Those Train-Wreck Gig War Stories

It's something that happens to every band out there. No matter how much you practice and prepare and the copious amounts of ass you normally kick, you are gonna have those train wreck nightmare gigs that make you want to run away and start a new life in a remote village in Slovenia It's the most frustrating damned thing in the universe when it happens, but we should take some degree of solace in knowing that it happens to everyone. That and the train wreck gigs wing up making for some of the best stories later on down the road, and often times when looking back on a train wreck gig you realize that it really wasn't that bad after all.

Personally, it's one of the reasons why I love live music. You never know what's gonna happen, and as a fan you hold onto those train wreck moments where you get to see a little more humanity from the people you idolize. The blown amps, the bad cables, the dropped notes, off timing, forgetting the lyrics to a song that they've sung a billion times. It makes the musicians relate-able and offers a genuine human connection between those musicians and the fans. I was there, I saw them in one of their most vulnerable moments, and they still tore the roof off the venue!

Our gig last night was marred by difficulties, but in the end the train was not completely off the rails and we were able to slide the damn train into the station sideways without killing any passengers. It is still frustrating delivering a less than stellar performance, especially when you actually have a decent sized crowd to play to on a Wednesday night.

The first ominous sign: It's no secret that Low End Lucy is the musician in our band with the most skill and talent, so naturally we are not the only band that Low End Lucy plays in. She also plays in a band called Toxic Dose, where the Low End Lucy persona is put on the shelf and the bat-shit crazy antics you can expect from one of our shows gives way to actual fucking skill. I recommend checking them out for some no-holds-barred thrash goodness:

Toxic Dose Facebook Page

Toxic Dose lands a once in a lifetime gig opening for Marty Friedman (of Megadeth fame), but the gig is on the same night we are supposed to open for Black Lodge.

Now this is the 3rd time we've opened for Black Lodge, and I had personally sought out the gig because we really like Black Lodge and doing shows with them. So I didn't want to have to back out of the gig.



Securing a "Rent a bass" actually turned out to be a good experience. Although there are logistical issues that prevent Andrew from being able to become a permanent member of the band, he was awesome to work with and I'm sure well do some colab work with him in the future.

Not knowing how the show would be affected by bringing in a substitute bass player that we hadn't worked with on a regular basis, I decided I needed to up the game and took to learning the guitar parts to be able to play and sing at the same time.

In the end, you expect that you may have a bad cable that is going to cause problems at a show but several cables that just magically decided to turn to evil ruined our shit a little bit and I had to fill a lot of dead air with stupid jokes and banter. I was told that I covered well for the issues we had, but I still felt like the fans were cheated due to shitty cables.

Looking back at the various shows I've done though, this definitely was not the worst. Sure, we are used to a much smoother ride, but buckle your seat-belts now because I'm going to share my tale of the abso-fuckin-lutely biggest train wreck gig I have ever done.

It was the summer of either 2001 or 2002, possibly 2003... hell, I don't remember exactly anymore.

Back then I played guitar in a band with my brother as lead singer, my Dad on bass, and my cousin on the drums. We called ourselves Darc Steele, and we were tragic as... well as tragic as a goddamn family band from Tooele, UT who mostly write depressing songs about chicks not wanting to sleep with us.

We had no idea what the hell we were doing, but still had it in our minds we were bound to be rock stars at that time. We were so damned pretentious.

We had previously done a gig for some of my father's work buddies out at the rodeo grounds in Tooele, and it was pretty successful for the relatively chill gig that it was, but then we bit off a hell of a lot more than we could chew when we took that leap into our first bar show.

It was about a 90 minute drive on a very shady old highway going the "back way" through the middle of no-where from Tooele to a bar called the Big Easy in Lehi. The place was ran by a dude with a fake tan who wore Hawaiian shirts and gold chains. He booked us on a Wednesday night with the usual promise of bringing us out on a weekend if we put on a good show and the bar actually made some money.

Of course we didn't do any real promoting or anything, because we had no clue what we were doing. So the only people at the show were a handful of rednecks, and we were pretty much all clad in black ready to rain some pretentious-experimental-doom-goth-rock upon them.

My cousin had decided he didn't want to be a part of the band anymore, so we were now playing to drum backing tracks. This was an unforgivable nearly suicidal act by itself as this was still the era where if you were a rock band you did not play with any damn backing tracks at all... but hey... the show had to go on.

About 2 songs into our set and after a few comments to the effect of, "play something country," and "where's your drummer?' we eventually found ourselves playing to a completely empty bar. That's when things started to turn to shit.

My brother at one point reached into his pocket to pull out lyrics to some of the songs because he couldn't remember the lyrics to songs we had been practicing for 2 years. Worse than that, he suddenly couldn't remember how they were even sung. At one point after starting the same song over 3 times as he kept coming in at the wrong time, I lost it and I started kicking him repeatedly... while still on stage... until he finally came in at the right time.

I still remember vividly the hate rays he shot my way the rest of the gig.

I can't really blame him now looking back at the situation. We were already bombing at that point, playing to an empty room. He was probably trying to muscle through a full on panic attack at that point, and there I was... kicking him in the ass for not being able to remember if he came in on the 4 count or the 8.

We pretty much left with our tails between our legs but then as we were loading all the gear back up, one of the amps was not fitting correctly into the back of this little ford hatchback my Dad drove at the time and my brother tried to force it in shattering the back window on the car.

By the time everything was cleaned up and we were back on the road it was well after 2 am and we had to be at work at 7 the next morning. My brother insisted he get to sleep on the ride home as payment for me kicking him on stage. I wasn't allowed to have the radio on, or roll a window down or anything. I was literally crying from being do damn tired, and constantly nodding off and drifting into the wrong lane. Fortunately it was a pretty deserted back road at like 3 in the morning, so the worst possible thing I could hit would be... well actually there were a lot of damn deer on that back road and several people had gotten into serious accidents going that back way, so I guess we are lucky we survived that night.

