didn't like it much, but he paid us.

However, on the way out, I handed my big Motorola brick cell phone (it was 1991!) to our band leader who was riding with me and said "Okay. Now you call Angie at Rack And Roll in Erie and see if she will fire her local band and put us in there." Which she did. So we got paid for the snafu at the ski lodge AND played elsewhere.

there needs to be a book about stories like this

Write it! In video form!

Back in the late 70's and early 80's pyrotechnics were all the rage. Flashpots.

We used them and in one club in Wrightsville Beach NC, an old movie theater, we set them off at the very beginning of the show. The song was "Ain't living long" as a full tilt rock and roll song. I was on the drum riser when the song started and the lights came on.... rocking with the drummer. He's laughing and rocking with me... pointing with his stick at the audience... I pay it no mind and rock on through verse one of the song.

As we hit the chorus, I jump off the riser to join vocally with harmony, spinning in the air and hit the stage, take a few steps up to my mic.... which was on fire. Yep... burning like a torch. Seems the flash pot was too close and set the windscreen on fire. I blew it out and sang.....


Later on down the road.... in another club, we had planned to end the night with a flash pot but played a request and changed the song... so the pot never got used. Saturday night was a slow starter so we didn't use it on set one. By the second set, the crowd had picked up so we plugged it in and started that set with ...Ain't living long.... It didn't go exactly like expected.... we expected a ball of fire and residual smoke.... what we got instead was the equivalent of a fragmentation grenade tossed at the front of the stage.

The loudest BOOM I have ever heard. And it felt like someone body-slammed me. Then everything looked and sounded really weird.....then I realized the drums weren't playing....so we stopped and looked around... The drummer had fallen or been blown off his stool into the wall and dragged our curtain backdrop down on top of himself.... The stage looked strange because all the PARs were white... the concussion knocked all of the gels out of the cans. Our sound was funny because all of the open back speaker cabinets took the full force and the speakers were all ripped from their baskets. The ceiling paneling was hanging down where the blast knocked it loose.

All in all we lost over 14 speakers to that blast.... one 15" JBL in the bass bins, all the guitar and bass amp speakers in open back cabs, and all of the floor monitors. The blast was picked up by the mics and it ran through the system. We had a limiter on the mains and only lost one speaker in the mains, but the entire monitor system was toast. We also lost one power amp from the back pulse from the speakers being slammed by the pressure wave. The footlocker the flashpot was setting on (down on the floor) was destroyed and the block of wood that the flash pot was screwed to was never found.

As the pot exploded, it was made from 2" steel pump pipe.... it fragmented and pieces went in every direction. Fortunately, no one was hit by any of those fragments except our drummer. A piece entered the kick drum tearing the front head, hit the top of the drum, dinging it like a bullet does to a window, and bounced back down through the beater head and hit him in the leg just below the knee. Cut clear to the bone. So we had to take him to the hospital to get stitches. Needless to say, the show was over and we were almost out of business. We needed a couple thousand dollars for repairs to our gear. The club owner laughed, said don't worry boys, paid us the door take to that point, and asked us to not use pots in his building again.

We were so "gun shy" from that point on that we decided to get rid of the pots from our shows. We had had several other disasters with pyro but nothing like that wakeup call on that Saturday night.

Note: Our band was responsible for getting the use of fire, flames, and explosives banned from the military base in Jacksonville NC. We had a drunk Marine trying to set an unused pot off by throwing matches into it after the show one night. Our drummer told him to stop... several times. He replied that he knew what he was doing since he worked with demolitions every day. Our drummer told him that if that was the case, he should know that he had to "put the fire into the powder to ignite it". Yep... you guessed it. That's exactly what he did..... to photographic flash powder. It sounded like a gun when off and the Marine starts hooping and hollering and jumping around on the floor. I thought he was happy util I heard him yelling ... "I CAN'T SEE, I CAN'T SEE"!!! He was white from his arms to his face from the powder residue and not a hair left on his arms, face, or head. Fortunately, the guy was OK.... they took him to the base hospital and treated him for mild burns and rinsed him off. The flash was what had blinded him temporarily. I got a call the very next morning from the base booking agent..... " Herb... are you trying to kill my Marines?"... NO more flashpots.

