I still flash back to a gig my band played in July at the American Legion in Dalton, Minnesota in 1995. I hated outdoor gigs, but here we were, getting top dollar for setting up on a big old semi flat-bed trailer for some annual street dance. We set up under sunshine and a very hot blue sky, a few biting flies, and ran through our sound check. An hour later we started rocking Dalton and an hour after that I started getting a little nervous.

The blue sky was becoming a fading memory off to the east, clouds had started rolling in and a wind had begun to blow dust and papers down the street. Off to the west, the sky was getting disturbingly dark and it was only a little before six o'clock. We kept on playing and the sky kept getting darker, moving slowly but surely our way. After the second set I went into the Legion to talk to the manager and told him I thought we should tear down and move everything inside onto the stage. He said, no way, stick it out or you don't get paid. $850 was good money back then and I wasn't as smart as I am now.

By the time we were closing in on the end of the third set I knew we were in big trouble. It was getting way too dark, the wind was threatening speaker stacks and I could smell rain coming. I shut off my Fender amp and told the guys to start tearing their stuff down right now. The rain, when it came a minute later, didn't do the pitter patter first, it just came crashing down in an avalanche of wet. Someone threw a tarp at me, but my drummer grabbed it and started trying to cover his crappy old drum kit. My son (my bass player on a fretless Amercan Jazz) and I yanked it back from him and threw it over the sound rack and our amps, trying to keep the wind from ripping it out of our hands.

By then friends were running to the trailer and grabbing gear as fast as we could throw it to them, then running inside the Legion with it and coming back for more. We managed to get all the power pulled before someone got electrocuted and dragged the sound rack, still wrapped in the flapping tarp, off the flat-bed and inside. By the time we got everything inside, we were all soaked to the skin, I mean right down through our underwear and socks, and we were plenty cold, too.

We had all the gear on the stage, spread out so it could start to dry, but everything was dripping, including guitars. While we were standing there trying to dry off with paper towels and figure out what to do next, several very obnoxious drunk "women" came up and asked in whining voices how long it was going to be before we started playing again? I wanted to slap them, but my son managed to keep me under control. The manager came up to me hesitantly, gave me the cash and said, oops, sorry, guess you were right, don't worry about the fourth set.

That was my worst natural disaster gig, though one time we were playing on a hay rack outside The Last Resort in the way-back northern Minnesota boonies when the Mosquitoes From The Black Lagoon descended upon us... God, I hate mosquitoes.

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Dennis in CR
Rockin' since 1963

Same deal and it happened last summer during our monsoon season. A hazardous poolside splash-party became a safe-and-sane barn dance, but only after the hostess's husband mercifully over-rode her insistence that we "fly the mission as briefed". Thousand-dollar paycheck or not, I was prepared to un-azz after the first set had he not intervened.

Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

I guess ive been fortunate to have never had a natural disaster happpen. I have only been giging for two years now. so im knockin on wood.

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"Blues, as a human you get it right"-

John Mayer
'84 MIJ(#1)
90's Samick S-Type (Slim)
Vox AD50VT-XL w/Footswitch
Peavy Audition Chorus 10 watt

International Festival at a church last summer. It started pouring right at the time we were supposed to start (luckily we were smart enough to not set any gear up since it's was threatening to rain from the minute we got there). Everyone left and by the time we played (about three hours later) it was just for the people manning the booths and their families. But I'm just glad we got to play at all.

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Website: http://www.rebeccalaird.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/rebeccalairdmusic
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wow guitarman, i just dont know if i would have handled it as well as you seemed to have. contracts contracts contracts. put your requests in writing, the customer sure does.

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63supro
"The good thing is in a club situation, most of the patrons are trashed and really can't tell the difference."

The real pisser was having to leave so much of our stuff sitting overnight at the Legion, couldn't stuff it back into the trailers until it had a chance to dry out. We took our amp heads and our guitars and smaller gear, but had to leave the PA and guitar speakers overnight with fans on them, then drive 45 miles back to get it all the next day.

