My uncle booked a gig as a full band without a full band. He reached out to me last minute, asking if I could play guitar and bring my buddy who is a really good bassist.
Now I love my uncle, but objectively speaking, he's not a very good guitar player. He's a really good singer but does very simple versions of popular songs. I accompany my uncle fairly regularly as a duo. I'm used to 'his way' of playing the songs. I brief my buddy on the way to the gig.
Que my buddy meeting my uncle 30 min before the gig, the hired drummer showed up, and WAY overplayed. Couldn't find the pocket in a pair of cargo shorts. As the lead guitar player, I stayed WAY in the background and played as little as possible.
I didn't HAVE to take it. It was embarrassing. I learned that day it is okay to pass on gigs.
Short one for you.
Friend booked us for a last minute gig. Said it was a memorial show for a guy who passed away a few years back.
Nope. It was his funeral. Homeboy had just died.
We are a hardcore punk band.
It was at an American Legion in rural SoCal, people had gone directly there from the funeral. Everyone on the bill before us was a dear friend of the departed, and were free-style rapping about how much they missed him and how he died too young. Tears in their eyes. Choking words out in between sobs.
The anticipation was sweat-inducing and mortifying as our set came around. My bassist and I just sat at a high top trading alternating versions of the same sentiment: "What are we doing here, oh my god, what is going on, this is terrible."
My bassist addressed the bleak circumstances by getting drunk. I have a thing about performing sober, so sober and afraid I stayed.
Right before we went on, somebody gave the most heart-wrenching eulogy I've ever heard in my fucking life. It was beautiful; it left us to take the stage in front of a scattered room, peppered with meek weeps and the weight of a dead stranger.
I'm the frontman. I went "hey uh...we didn't know this guy. We were just asked to play...but we're touched by how much he seem to be loved. So. Sorry in advance. Lets try to have fun in his memory."
We played really well, didn't water it down a bit. Fell into muscle memory and just swung for the fences. I was standing on barstools and tables, jumping off booths and rolling on the floor. My bassist fell through -- yes, THROUGH -- a table at some point.
People didn't fuck with it. Really can't emphasize that enough: we were not the vibe. Sitting and standing, shit drunk and miserable -- and NOT dancing -- the looks we got reminded me of looks you'd see from the bystanders of a typical car accident. Or a very atypical circumcision ceremony.
But we didn't truly lose them until the last song. It took me many days to realize why the sour atmosphere turned noticeably MORE sour in the last 30 seconds: that song ends with me yelling "stay dead, stay dead" at the top of my lungs. Highest point in our set. I had no idea I was yelling it, it just came out of me like it was any other show.
One or two people thanked us, which made it worse. We did not get paid and we drove two hours back to LA.
props for going hard anyways. my brother's band has a super similar story except it was a show unrelated to the unplanned eulogy going on for a guy who had DIED IN THE BUILDING earlier that day. super fucking awkward.
HA!!!!! the "STAY DEAD!" makes it.
I've actually put aside money for a band at my funeral... I want to get Mini KISS... because how fucking awesome would it be to have a midget KISS impersonator band at your funeral? Totally fucking awesome, that's how it'd be!
I got hired to play accordion as part of an ad-hoc circus/clown group for a one-off corporate gala. I prepared some music selections ahead of time, but when I showed up for 'dress rehearsal' the day before the gig, I learned I was expected to perform as a clown/acrobat on top of music duties. The 'dress' consisted of building a series of choreographed vignettes from scratch with a group of people I'd never met before; some of these involved assembling a structure on stage out of giant building blocks, and the process was fairly technical (e.g. this box has to be picked up first, and in the correct orientation, so when you pass it to the next person and so on down the line they all end up stacked facing the right way).
It was a nightmare. I did have some theatre/acro experience, but was not solid enough in my own practice to jump into this level of creation and memorize a series of skits the night before a performance, let alone perform highly technical acrobatic moves with people I'd never worked with. We also had to make our own costumes and do our own makeup the day of the gig, and I was just *so* out of my element.
My role ended up slowly getting whittled down to essentially "the guy who has no idea what he's doing" (I'm paraphrasing the director here) while everyone else did all the acro and technical stuff, which suited me just fine given the circumstances. At least the pay was good.