The other band partially responsible for the ban was a band doing a Kiss tribute set.... someone in the band did the fire eating thing..... and some of the flammable liquid didn't come out of his mouth properly and he set himself on fire in the club....

Anyway... we had fun....I guess that's what matters and no one put an eye out....

So.... way back... I was hired to play guitar in a band.... I was still new and hadn't really figured out the internal politics yet.... but was having a good time playing with the guys. I think I had been with the band maybe a month's worth of gigs. I had gone to jam with them by their invite, they hired me that same weekend and this was 3 or 4 weeks later.

So we have a booking at a club in Morehead City NC.... The band was sounding good, the place was packed.... close to standing room only, and we had played maybe 2 sets and were on our break.

The guys were at a table with their girlfriends and I kinda felt like the unneeded 5th wheel, and since the smoke was so thick you could cut it with a knife, I decided to go outside for some fresh ocean air. So I did. About 10 minutes later, I'm setting on the front steps when I see 3 ladies coming across the parking lot. I recognized them as the WIVES of my band mates. The drummers wife asks me if their husbands are inside. Uhhh yeah. Then asks, are they with someone? Uhhhhhh... (how do you answer that question?)... she says, "It's alright...we know... that's why we're here" and they went inside. I didn't follow because I didn't want to be in the middle of what I kinda figured was coming and I didn't want to be an eyewitness to a murder.

Here's what happened.... as recounted to me later by the guys in the band. The Wives stayed back in the shadows watching. When the girlfriends went to the bathroom, so did the wives. The drummer's wife says to the drummer's girl friend... Man that drummer sure is one hot,handsome guy, I think I'll pick him up and take him home with me tonight...to which the girl friend replies, sorry, he's my boyfriend and he's going home with me. To which the wife replies.... he's my husband you [*****], and hauls off and punches the girl friend in the face.... it escalated quickly from that point and spilled out of the bathroom into the club. The bouncers were on it quickly. The owner finds out what was happening, and calls the band members over to talk. He tells the band members that he's throwing someone out..... either the girlfriends or the wives....and the band members had to choose. (The wisdom of Salomon) They chose to have their wives thrown out... yep... I kid you not. Had their wives thrown out the club.... wow!

So we finished the night without any further incident. The girlfriends stayed and left with the guys, and I drove home to my house. When the bass player got home, his clothes were scattered on the front lawn and the door was locked and chained. The drummer found his house ransacked, the TV smashed, the bed sliced up and his wife gone. Same thing for the singer.... The drummer's wife was not heard from for over 2 months.

Eventually, everyone made up, and the incident was forgotten as life went on...and on.... and on.... this kind of thing tended to occur about every 6 months with those guys in various forms.

One more before I go to do what must be done......

The same band with the girlfriends vs wives.....

We had another gig booked just a few weekends later.... way out on Harker's Island. Think Outer Banks NC area.

So we get out there and set up.... show starts at 9pm. The singer/rhythm guitarist, isn't there at 8:55pm.... this was before cell phones. So the guys were scrambling... trying to call his house... no one answers. 9pm comes.... 9:15 comes and the manager is getting on our case... TIME TO START PLAYING BOYS!!!

Here was the problem. The singer sang 100% of the songs. No one else sang the leads... just a few harmonies here and there. I was still new and hadn't played the songs enough to know them well, and had mostly been hired to play leads and fills so I never, to that point, had played the rhythm parts.

Glen, the bass player said we can't NOT play this gig, we need the money.... Danny, the drummer knows the words since he sings along all the time, he can sing the leads. Herb, you follow me, I'll tell you about things before they happen.... chords, breaks, modulations... follow me....

