You'll Hear It: Full Album Deep Dives with Jazz Musicians - Funniest / Worst Gig Stories Part 1 - #81

Episode Date: April 21, 2018

In this episode, Adam and Peter discuss their worst / funniest experiences playing music. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This is Adam Maness. And I'm Peter Martin. And you're listening to the You'll Hear at podcast. Daily Jazz advice coming at you. Today we're going to delve into some of the funniest or worst gigging moments we've ever had. All right. We should probably do this one anonymously, like not name names because we don't want to get in trouble with our friends. That's right.

My name is Brad Meldow and you are Chip Korea. Guest host today. Well, this is, now, it's phrased in a funny, worst, ginging moments way because this is a question for one of our listeners. We, you know, we love the listeners and we love the questions because we're running out of topics, to be quite honest with you here at the You'll Hear at podcast. And we would feel bad within the first three months to actually recycle topics. We're dangerously close to that, though. Dude, this was your idea to do this daily. So don't start complaining now.

Well, I mean, daily, I didn't, you know, every day, it was in the middle of winter. Every day seems so long. You know, now the days are short. This is really becoming a hassle, I got to tell you. It looks nice outside, right? No, actually what it is we've got plenty of ideas, but what we want to do is talk about things that are entertaining and maybe even enlightening to you guys, the listeners.

So please go to you'll hear it.com. You can leave a voice message or a typed message, as it were, and we'd love to answer your question. Or if it's something that we don't like or don't know about, ignore your question. One or the other will happen. We do that too. We do that often. So this is from Alia, Elia.

Elia. Elia. Elia. And it's about our funniest and or worst ginging moments, do we care to share. Ha-ha. I mean, how much time do we got? We've got between seven and 11 minutes. All right, I will start.

So this was in Peoria, Illinois, which is a hotbed for it's already kind of fun. Marty laughed. hometown of famous comedian. A little trivia for you, Peoria trivia. I don't know. Richard Pryor. Oh, that's right. That's awesome.

Well, Richard, I wish Richard Pride was at this gig because he would have told a great story about this. So I was playing in a band. It was, we weren't a wedding then, but this was for a wedding, and this was a very affluent family in Peoria. And we weren't actually, we were playing the rehearsal dinner. But, like, I was playing with kind of a famous singer. And that's how wealthy these people were. I think, actually, for the wedding themselves, I think they had your boy, Jeremy Davenport, like, on stage. Headlining.

Headlining, like on the football field in Peoria or something. You know what I mean? Like, it was like, they rented out the whole town for this thing. That cost $98. No, just kidding. We love you, Peoria. Big shout out. Big shout out.

Peoria. But, so we're playing the rehearsal dinner, and the speeches start happening. And the parents go first, and I'll never forget, like, there was like the father of the groom said, well, you know, we're very proud of our family. We're proud of to have it here, and we're proud we can do it here in Peoria. But the thing we're most proud of is what wonderful kids we have here.

All these young people, the bride and the groom and all their friends are so marvelous. And then it was like not even two minutes later, the first like groomsman speech happens. And he starts it out by talking about how when they were in college with the groomsmen, all he remembers his hearing was like, It was like, it started going in the most distasteful.

At one point, one of the groomsmen actually said, you know, well, we're glad that the grandparents and the parents are here tonight, but screw the parents. This is about us. Party on. And we're in this like lavish ballroom. And I was like, oh, man, the grandmothers looked horrified. I just remember, like, I mean, there was some, there was just some really weird stuff. And the worst part about it was why I bring it up is because we had gotten done playing our set, but we were stuck behind.

We were in like an alcove behind where they were speaking. So we were trapped. And we just had to sit here for two hours and listen to these horrible people do these horrible speeches. And it got worse and worse and worse. And then, you know, you realize that you're in Peoria on top of it all. Right. Big shout out of Peoria. Sorry, we're in St. Louis.

say that about our rivals. That's right, right. Wow, that was funny and bad. That's what I'm saying. You really combined those nicely. It was horrible. That's good. Well, one thing that I remember, it seems like there's so many horrible and funny things that I can't remember. I guess I blocked them out. But early on, when I was in high school, we had a nice little combo group, we used to call it. We even had a name, The Jazz Dispatch. This was with Jeremy Davenport, Chris Thomas. Nice. Drummer was David Berger and bass player Christopher Thomas. And so, you know, thinking back on it, you know, I was so lucky to play and grow up with these, you know, great musicians and really good friends.

I thought we weren't naming names, though. I mean, I'm just dropping some names of my boys back in the day, yo. But we would do gigs. We put our little band together, and we would get called for a surprising number of gigs, considering how bad we sounded at the beginning. You know, the correlation between. I mean, there was a lot of goodwill in the community, I guess. I don't know. But one funny thing was, like, we didn't have our business stuff together.

So we were, you know, like a lot of kids, like, we would take gigs and we would never ask how much the gigs paid. And if they would ask us what we charged, we were so afraid to say, like, we wouldn't say anything. It's kind of like babysitters. I've had babysitters. How much do you charge? Oh, I don't know, whatever. You know, it's just something about that age. But we were also so excited about playing music.

It's not that we didn't like money or need money. We definitely did. but it just wasn't really like we would try to we would get paid for gigs and then pull them take we would never even separate out the money we would like you know use it for some piece of equipment you know like we were saving up for a fender roads for me that worked out good and then or like a bass pedal for for chris or some music stand whatever it is we needed so we were just like it was all gravy but we got asked to play the opening of a bank brand Commerce Bank on Delmar.

