Every band, no matter how popular and what genre, has stories of shows that they’ve played or the events surrounding them. This is one of ours…
Last evening we were scheduled to play a show at a venue in the city that we were not familiar with, but being where it was located felt that it would be good exposure for us to see what it’s all about. As we made the hour trek through traffic Paul (drums) arrives before anyone and calls to inform us the venue we thought we were playing at was actually a “hip-hop” club and after asking around found out that we were actually booked next door and was also owned by where we thought we were playing. Luckily the front of the venue we were playing at was open, in that anyone outside would see/hear us playing, so our promotional efforts weren’t completely lost when folks came out to try to find us.
So we setup and get things going. Our set went on without a hitch, even debuted a new song that seemed to go over well. Met a few people that really enjoyed the set. We take down the gear at the end of the night and Paul brings his car around the back of the venue to load his drums. Just as he’s finished loading his kit he walks out back to find that his car is towed. At this point venue manager has disappeared so we’re left with the staff saying that it’s CTA property and they can not help us. Which works out great since we were told to park around back to load/unload our gear.
By 3:00am and $200 later Paul has his car back with all drums in place and we start the journey back home. At the end of it all we ended up playing a show at a venue that we didn’t know we were booked at, our compensation for our efforts was worth less than our costs to park in the city and our drummer’s car gets towed within a 10 minute window.
Definitely an interesting night to remember, but luckily we are a band that loves what we do.