So we played the night.... it was a long night since we were all out of our element....and we had to take up a lot of time.... it was actually good for us. It was where we started to develop our stage show.... In the song Kawliga, for example.... the song is a 2:30 song.... but Danny picked up his floor tom, jumped onto the dance floor and I grabbed a drum stick and we played that drum and banged on my guitar with the stick for 5 minutes... the audience loved it. We did similar off the wall impulse things that later became part of our unique stage show.... Danny could barely talk at the end of the night but that was the true beginning of our band.

As for Dail the singer..... earlier that week, he had gone around town to various musicians and asked to borrow guitar amps, bass amps, instruments, he went to another and borrowed a PA system and loaded them up in his car and took off to Ohio to join his brothers in a band they were putting together. He never came back to NC and no one ever got their gear back.

ahhh, yeah... that reminds me of the guy who borrowed my amp after I got married and wasn't playing anymore. Because I was involved in a whole new life, I forgot about it and never followed up. I later learned from a mutual friend that he sold my amp and kept the money.

my similar story only differs in a few details... nobody was married yet, but suffice to say that sometimes hometown girlfriends travel to out of town gigs and discover other girlfriends.

I'll never forget the way the one guitar players girlfriend kept viciously kicking him in the shins with her pointy-toed shoes. Ouch.

All this happened at a topless club in Somerset Pa, and the memories of the event helped me to back out of the music business when I got married. Playing at those places makes it very hard to maintain trust in a relationship, and marriage is already a challenge without all that.

Not a war story as in horror, but related to Pat's.

One of my favorite gigs was being the staff trumpet player for the regional theater in Albany. A phenomenal summer job at age 21.

We had a variety of acts come through such as Jerry Vale, Mitzi Gaynor, Roger Williams etc. for weekly shows. Only the talent and a music director traveled, and each area's top players made up the rest of the band as they toured the country. One of my favorites was playing the Burlesque Show. A stripper in a glass bowl was the highlight of the show, and I blew a jazz solo throughout her 'dance'. She came down and told me she enjoyed 'dancing' to my playing more than any city they worked in. I wonder how many she told that to...

One day my future wife visited the show. She asked me if I knew what was going on up on the stage, and I said, "No, I'm too busy reading the music".

That excuse worked until she overheard another band member say, "Boy, did you ever memorize music so fast in your life!".

And perhaps someone should tell Eddie this story in his thread about reading music.

Worst gig... insult to injury.

This was the second band I was in with Glen & Danny. When the first one broke up, we didn't talk for a long time. Then one night Danny called me and I hung up on him. He called back and yelled DON'T HANG UP.... JUST LISTEN. He wanted to put the band together because none of us were playing and he needed money. He came over and we talked.... He called Glen. Glen hung up on him too. Eventually, we did reform the band, and named this band Cahoots... since we were going in cahoots with each other to make money.

So, the band was going along nicely and we were getting along well. We bought a band truck and had our logo painted on it.

We had landed a gig at the biggest club in the town up the road. We were excited to play there since it was where they booked the bigger bands. I almost believe it was a 3 day gig.... Thursday through Saturday. So we get ready to roll out. I decided to drive my van to the club. I had barely got out of town when my front wheel bearing went out. Fortunately, the service station right there had the right bearing and had me back on the road shortly. About 10 miles from the club, there was the company truck parked on the side of the highway and our road crew was setting on the bumper.... What the....?

The head gasket had blown out and the truck would not move. We called a tow truck and had the truck towed to the club. We loaded in, and pushed the truck to a parking place. We played the gig and the place was fairly empty. At the end of the first night, the club manager came up, handed us the money for one night and fired us telling us "we didn't draw a crowd" and he was going to hire another band for the weekend..... and oh... by the way, get your gear out of the club tonight. We pushed the truck to the loading dock, loaded out, and pushed the truck back to it's parking place.

Next day we had to have the truck towed back to our home town fully loaded. Turned out that the gasket wasn't blown, but the motor was totally gone... threw a rod.

I think we were unceremoniously fired about 3 times in this manner. 2 times it was supposedly because "we" didn't draw a crowd.... the other was we were in a dance/disco club that didn't like country and rock.