When Jess and I went back to get everything, the manager slipped me another $100 and apologized for the way things turned out, then asked me if I wanted to book another ride on the flat bed in August. I told him I'd let him know, but I never called him back - once was enough.

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Dennis in CR
Rockin' since 1963

um ....... no thats not a pisser, heres a pisser for ya.

back in 87 i friend of mines parents donated a good chunk of the house for him to make a studio out of. it was an old colonial home and they had room to spare believe me. those houses are huge. his mom and dad were pretty much alcoholics. dad drank at least a 5th of early times a night while his mom did her deal about twice a week ok.
well, i was at a friends house one morning about 9am, trying to get things going for a gig
that night. i had been out of touch for about 2 days with a new girl i had met and things were happening.
my buddy in the middle of getting ready to go asked me if i had heard what happened to john. i said nope. he said well his mom got drunk last night and when he finally dragged his arse home this morning she had thrown his new amp in the pool. we both busted a gut
and went about the business at hand. it hit me and i said dude you lying, john dont have a new amp, I DO, and beside i have his amp and he....has......mi...SON OF A BIOTCH!
man i took off like a bat out of hell, running towards johns house. i came through the back
gate and there he was cursing his mom out like ive never heard anybody curse before.
looking across the lawn i see tons of gear spread out on towels, with fans on them, blow dryers, you name it. everything we owned was either out on the lawn or still at the bottom of the pool. guitars, amps, pedals, PA's, mic's, stereo gear, albums, tapes, 8track tapes, stands, floor monitors, you name it bro it was wet and out of the house.
there set my brand new, not even 12 hrs old, sunn amp drinched. i was freakin out.
she was still drunk from the night before, so was john, and myself. not a good mix.
we spent all day with dryers and towels. it was a mess bro. a real pisser.
well the next day after the storm his mom let us load up the car with gear off the the shops to be checked out. we had every repair man within 50 miles busy on our gear.
what was damaged his mom agreed to replace, and she did. man what a site that was man. tons and tons of money in gear under water. ive never seen anything like it since.
i honestly dont remember what sparked her rage. i think it was that the sound deadening
material wasnt in place yet and he was playing way to loud. she couldnt party in peace lol. he left for the evening with some girl and came home to the disaster.
so i dont know if that actually counts as a natural disaster or not but it was a major ordeal involving gear and water, and alcohol was involved. cognac to be exact lol.
so yeah its a man made.....ahum ahum, woman made, natural disaster.

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63supro
"The good thing is in a club situation, most of the patrons are trashed and really can't tell the difference."

Rode through a forest fire on the way home one night, but that was after the gig. I don't know how that road was left open, but the woods were on fire on both sides of the highway for a mile or so.

Caught the proverbial drencher storm outdoors, of course, one night. Everything was soaked, including us. I was freezing inside the house where we reset everything up. My strap stained my shirt.

Got heat exhaution once playing on an uncovered stage at over 100-degrees. That was rough.

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'87 Jazz Bass Special / '01 American Jazz Bass / '05 Std. Strat

Now if you'd been trapped in a forest fire and just kept playing - that would have been impressive!

If you're a performer, you haven't lived until you've had the skin fried off you while playing on a flat-bed trailer at high noon on the 4th of July in front of 500 drunks. Why do all of my bad gig memories involve flat-bed trailers... and drunks, too, usually?

Ah, the drunk stories I could tell...

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Dennis in CR
Rockin' since 1963

Oh, the equipment in the pool had my stomach in knots!

Mine certainly wasn't a natural disaster. We were playing @ Aurora Blues Fest (Sing's Waynes World) in early 2000's something. As we were about a minute in to a Zeppelin cover of How Many More Times, I noticed everyone getting a bit shifty & then HUGE flames & smoke. A food tent right outside of the stage area caught fire, something with the fryer. Anyway, we called it our incendiary performance.

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i would have broke out with kiss's firehouse. lol

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63supro
"The good thing is in a club situation, most of the patrons are trashed and really can't tell the difference."

^ Oh man! That would have been perfect!

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