By the time everything was unloaded, I had to peel my clothes off of myself as I had worked up such a sweat earlier that my black clothes were now white from the dried salts in my sweat. I crawled in to work the next day on about an hour worth of sleep and the band was officially fucking over.

Looking back though, I really feel bad about my brother and I being suck immature dicks. My Dad still has old photos and such from the band on his bulletin board, and for many years afterwards talked about wanting to get the band back together. I eventually had to Taylor Swift my own Dad, and I can tell you as a goddamn man there is nothing more gut-wrenching than having to break your father's heart. (Dammit, I'm tearing up just thinking about it.) He just wanted to ride the road to rock'n'roll glory with his sons at his side, and we broke the old man's heart.

In the end, my Dad still has the bass down in the basement collecting dust. Possibly waiting for the day in which the clouds will part from the sky and rays of light will shine down upon that old bass and the voice of God will boom across the sky, "David, your time has come. Take up thine bass and ride to glory!" My brother decided to pursue a much more rewarding career in politics. That last sentence was intended with all of the possible sarcasm I can muster.

I'm still playing shows and doing my thing, just doing the weekend warrior thing. My sister is really the one in the family with all the talent though. She's the one that everyone asks at family functions and what not if she still sings at all. If she ever did get serious about her music I'm sure she'd be a hell of a lot more popular than my goofy-ass band.

Getting off on a tangent, sorry.

In the end, we've had many kick ass shows. Our CD release party, just about anything we've done were Jeffrey Hacker and Jordan Clements were involved. So you can't let technical difficulties or a bad turn out to a show break your resolve. It's all part of the game and the horrible gigs will be an essential part to the stories you'll tell as an old man to all the people who wasted their lives doing nothing but playing video games.

So now, I've told you my worst gig story... now lets hear yours.

Am I Doing This Right?

I guess it's just the nature of any artist to always be second guessing yourself, always walking a fine line between creating art or just product, trying to be different enough to get noticed but not so different that no one can get into what you are doing, not knowing if you're selling yourself too hard or not hard enough.

Of course with that comes the inevitable balance between honesty and letting your fans share with you your trials and triumphs, and being solidly professional and only sharing the triumphs. If you're only in it for the triumphs then I'd recommend stopping here and seeking out cat videos instead.

I've always said that music is something you do not because you want to do it, but because you are compelled to do so. I guess everyone has to have their one vain and completely futile thing that they do to try to obtain some degree of immortality. We all want to create something that will outlast us. That's why it's so gut-wrenching that we live in an era when art, music, entertainment in general has become so cheap and readily available that it's only the images and words that are constantly repeated that stick with us. Media is in fact the opiate of the masses and it can be had absolutely free and gift wrapped in a slick package of sex. I'm sure there's a fight club quote I can throw in here about how we grew up being told we were gonna be rock stars and movie gods and now we've realized that's never gonna happen and we're pissed off.

So why even bother then? I guess I'm not set on becoming a rock god, that boat sailed ages ago. Though it would be nice to be able to be in a situation where I can be one of those pretentious douchebaggy musicians who is constantly posting crap about how you should never take a "pay for play," or a non-paying gig, or fall into the trap of playing battle of the bands shows. Or worse than that are the posts about how people are willing to pay $5 for coffee but won't pay $1 for a song. Get over yourselves guys, it's 2015, the music isn't even the product anymore. A song is just a 4 minute jingle for a T-shirt. Not to mention that if you still haven't made more money than you've invested in gear and marketing, you're still paying to play. And, if you've ever had the misfortune of being the less popular band playing the venue across the street from where the more popular band is playing... well that's losing the battle of the bands right there.

So we keep walking that fine line, trying to find a balance. Maybe that's why I'm not doing this right and why our progress has seemed like dragging ass through quick setting concrete. I was born in the wrong place, at the wrong time, under the wrong star sign. The band Snog said it best when they said, "I'm a late 20th century, post-modern tragedy." Too old to be cool, too young to be taken seriously by the older generations. Born in those years of the early 80's where people can't decide if I'm part of generation X or a millennial. I guess the music I write is a reflection of this giant identity crisis. Guitar heavy rock having taken a brutal beating but not willing to lay down and die yet while EDM elements are being breech-birthed into the mix. It's those of us who were old enough to remember the 90's when the american dream seemed largely still alive and then saw the economy go to shit and the general populous turning from skeptical moderates to heavily divided flocks of sheep blindly consuming the media that's been custom catered to fall in line with the socio-political sports team they've decided to follow. The songs I write aren't inoffensive canned songs about unrequited love, but show too much skepticism towards both sides of the political aisle to be accepted by the  right wing flag wavers or the Rage Against the Machine left wing. You can't really market a product that can't decide what the hell it is really trying to be.

Now comes the part where I feel I should throw in a fart joke to keep from being too pretentious.

Yeah... back in my day we only had like 100 pokemon.

In the end, I grew up Mormon. Gave up Mormonism in my mid-20's so by that point I was already well past the age where they say addiction is likely when experimenting with alcohol or drugs. So why do I do what I do? Because I've realized that the music is my addiction. I can't give it up. If I go bankrupt (again) it will be because of the music. If my marriage fails it will likely be because of the music. If I die, it will likely be from melting my brain trying to perfect a composition that 12 people total will listen to on soundcloud.

Maybe there will come a day when more skeptical identity-crisis cases latch on to what we are trying to do and maybe the music will eventually at least pay for itself. I'm sure even at that point I'm still gonna be asking constantly, am I doing this right?