Lovely. You know, kind of a location that's still there, sort of a famous location. This is like, you know, I don't know, 1984 or something. And for some reason, I mean, thinking back on it, like we thought we were relatively smart. We didn't think we were geniuses, but we thought we were at least average intelligence. But after you hear the story, you're not going to think so. We thought, oh, it's a bank opening. We're going to make so much money because they, this is a bank.

And, like, they've got stacks of bills. We're going to get paid. And we're like, don't even worry about telling them a price this time. You know, they didn't say anything, though. Can you play this opening? Yeah. So we're like, man, we're going to make, I mean, certainly thousands, if not millions. It's possible.

I mean, it's a bank, you know. So we played the gig, and everybody loved it or pretended to love it. We kind of sloped our way through whatever little tunes we sort of knew at the time. And at the end of the gig, we were packing up. And we were always embarrassed. Like, if they never came to pay us, we would just leave without any pay. We were too embarrassed to even ask for anything. But they came over and they're like, yeah, we need everybody's name and just if you could write it down so that we can cut checks for you guys.

And we're like, oh, man, it's on now. Plus, we're getting checks. I don't know what we thought we had no bank account. Man, we are, this is, this is, and separate checks for everyone. So not only we're going to be making like thousands of dollars, but each of us individually is going to make thousands of dollars. So we're so excited. And this was back when they still had like, you know, some kind of. machine that you would put. The shunk, shunks. Yeah, yeah. You could like cut, you literally would

cut a check on. So they kind of called us to the back, the manager of the branches. Like, come back to your boys. And we went back and we're just like, oh, man, it's on. And so they printed out and had our names printed on each of the five checks and handing them to us, like, in envelopes. And of course, we're too, like scared to even look at them while we're there. We get up front and we're all like, oh, ripping open in the envelopes. And each of us had a check for $5. Oh, my God. And this is not like, I mean, this is a long time ago, but it's not like when $5 was worth $1,000, no, $5 was worth the equivalent now of about $7 or so. It hasn't really changed that much.

Still a check for $5. Yeah, but of course, we didn't go say anything, but we were excited, so we got $5. That's awesome. And I had to have my mom cash it for me because I didn't have a bank account. Yeah. Well, my next story, I don't know if this is. Wait, next story, I don't know if I have another one, but go ahead. All right, well, no, so mine, I was in Italy.

We were doing one of these tours, infamous. Italian promoter. I won't say his name, but you know I'm talking about. And we are... Toti. Go ahead. We are on our way

to a town that is literally where, if you're in Italy, it's where the toe is kicking Sicily. So you could see Sicily, basically, from our hotel, right? I forget the name of the town. Is that Leche?

It might be Leche. Yeah. That's down there somewhere. Yeah, it's down there somewhere. Well, it was this, first of all, we get, you know, we almost die. Is that Calabria? The region?

I don't remember. I don't remember. Oh, you have no idea. I'm about to name the club. Was it Malano? I don't want to get too far into it. Or perhaps Zurich. In case they can speak English.

But, I mean, so this promoter infamously is, you know, a horrible driver. So just the drive to the gig, first of all, is a story on himself because you feel like you're going to die the whole time. Promoter can't find the club. So we're already, you know, behind the ball there because we're late to the sound check. put sound check in many quotes. Air quotes. Because of what happens next. We get there and we're kind of feeling our way out.

There's like a tiny little sound system, a tiny little stage. There's a tiny little grand piano. I step up to the piano. The piano, it's only missing two strings in the middle. So there's only two notes that don't work, which I was kind of horrified because the promoter was like, then we met the promoter. and he said, it's sold out. And I said, well, there's two, you know, you're missing, like, literally the D above Middle C and, like, the G two above that.

And he's like, oh, yeah, yeah, it's okay. And then he offered me some acid. And then I watched him put some in his mouth. Wow, this is not a typical Southern Italian delicacy. This guy is his own cat. He got sausage, you've got red wine, parmigiano, and acid. So we do our sound check. He is not quite hot.

yet. And we start the gig, and the gig goes as you would think, which is like horribly, right? But about, I don't know, 45 minutes into the first set, or the only set, as it turns out, it was supposed to be the first, but it ended up being the only. The sound system starts feeding back, like a really high-pitched, one of those, like, it starts out, you know, you ever hear these, like, starts out with, like, just like a, and then it just goes crazy. slow rolling feedback.

Well, we can't find the promoter and the guy who runs the sound anywhere. We can't, there's no, it's just happening. The audience is holding their ears and people starting to, like, run out the door screaming. The singer that I'm playing with is holding her ears

and, like, crouching down behind the bass player. Crouching Tiger Hidden Singer. I don't care, because I'm still pissed off because I don't have any strings on the damn piano. The promoter had to kind of run up and just basically turn off the soundboard. Right. I put, again, soundboard in many quotes,

because I think it was just like a, off-brand check mixer that was like not very good and and we we kind of just stop the gig because we didn't have any sound and all you see behind the bar the promoter's feet he's like laying down he's not asleep he's just like he can't handle it he's on like a post acid trip he's on like a horrible acid trip uh you know it's Italy so then you leave the gig and you have some amazing food and wine you feel great about it right anyway but it was still a hilarious thing things took a a positive turn after the gig, I'm sure. That's the great part about being in Italy are the food, the people, the wine, you know.

Everything's fun. That was great. That was good. I actually thought of a couple other Italian stories. Maybe we'll go with two-parter on this one, and tomorrow we'll come back with my Sicilian adventure. Part Duet. Part Duet. Because you'll hear it.

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