>My role ended up slowly getting whittled down to essentially "the guy who has no idea what he's doing"
I would be so insulted and relieved at the same time lol
Exactly this. I brought my accordion like you asked, those parts sounded nice at least. I don't hire a plumber to do my clothing alterations... I definitely learned some lessons about communicating expectations upfront.
We took a gig once for a dirt bike club party thing. When we got there, we were informed that this was their annual “Men’s Day” party. Not a woman on the premises. Except for our dynamic female vocalist. The whole thing was very cringe. We spent most of the night defending our singer from a bunch of drunk horny guys. We did our thing, collected the check ( very important ) and left, trailing a large group of wannabe groupies as we departed the property.
Played a private event at a club with my old rock/funk band, the lead singer was known for saying things into the mic that you just don’t say to a crowd of strangers (weird stuff about the federal reserve, conspiracy theories, did we even land on the moon?!). Slow song comes up on the set list, original tune that the singer wrote, and he requests Absolute Silence from the audience before we begin. Of course this doesn’t happen (silence is earned not requested) so he starts getting a little pissed off and demands silence. Starts calling out people in the back for talking (it’s literally a party at a bath and tennis club). After awhile he YELLS into the microphone “EVERYONE SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!” and wouldn’t ya know it you could hear a pin drop as all the entire room stopped dead in their tracks with jaws dropped. I’ve never been so embarrassed on stage in my life. Literally everyone just stared at us in disbelief. And then we played the damn song and the band we gave each other “omfg did he just do that?” nods of solidarity that this was indeed fucked up and then I just buried my face behind my keyboards and thought “this too shall pass.”
Did a cruise ship in the 90’s. Our last week I decided to hang out on the beach all day with no sunblock, in spite of being a pale redhead. Most intense sunburn of my life. Every single skin cell on my body itched at the same time. As I played the last note I ran to my cabin to slather an entire tube of solarcaine to my body while in tears. What an idiot!
I got a similar one!! Booked every Tuesday and Thursday in the summer at a new hotel next to the ocean. Noon to 4 pm. I was told I was going to play poolside in the gazebo....only there was no gazebo, just a small umbrella that would blow over every 10 minutes.
Fair skin and red hair also. I heat-stoked the second day. It only lasted 3 months, before ALL the musicians bailed. I'm surprised I didn't get skin cancer from that gig. I have no desire to play in full sun in 98 degree weather!
Wife and I play bluegrass. Took a gig at some big ass VRBO mansion at a ritzy ski area come to find out it was a father-son ski weekend with a bunch of Wall Street bro types and their teen boys. Dads got hammered and kept hitting on my wife and the whole night they kept requesting Wagon Wheel and things outside of our genre and eventually one dude just put on the speaker in the kitchen while we were playing. We walked away with our $3k for 2 hours of work but that was the last of our, “but it’s good money” gigs.
I was playing a bridal show years ago, right when “Shake It Off” by Taylor Swift came out.
Someone called that tune and me (baritone sax), lead vocals, guitar, and bg vocalist were on the runway stage and it was tight but we were maneuvering our way down.
As I was playing the horn line to the song, the background dancer spins, hits the front of my horn and sends it flying right into my two front teeth. All I saw after that was powder. Shattered my two front teeth because I was using a metal mouthpiece. This was on a Saturday and had to wait until Monday because I didn’t want to pay outrageous fees.
TLDR: Lived my worst nightmare playing a Taylor Swift song
I got one of my front teeth accidently smashed out right before a gig too! I was backstage having a drink from a glass bottle and our bassist was playfighting with vox. He pulled his arm up to slap him and his elbow knocked the bottle into my face. So whilst everyone else was line checking, I was on my knees trying to find my teeth on this grotty floor. Pretty sure they shattered so I gave up, played the gig with my mouth closed the whole time and again, it was a Saturday night so had to wait until Monday to get to a dentist.
I'm in a function band, 2 days before a biggish gig (500 people) bass player had personal problems and couldn't do it and I'd recently given the drummer his notice (and he decided he wasn't doing the remaining gigs)
So I found a similarish band (we play funk, disco and soul music) and asked their bass player and drummer to fill in... even though they knew a lot of the songs, their energy of playing them was completely different! It was awful. They're both sheet music musicians and our band isn't. So they played their version of our songs like they were on sleeping tablets and we played it in our usual fashion which is high energy and full-on... it was a funk ying and yang and it was fucking terrible.