The summer after high school I and a bunch of my friends were between bands at the same time. Our musical taste was different enough that we didn't want to start a band together, so we just got together regularly and jammed the most mindless random experimental drug induced stuff.. "whatever came to mind" you might say.

At the same time an old derelict guy decided he was our manager, and proceeded to book us at the absolute worst places... the kind of places where they have a peekhole in the door to make sure it isn't a raid when somebody knocks and doesn't use the secret code... Then once you're inside, they lock the door behind you. Yeah. THAT kind of place associated with police reports in the newspaper..

In fact I suddenly realize that I can't tell you that story. But here's another one booked by the same old derelict manager:

It was a hard core country dive out in the mountains in a town I had never even heard of and where I learned later the local police were afraid to go. It was in the days before political correctness made it hard on people who are haters... and we were exactly the kind of young 'uns this crowd hated. It was their civic duty to stir up trouble. And they did.

I don't think we made it through one song... but then, those guys never really stopped playing between ideas, and the first song could easily have been two hours long. I don't remember much about it actually. Except that they kicked us out very quickly and didn't pay us. We were probably lucky to escape unharmed

On the way home driving back down the mountain we found an all night restaurant in the middle of nowhere that had the best steak & cheese sandwiches, and life was suddenly good again. We were 18.

I was only 40 years, but when you play 4 to 6 nights a week most of that time you do get some real gems to tell.....

let's hear 'em!! And don't hold back, we want to hear 'em ALL!
(It's OK to lie if it makes them more interesting)
;-)

As part of a 120 voice choir in the 80's, the biggest gig we ever had was singing a pregame show for the Detroit Pistons when they used to play at the Pontiac Silverdome. We set up behind the curtain. You can see some of the curtain in the upper right corner of this photo https://www.flickr.com/photos/aaroncaldwell/2171980139
We didn't say my at that game but it was the best photo I could find of the curtain.

Our PA was meager. Definitely not suited for that size space. Scaffolding was already set up a couple stories and the staff of the Silverdome was supposed to put our dinky Bose 801 main speakers up on top of the two story scaffolding to each side of our stage.

The speakers had pole mounts on the bottom, and in order to aim them up into the stands the staff left the pole mounts on them so that they angled up.

We learned in the worst way that they did not anchor them down. Being teens and on the floor of the Silverdome, one of the guys brought a football and we were passing it around after our sound check, bumped the scaffolding and set one of the 801's rocking to where it fell off the scaffolding and shattered to smithereens on the floor of the Silverdome.

Those things were built like tanks but they weren't designed for a 20' drop onto concrete. All that was salvagable were the magnets.

So, we had even less firepower for the concert than what we brought. The echo in that place made it really hard to perform.

Hiring alcoholics & roadies with one name.

We hired 2 guys to compliment our 3 piece band. (Note: these were 2 different incidents)

Jay: played the B3 and had a big, heavy, B3 with a Leslie in a trailer. He'd have half a bottle of Southern Comfort gone by 10AM every day. He played well even when toasted. We were playing our first gig at a club. Nice place, high pay, promise of regular bookings. During the songs, people would come up to Jay since he was at the side of the stage, to ask for requests. Well Jay had enough of that and stood up on his gear, started yelling, and proceeded to tell the patrons that we don't play requests so quit asking. Needless to say, that didn't go over well. The crowd started leaving, very few were still dancing, and we were not invited back. We fired Jay that night.

Denny: Good singer, played guitar and excelled at fiddle. He loved country music. We knew he was a drinker so he was hired under the condition that he remain sober for the show. First gig.... I go to pick him up and he comes out with his fiddle in one hand and a plastic drinking cup in the other. I asked what he had and he said cool aid. Grape to be precise. I told him I could smell booze, and he admitted there was a "nip" of whisky in the cup. We get to the club and start the set. He's having trouble following the tunes and playing solo parts. By the second set, he couldn't stand up. Fired.

