Midwestern Musical Mishap

It was early winter 2004, the whole week had been a dull, dying gray and the three of us were bundled up like Eskimos on an ice fishing expedition. We were on the last leg of a tiresome Midwestern tour. We’d made it to the little town, situated about an hour and a half north of Alexandria, Minnesota the day before. The concert promoter had put us up at the small log cabin of a local concert worker. We’d rested a good bit that day, before our load in and sound check, catching up on some much needed sleep.

Although sound check had gone well, tensions were still running high in our little acoustic ‘country meets pop’ band. We were approaching our fourth and last year performing together. Internal problems amongst our trio and a bad experience with a new record label had sealed our doom. Although we had seen the end approaching for some months, we decided not to cancel any shows. We had set our egos and personal feelings aside the best we could and decided to plow through that last month and honor our commitments. New York, Indiana, Illinois, Minnesota then home to Tennessee.

So you can fully understand the extent of our volatile situation and the debacle that ensued, it should be known that, this ‘farewell’ concert consisted of an audience made up almost entirely of former prisoners, drug addicts, prostitutes and reformed alcoholics. We had been involved with various causes and often found ourselves performing benefit concerts and special events. Such was the case that particular night. It should also be noted that the concert was to be aired live on the local television station. A church, which worked in prison outreach and one of the main sponsors, had an hour worth of air time each Sunday night. They had dedicated this hour to our concert.

One of the ex-prisoners, who’d been brought in as our cook for the evening, prepared for us a nice Italian meal he’d apparently learned to make while doing time up near Fargo. He was a really sweet guy, soft spoken and had the most gentle demeanor of any man I’d ever met. His red cheerful face, chubby build and bowl cut hair added an extra degree of charm. I still found it hard to believe that he was out of jail, on parole, for repeated armed robbery charges. After eating we were ushered into our green room to hang out until show time. We were relaxed and confident that the ‘on air’ hour long concert would be pulled off without any hitches. We were very well rehearsed, our gear and instruments had been checked, all stage equipment and television cameras were running smoothly. We knew it would be a great night.

Our group was introduced and promptly hit the stage at 7 on the dot, smiling and waving to a packed house and did I mention, live TV cameras? The bawdy crowd was clapping and cheering loudly. I glanced around the room and saw a few of the folks that we’d met the day before. They were standing amidst a group of tattooed and pierced biker types. This group was integrated into a larger gang of younger teens and college age kids who wore mostly gothic black jeans, shirts and hair. In addition to that portion of the crowd I could see an equal number of more conservative Midwestern farm workers and townsmen. Our audience was definitely an eclectic mix.

We grabbed our instruments which consisted of a guitar, mandolin and my big upright doghouse bass. One, two, three, four…First two notes: Boing…Bewoing…Snap!!! The chords we were strumming were suddenly and severely out of tune. “Whoa, stop guys…uh…something’s up….uh”, could be heard echoing over the PA. One of my trio partners was nervously smiling at me while awkwardly clearing his throat into the mic and then telling our live audience, "we’re having some technical difficulties". I looked across the stage at the guitar which was strapped to him. …Not one, but two broken strings! Next I quickly looked over at our other trio partner, who was already lifting his mandolin strap over his head. He’d also somehow managed to break a mandolin string on the down beat. Two disabled instruments rested in the more than capable hands of both my bandmates.

Now here’s the first kicker: the spare guitar had a string missing. It was broken at an earlier show and for some reason we forgot to restring the guitar.

Second kicker: no spare mandolin.

My first trio partner looked at the audience then me, then back at the audience and said, “Folks, I’ll be right back.” He promptly turned and walked of the stage. The second of my trio partners, who loves observing these type situations, shrugged, looked at the audience, smirked at me and leaned into his mic said, “Shay, tell ’em a story or something.” With a little wink he whispered, “We’ll be back, Keep ’em occupied,” as he too exited the stage.

All that was left in front of the room full of ex-prisoners and television cameras was a microphone, my upright bass, and me. There was no piano to jump on and play as a back up plan…Just me, the bass, and a microphone. At that moment I vowed to myself that there would always be a keyboard or piano somewhere on stage that I could jump behind and perform on. I glanced at the small digital clock that we kept beneath our center stage monitor. 7:05 pm. What was I going to do? Sing a capella and pluck a couple bass notes here and there? I couldn’t do any of the songs in this type set up alone. There was nothing to accompany them with. Since songs for the time being weren’t an option, I thought “tell stories.” Temporary brain freeze. “Tell them about some road experiences,” I thought…yeah…wait, I suddenly couldn’t think of any…

After an uncomfortable ten second pause of me staring at a sea of faces hungry for a performance, my mouth went on auto pilot. I think I told stories about growing up in South Alabama, worm fiddling, greasy pole climbs and fishing on the Gulf of Mexico. I’m not sure. What I am sure of, is that each passing second felt like an eternity. That warm hazy sensation that causes your mouth to go dry, your palms to sweat and the stage lights to suddenly feel brighter washed over me. There was also a sudden black pounding behind my eyes. The shakes kicked in and I grabbed tighter to the microphone. Words were coming out of my mouth and I think they were making sense. Sentences would begin, trail into thousand colorful connected phrases and somehow wrap back around to a coherent ending.

I glanced down, 7:20 pm… “Where the heck, where were those guys,” I thought to myself…Fifteen minutes had passed. “Uh, so…we found this great restaurant today down on the square….” I think I talked about what I ate there. I’m sure the owner was glad he got about ten minutes of advertising on live TV. Our live TV audience received a detailed description of Lumberjack Jim’s Hickory Smoked BBQ. About seven additional, and may I add excruciating minutes later, my two trio partners emerged smiling, instruments strapped on, new strings, tuned up and ready to play. One of the guys leaned into me and whispered, “Sorry it took so long. We had to find the strings, then one of them broke again while we were tuning.” It was now 7:27 pm. I’d rambled for almost twenty five minutes on live television, no commercial breaks.

The studio audience and those watching at home got an abbreviated, but phenomenal, performance. My earlier ramblings and thirty minutes of our best songs got us an authentic rousing standing ovation. I’d like to think my 'on the fly' stories had something to do with the applause, but that’s probably wishful thinking, to say the least. The actual performance was one of the best we’d given in our three and a half years together. Somehow we pulled the night off.

At times, I get a little concerned that a video will surface of me nervously regaling the audience with stories of my younger years in the Deep South. I guess that will be o.k., if it happens. Maybe it wasn't as bad as I made it out to be in my mind. One nearly toothless lady with shrunken in eyes and an eagle tattoo told me after the show, “I enjoyed listening to you talk. That accent of yours really made them river stories you were telling us come alive.” I hope she wasn’t just trying to ease my embarrassment over the situation.

Anyway, tonight is the first installment in a series of new blogs that I’ve decided to write. I feel somewhat like I did that night 5 years ago when I had to ad lib tales of my early life in the panhandle backwaters of South Alabama. Where do you start??? I’ve never really written blogs before. I’m more used to wrapping my thoughts up in a two minute and fifty second framework of rhymed couplets. The challenge of having a full blank page, actually screen, to type on and a much broader canvas should prove to be a nice little diversion from my norm.

So, expect a few life observations peppered with colorful stories of music, marriage, moogs and mandolins amongst other things. If you’ve read this far, I thank you for your time and bid you a congenial, “Welcome to my blog.”

-Shay
http://www.watsonandnash.com/