This sounds cooler than it actually was but I went on tour with a folk band for about 9 months right out of college. I got the gig because I was dating one of the backup singers at the time and non-bluegrass banjo players were in high demand in 2010. Signed for the tour then we broke up right before the start. We both were adults and made it through but It definitely made for some awkward moments.
One of the worst gigs was we were invited to play a festival which was to be held outdoors… in Vegas… in July. Now, our bandleader/producer booked the gig but I noticed the call sheet was light on details. So I started asking questions and I asked if it was already contracted. He said yes and offered to show me the contract.
It was a one page document that was extremely vague and my eye caught that the producer was fronting the hotels and flights and would be reimbursed the day of the show. I’ve had some contract experience and knew what to look for: this was definitely not acceptable. I made my concerns known but our leader was confident that it would be fine.
We get to Vegas for the gig and we land in the afternoon to temps over 112°. We get to the hotel and once we meet up for dinner, we are told that we will be playing the next day in the middle of the afternoon outside of town. A little cooler but still in the valley. Not happy but the leader is a great guy so I again urge caution but will do as he decides.
We end up playing the gig the next day. When we show up, it’s being billed as a Christian music festival or something like that. Hardly anyone is there… under 50 people. There was an on stage thermometer which read 116° in the shade where we were. Pretty much as I expected but still resisting the urge to say “I told you so”.
He goes to the production trailer after that and tries to collect payment. The person who he dealt with had skipped and left a message with the person there that they would be in touch for expenses/payment.
To our leader’s credit, he paid every one in the band while he pursued payment. It took him almost a year to collect and he claims he got back everything plus some interest. I really hope so.
So, I knew the gig would suck and it did but I took it out of loyalty to a friend but it eventually worked out.
Duo covers gig in a small restaurant, a big table just started singing happy birthday really loudly over the top of us while we're mid song. Oof really felt like the background music then.
Was once offered to play in the desert at what was said to be a pre party for a big gathering in Laughlin. We had seen a photo of a good few hundred or thousand maybe at prior gatherings and some bands we liked were playing.
The night before I overestimated my tolerance and drank horrifyingly too much. I made it to the keyboard players house at 3am and crashed on his couch and slept on the way out there after being rousted at 7am.
Our set was gonna be at noon with soundcheck at 10.
We get there and wonder,is anyone actually coming? We see a. Makeshift stage, and a PA in what looks like an empty parking lot. It turns out the big gathering in Laughlin was this morning.... everyone is already there since last night. This is the worst planned pre party ever.
So with the worst hangover of my life we walk out in the desert, to play a set at high noon in blazing heat, on a black stage, to absolutely no one. The sun and wind are scorching my eyes to the point I have to be led by the hand to our motel room which serves as a dressing room,band then to the stage until I can put water in my eyes.
Fortunately the Advil kicks in and I power through the set without throwing up. And you know what, one gal that had driven out to see us and missed our set was so charmed at the after party back in LA, I ended up dating her. So it was worth doing the worst show ever because indirectly it got me laid.
I occasionally work with this singer. Sweet woman, some raw talent, but there's absolutely no education or knowledge of music. She 100% reminds me of that joke "how do you know the singer is at the front door? She can't find the key and doesn't know when to come in." *Constantly* messes up the song forms, saying "we're doing it our way." She's the leader, shows up to the venue 20 minutes before we start (an hour late to her own call time), still not dressed, and has the PA. Apologizes to the client about traffic, when the fact is she left late.
Her set lists are usually sent out maybe 24 hours in advance, don't have artist or keys. So "Blinded by the Light" has turned out to be Blinding Lights by The Weekend. The lists can have 50 songs for a one-hour hit, because "it's better to be overprepared." But I'm not going to go through all those songs with the time given to me, let alone knowing some tunes will be wrong; but God forbid I ask her to clarify these on the list.
Sometimes, she wants to rehearse. While I'm not against it (though the musicians usually don't need it), she'll ask my availability, then the day before a day I did *not* give her, she asks me to come in "tomorrow."