Roadie: Not an alcohol issue.... At the same club where Denny blew it.... we had a roadie who worked with us on occasion, we called him "Skull". No one knew his real name. We had another one called Rocky...also no one knew his real name. Rocky had been wioth us a long time and was worth his weight in gold. Anyway, Skull was with us at that club. The owner cornered Glen and said we needed to do something about Skull. Glen came to me and pointed out what he had been told and I looked.... and sure enough, there was Skull setting at a table and every table around him was empty. The bar was fairly packed so that did appear unusual. It seemed that Skull hadn't taken a bath, or used deodorant for at least several weeks, if not longer, and his BO was nauseating to the patrons of the club. We took him outside and discussed the issue. He stayed outside for the rest of that gig and promised to take a shower and put on clean clothes before coming to work from then on. I didn't ride up with the crew or really work on setup so I had no clue it was that bad. But it doesn't end there.
Going home that night with the trailer in tow, Glen's vehicle had a flat tire and no spare. So Skull offered to stay with the vehicle while everyone else went home. They would get a tire and go back in the morning to fix it. That's what they did. So... fast forward 2 weeks. I called Glen to see if I could catch a ride to the gig with him. When I got in his car, I asked him what the heck that smell was. He said "That's Skull. He said you should have smelled it that morning I went back to change the tire."

Roadies.... gotta love um.

I was drummer in my elder brothers rock & roll band. For a few summers we had a weekly gig playing the Folly Beach (beach area close to Charleston, South Carolina) Pier and Pavilion.

The stage was huge but the electrical was lacking; EVERYTHING used extension chords to connect to one electrical outlet. When it was time to take a break the main extension chord was unplugged and the jukebox was plugged in!

One sunny day our Mom made us take our younger brother with us. There we are playing our hearts out and wowing the crowd with our showmanship and musical skills. Younger brother walks across the stage to let older brother know he is going swimming. Band is wailing! Younger brother trips across extension chord! Then there is just me playing sudden and unexpected drum solo!

When I use to tell the story my younger brother use to comment by telling the name of the song we were playing; what say ye, Charlie?

Man, some of these stories remind me of why I gave up the road...

I've talked about how I was in a Vegas show group but not all the gigs were in Nevada or were in Class A rooms. Our deal with the agent was if he had an open week in the schedule and couldn't fill it within a certain time we were free to fill it ourselves. That's where some of the fun was.

One gig was somewhere in the Baltimore/DC area, it was just a large local bar. We show up in the afternoon (Sunday maybe) and start setting up. There's a large black cloth hanging on the wall behind the drummer. A bartender says pull back the cloth and we see 2 or 3 bullet holes in the wall. That happened two weeks ago we're told. Great. Anybody hit? No.

A few nights later we're playing the first set and the place is pretty dead. It was a rectangular room where the band faced the bar with the dance floor in front and all the tables were on the far right and far left. The bouncers were from the local college football team and were all big boys. About 10-11PM or so a couple of really big mid 30's guys in loud shirts walk in and sit on the right side. A few minutes later another 3 or 4 equally huge guys also wearing very loud shirts come in and sit on the left side followed almost immediately by more large guys some who sat on the left and others sat on the right. These guys were big, solid and had muscles on their muscles. They began yelling insults at each other, then a couple beer bottles started flying and the next thing they're all mixing it up. The bouncers tried to step in and got clocked good.

Turns out these guys were pro wrestlers who just finished their show and the "good guys" and the "bad guys" decided to have some fun at that bar by messing with the football player bouncers who thought they were real badasses. The whole thing lasted just a few minutes and they all left before the cops showed up.

No shootings that week and we didn't do Macarthur Park in that place.

Bob

We had secured a gig at the biggest nightclub east of the Mississippi River. At least that's how they billed the place. It was an old metal warehouse in Raleigh NC. It brought in the national acts. To get a Wed night in there was an honor. We had auditioned on another band's gear on a Sunday afternoon to get the gig. It was named Music City.

