General Music Chat

I haven't gigged since well, ever. But in the high school jazz band, I was introduced by the band instructor as playing lead guitar on the next number. My wah pedal malfunctioned and I spent the whole song on the floor trying to fix it while my buddy picked up the slack.

We played some pretty rockin stuff. Stairway To Heaven. Flam Dance (can't find this one online ). China Grove.

I think we played Watermelon Man, too.

In my second year of beginning classical guitar, I asked the band instructor how to play Dust In The Wind. We spent two weeks learning the Travis pick (the whole class). I bought the single in so we could listen to the recorded version as a reference. I also brought in a recording of the Rocky And Bullwinkle Show theme when we played it in concert band.

pretty sure i've told this story here before.

i'm playing bass on a pickup gig...good money corporate gig w about 500 guest so we're in a pretty good sized room. we've just started up our second of three sets and from across the room the soundman stands up and is signalling us bringing both open hands palms down (the universal sign to turn down, right?).

we're still playing looking at him and wondering "WTF?" since we're at the same volume as before.....then people start diving under tables! and now we hear it...gunfire from the lobby! some yahoo had a beef w his girlfriend who worked the front desk.

a gazillion cops arrive on the scene...no one got hurt. idiot apprehended...and we were paid and sent home.

but here's the funny and weird thing....the song we were playing at the time, and i swear this is the absolute truth....drumroll please.....wait for it....we were playing "Shotgun"!!! I can never hear that song now w/o thinking about that night.

another i believe i've shared before....

I'm playing vibes on a Riverboat gig. dead of winter so everyone is inside in the main cabin where we're playing....and there's nothing but dead trees lining the MO River as we cruise along. so....WE are the show and have everyone's attention for once! but before too long it's obvious it's a comedy show because the wheel locks on my old P.O.S. Jenco vibraphone aren't working and i'm spending half the gig chasing the damn vibe around as the boat is gently rocking. i musta walked miles on that gig!

I've got SO many of these stories...but the one that comes to mind right now is from the mid 80s when my band, Side EffeX, was opening an outdoor concert for Foghat just north of Dallas.

As we were starting our first song, there was this one girl in the front who was staring at me and I motioned for her to....

Hmmm....maybe I shouldn't tell the story....but lets just say that within a few minutes there were a dozen girls not wearing their shirts. It was hard to concentrate with some of them trying to outdo the others, if you know what I mean, and the first girl was now standing there completely naked with a security volunteer getting her from behind up against the stage.

But I looked over at our lead guitarist (we were a power trio) and he had this huge girl with gigantic bazongas flailing around in circles and I couldn't hold it anymore. I burst out laughing, missing the words and the bass line. I felt a drum stick in my back and turned to see the drummer upset that I was falling out of beat, but then I motioned for him to look at that girl and he lost it too. We eventually found the beat to finish the song but were out of breath from laughing at Rob's "groupie" trying to get attention in the midst of titty-city.

Even with all of that happening we had the audience screaming for an encore when we finished, but opening band doesn't get one. What I can't tell in a public forum is what happened then.....



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In 1980 I moved to Dallas and my first gig was with a guy named Russell Stonecypher. We didn't practice, and I had never met any of them before we shook hands to set up at the gig.

We were playing some real dive in a part of the city known as "Oak Cliff" which is where all the great blues players of Dallas come from.

My mom had moved to Dallas a few years earlier and came out to see me play. So she's sitting on a couch about 30 feet away, and behind her is the cigarette machine against a wall which I can see but she doesn't.

A drunk staggers up and puts money in the machine but evidently nothing comes out because he starts kicking the machine. The bartender comes over and gives him a shove out the door for doing that. A few minutes later he comes back in with a pistol, and bartender meets him in front of the cigarette machine with a shotgun. They are maybe 3 feet behind my mother, who is still staring at me and oblivious about what is happening behind her.

The band never misses a beat. Russell is singing and we're pretty loud so I start frantically motioning with my hands for my mom to move....and she smiles and just keeps waving back at me. After only a few seconds (that seemed like eternity) a few more guys come up behind the drunk, grab the gun, and push him out the door again before we finished the song. We kept on with the set and I'm not even sure that I ever told my mom how close she came to being shotgun fodder?

Just another gig in Oak Cliff apparently...


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1981, Ft. Walton Bch. Fl. in the Air Force along with every other member of the band except for our drummer "Sticks" and we are playing a gig at The End Bar, a quaint little bar at the end of the former room motel court that has been converted into band rehearsal "rooms".. can't remember why, but Jamie, the lead guitarist has borrowed my Gibson ES-335 for the gig, he might have hocked his guitar earlier that week since money was always an issue with some in the band, (you used to feed Sticks cheeseburgers out of the Air Force canteen which was theft of gov't property, LOL, but do you realize how hard it is to find a great drummer? LOL..anyways, for antics playing our signature cover song "Born To Be Wild" by Steppenwolf, Jamie decides to hop up on one of the End Bar's tables, which are those giant spools that cable is wound around, and in one of his "moves" he lifts my guitar up into the overhead fan, not realizing it until a giant crunch sound even overwhelms the audio output of the PA. (maybe the mics picked up on this ? LOL) but nonetheless, although it diminished the value of my guitar considerably with the new "chunked out" piece on my headstock, we managed to get through the gig with an apology from Jamie, and some restitution also, in which I obliged him..