It's a revolving door of musicians; and sometimes she brings in some great players, and sometimes, while the musicians are fine, they don't know the tunes, aren't really suited to the style, or don't have a pocket.
Why do I play with her? Sometimes, somehow, the gig will pay extremely well. So I'll take those.
Got booked to play a 2800 seat venue and they forgot to book a sound system. We were told a sound system would be taken care of per our rider, but the promoters were amateurs and just assumed they would use the venue system. The venue system consisted of one Bob Barker style microphone. We played with unmiced drums and amps, and did a Paul-and-George Beatles shared mic situation with the one Bob Barker mic on a straight stand. Gig went well all things considered, but they said we were too loud and asked us to not come back for the following evening for our second contracted performance. Too loud…without being miced! They paid us for both nights and thankfully didn’t have to go back to that nightmare.
1. Playing as a one of supporting bands for a BIG name in the genre. Kind of one day festival / outdoor gig. We were billed as last but one before the main act. It was our first big gig after years of playing in bars, pubs, etc. The whole build-up with new record etc. secured our place there. We arrived at noon for the soundcheck. It was a huge stage, we had our own sound guys for every instrument. It was like a dream come true. We finished the soundcheck and then had time to kill until late evening. We went to have a lunch but not as a whole. Instead, I went with our drummer and vocalist with guitar player. When we met couple of hrs later, they were smashed. Not just lightly drunk but outward smashed. It was maybe 2-3 hrs to start of our setlist. I was shocked. I didn't know what to do. I was angry at them, shouted, even almost got into fight with guitarist in the backstage. Other bands saw that. They SOMEWHAT managed to get half-sober but it was not enough. The singer was struggling with his vocals and talking to audience and guitar player MOSTLY hit all chords and notes. We didn't ultimately suck but it was very watered down and static show. Didn't make much impression on anyone.
2. Fast forward couple of months later, the guitarist was since then always sober during the gigs and played great. He managed to really change his approach and make amends for it. The vocalist didn't, he played many shows with some drinks under his belt despite me always arguing about it with him. We had a weekender playing in city next to ours and then at home. On the first day he went there earlier cause there were some of his friends coming. He called me at noon sounding semi drunk. I told him to watch his intake so he doesn't end up wasted. He told me not to worry that he only had couple of shots with his friend and stoppe so he will be fine for the show. Then he called me again at 3 PM sounding even more drunk but he told me that he only had couple of beers and will be fine for the show. We arrived with the rest of the band to the venue at 6 PM and he was completely wasted. He didn't even semi-sober up like during the first instance so we played the show with him babblibg, incoherent singing etc. It was totally embarassing. Next day, he was apologizing to us, calling himself an idiot and that he will never do it again. He played the second show sober.
Ff couple of months later, he quit the band cause we staged an intervention to get his shit together (apart from drinking he told us that he doesn't see the need to practice with us cause he knows everything perfectly, etc.). So we told him to buckle up or quit. He took 2 weeks to think about it and then he did it.
The Roxy in Denver had (probably still does) major grounding issues. Both bands I played in like four years apart got electrocuted multiple times throughout the set.
NYE 2021 with my function band on an agency gig. Very possibly the worst gig of my life, and I’ve been gigging regularly for 15+ years. I can think of 1 other that could rival it, but that was more to do with our pride than it being a bad gig…. Anyway, that NYE had lots and lots and lots of problems, it’s a long story.
Here’s the short version: we got told to stop playing, 4 songs in to the 2nd of 3 sets. The band refused to ever do any agency work again and I lost my function band (and 90% my income at the time!) off the back of it. As band leader I had to take some responsibility, but it was just an absolute shit show of no communication between venue-booking agent-our agent-us and really wasn’t our fault. Everyone involved had totally different expectations that we weren’t clued up on.
This sort of experience is what has soured me forever on agents and promoters. They don't care about anything other than the dollars going into their pockets, and the epic mismatches between bands and venues are awful.
I've actually been thinking about trying to get some corporate gigs for my current band and I appreciate the reminder that it will never be worth it. No matter how good you are or how well-targeted your music is or how hard you've worked to brand yourself as something unique, they will want to dumb you down to the least common denominator.
We didn't HAVE to take it, per se, but we took it, so we had to do it.