So we get there and start to set up for the job. The manager informs us that the club had a brand new electrical circuit installed that very day for lights. 50a 240v which was perfect for the lights we had. Previously, bands were having to open the panel and tie in in a most dangerous fashion. We often had to do that ourselves in most of the clubs we played. Our lights were awesome. AS I recall, we had 16 one thousand watt Par 64's and a few other lamps and lighting effects.


So Dave has the lights set up, all plugged in, and he plugs into the new 50a range outlet back stage.... flips the breaker on our light control and poof..... half of our lights blow out. The electrician had wired one side of the lighting to the building high leg.... 240v between the phases but 120v to ground on one and 208v on the other. The gig didn't pay enough to cover our lights. It was a live and learn. I had previously told Dave and the crew to always check the voltage, but he was so excited about us playing this huge club he neglected to take 10 seconds to check. Just glad we didn't have our amp rack and mixer plugged into the lighting panel for our band.

Shortly after we played there, the place went bankrupt and closed it's doors. We had bookings that went poof... like our lights.

All I have to say about that day is the lyrics were rewritten to include ugly words and my name.....

This is not about a gig, but a contract. I was labeled as the bad guy and the most heartless SOB in the area over this one.

We had a couple approach us about playing their wedding. The date was 8 months into the future. We suggested that they wait, get the venue locked down, find out about food and booze costs, etc... and then we would talk once they knew they had budget for us. They said no, we want to sign you right now so we have you. We said okay. The fee is $3000, and we need half now as a deposit. That deposit is not refundable under any circumstances. If you break up, if you change the date... no reason will get that deposit back. I explained that the policy is NOT to bilk people out of money. It is a matter of us protecting ourselves because holding that day for them would end up bad if they were to call us close to the date of the event and canceled. We would have no chance to book the band for that night, and we would be out of work. We all have rent, or a mortgage, a car payment, etc. This is our work. They were fine with that.

Fast forward to the week of the wedding. The bride called me Monday to tell me how everything was ready and they were so excited that the big day was finally here.

Wednesday night, the groom and the groomsmen went out to party. On the way home, there was a bad accident, the groom was in ICU and 2 of the other guys died. Thursday the bride called me and told me about the sad accident and asked for her deposit check back because there was a possibility that the guy would die and there would never be a wedding.

Well, enter Eddie wearing the black hat. I told her that while I could not be more sorry that this happened, that she signed a contract that included a non-refundable deposit, that it was simply not our fault that they decided to drive drunk rather than rent a bus or hire a limo. She called me every name you could think of, and no matter how I explained that this is how the guys feed their kids, she wasn't going to hear it. I offered that I would start calling around looking for a gig for Saturday, that is was doubtful I would find one, but if I did I would break a rule and refund ONLY the difference between the deposit and what the replacement gig payed. I stressed that it was a longshot that a club would not have a band booked for 2 days from now, but I would give it my best effort, but really to not expect that I could pull it off. She kept screaming at me, cold-hearted, heartless so and so.... finally I just said that I could not do any more than that, and that I was going above and beyond given that we had a contract that said no refunds.

When word of that got around, man, everybody hated me, and all I did was make sure that the guys did not have to go without a paycheck that night. That was a $550 per man night for us! When the few most vocal people who were bashing me actually talked to me and I explained it just that way, that if it was THEM in the band and the option was not making $550 or coming off as cold, they all ultimately agreed that business is business and that it wasn't our fault that the guys made that bad choice to drive. It wasn't a lot of people calling me out, but enough to make it rough on me individually and us as a band. From what I heard, the guy lived and they married when he recovered, like 18 months later, but by then I was no longer in that band and I have no idea if they played it or not. I hated that they had the accident, but I didn't buy them as much as ONE drink!

If the shoe was on the other foot and it had been one of the guys in the band driving home sober, and he got hit by a drunk driver two days before the gig, and was unable to play the gig as a result of being in the ICU, I doubt the bride would have let you out of the contact without huge penalties so... yeah, while it seems hard and cold, it is what it is and I think you made the correct call.

We auditioned for The Gong Show with Chuck Barris once. We didn't get it.



Regards,



Bob