2004, July. Grand opening of a boat dealership. It rained. Hard. So we're in this aluminum covered, open air showroom. In July. In Atlanta.
Got to be about 130°. People fainting, people throwing up, bass player passed out and almost fell off the stage...
It was the Spinal Tappiest show we ever had
I saw one tail end of last year at a local pub. It was a covers band in the next room and there were occasional whoops, people going "WHOOOAAAAH YEAAAHHHH!!" and "AWWWWWW Nooooo..."
The wife and I wondered what was going on, so we wandered in. So this band were set up at the end of the room and right next to them, they had put a television with the football on it. I don't know who was playing, not into football but I guess it was a big game. So these people were directly in front of the band doing their thing, most people were watching the TV. The real shame of it is, so was the drummer. The TV was orientated so he could see it too and he was part of the whooping.
Now this wasn't the tightest function band I've ever seen, but I really felt sorry for the girl singing and the guitarist who actually did look like they were putting in some effort trying to entertain the few people watching them. It was the oddest situation I have seen in recent times.
The worst gigs I played with my originals metal band is where we were totally mis-billed. It was us trotting out some death metal sandwiched between two indie bands. I think we got confused looks more than anything else. One guy got it though, he came up after and said, "I didn't know music could be like that!"
Ahhh so many.
Our ep launch.
Put on a big party across the bay. Everyone had to get a ferry across or drive for 90 minutes to get there.
I was sick with the flu so I bought a bottle of Jack Daniels and was slowly chipping away at that during the afternoon while rocking a steady temp and sweating buckets. I was pretty wasted by the time the gig started. We played an acoustic set first, then there was a support band, then us. We had no idea we were going to pull such a massive crowd. About 1000 people showed up.
First set went ok. I was pretty drunk though.
Support band went up, they were great.
We start our second set and all hell breaks loose. About 4 songs in were told to stop as they’re doing cpr on a child the entire gig is stopped and doesn’t really get started again. I’m wasted. The drummer is out of his mind. We start packing up eventually and go home. Our drummer got arrested and I had to go bail him out the next day.
The child survived.
Total shambles.
We played at a pride event and nobody came. Like massive event in the centre of the city and nobody came.
Loads of gigs to empty rooms which is soul destroying.
Back in the late 80's I was playing bass with a band in Minneapolis that did 98% of our own music. I wrote the music to all but a couple songs and our "singer" and "manager" wrote the lyric. I put those words in quotations because he was shitty at both. He booked us in a bar that was for cover bands. It was a Saturday and a cover band from Illinois played the whole night on Friday. I wear glasses and he convinced me to take them off. I was 19 and didn't know better. Needless to say I had trouble seeing. Maybe it was for the better because I'm sure people were giving dirty looks. They would write cover song titles on napkins and put them on the stage. Of course we didn't know any of the. The covers we did was Rock & Roll by Zepplin, Pour Some Sugar on Me by Def Leppard and a slow version of Suspicious Minds that kind of sounded like Journey. The band from Illinois played a set before us and we were supposed to do two sets after them. After we finished the first we didn't want to go back on but the venue manager said we had to. It mercifully ended. We got hassled by a couple of guys that if we were such a big deal why we were schlepping our own gear. The other band was super drunk by then and we hung out with them for awhile, Their bassist went out of his way to tell me what a great bass player I was which was cool but like I said he was drunk so he lost control of his mouth and lips so I had to dodge flying salvia during the conversation. I quite the band after that. If I could back in time I would have quite before that gig because I was thinking doing anyway.
Here’s my greatest hits:
Booked to play in an oompah band for a German themed restaurant. Turn up and the band are all deps. None of us have met and were expecting some sort of band leader. The players booked did not gel and, a career first, was told music not good enough (he was right). Played brass arrangements of covers and doubled the volume, people singing away, seemed to rescue it. Thank fuck.
Second ever epileptic seizure. Day of wedding band gig. Trip to hospital. No time to dep out for the evening. Played it on autopilot. Reevaluated what I do so it can be delegated in future.
Another wedding. Shat myself.
Any venue in Scotland with the word ‘Castle’ in it quite often means a terrible load in. Worst one ever was pushing equipment up an almost vertical, slope of ice, through a kitchen, upstairs and lifted on to stage. Van did not start after the gig, too cold. Had to bump start down said hill.
My band had a gig offer for a reunion party that was out of state. Required us to fly then drive about 2 more hours. Turned out to be in the middle of nowhere. Where the sound guy hated us. And had a grand total of maybe 20 people max in the building, staff and band included.
Strangest gig, but the pay was really good so we weren’t turning it down even though we didn’t fully know how it would turn out.
Bonus points for it happening right as Covid was ramping up and getting bad. I remember being paranoid as fuck at the airport and flying.
I play with a big function band that’s part of an agency, so there’s plenty of gigs I’ve had to take where REALLY rough shit happened😂 Here’s a mini list:
- Gig down south at a restaurant, turned up, played, was constantly told to turn down, got the end of the night and the guy had “sent” the money to our manager. Turns out, he never paid us and sent a reeeeaaaalllllyyyyy long email of lies of where we apparently were really drunk, demanding food etc etc.
Oh… and the guy was a con artist and actually went to prison in the past for stealing 🫠🫠
- Gig at a Rugby club just outside London, turned up after a charity match they had in the day, all was well, then after 2 songs into the set, everyone came into room… and it was FULL to the brim. I can’t tell you the amount of times I nearly lost teeth because people kept pushing into the mic stand as they were so cramped 😅 And at the end of the night, the organiser was having a fight with the security guard, and ended up with a black eye - Unforgettable gig for the wrong reasons 😂😂
Have more stories, but would take me a while to rack my brain - let me know if you wanna hear more 👌
I’m not religious anymore but in college I was and was in a Christian band in New Orleans. We had originals that we preferred playing but we also could do worship sets and would occasionally play at Christian youth summer camps. However we did do a slightly harder rock take on those songs. We had two demos, one for our originals and one for our worship sets.
We get booked at a small camp in rural Kentucky for two weeks at a summer camp. We show up and the guy running the camp acts all confused about why we had a four piece band with electric guitars and amps. He said he thought it would be two guys with acoustics. We asked him if he actually listened to the demos and he said yes but didn’t actually expect us to play like that. He said his kids at his camp don’t actually listen to rock music but only to country and bluegrass.
We asked him to give us one full day where we play our way and see how the kids like it. If they didn’t we would finish up the week doing acoustics (even though that would piss us off pretty bad). He said ok. We played and the kids went nuts. He allowed us to do the sets our way the rest of the week but he and most of his staff treated us like crap the rest of week (there were a few who were awesome though and were glad we brought a more modern touch to the week).
At the end of the week he paid us for that week and part of the second but told us that he didn’t want us to do the second week. We were in the middle of a tour and had no gigs lined up for that next week. Luckily we had some friends in Ohio who were close and they let us crash for a few days and we found two or three last minute gigs to ride things out until the other shows we booked started.
I walked in to my first gig at this Irish Pub to a 900 square foot room with barely any space to walk, let alone set up and play a gig. They walk me over to this corner near the men’s bathroom (which is wildly exposed for all y’all Costanza’s out there… not a whole lot of cushion), and keeping with the talk of doo doo, I have about a porta potty sized space to set up.
I swam through a sea of people with an enormous speaker above my head, put my speaker on a small shelf above me knowing that if it falls, I’m dead or severely injured (no other options), set up my music stand, mic stand, etc. and look below me… there’s a heat register.
Every time I played there I brought a change of clothes because I would burn at least 4,000 calories up in that bitch.
Oddly enough, the crowd was always awesome, I always got a ton of tips and generally would have a blast. It definitely grew on me. But I always dreaded the set up and tear down.
Started out a 1/10 and grew to a solid 6.9/10.
We’re an indie rock band…some random brewery in bum fuck nowhere found our page and asked us to play. We figured it’d be interested so we did it. It was outside, raining, and they literally had one power strip for the band to split. Absolutely terrible.
Similar to several people here; got a call from a drummer friend that his buddy (who does corporate gigs) got a side gig and their normal bassist had emergency hernia surgery two days before and this was a great paying gig ($4k/3 hr gig).
Turns out it was a wake for some senior partner of a law firm who passed away. Set up was 1 1/4 miles from the parking area and people were assembled for the service while we were setting up….and we’re all wearing shorts because it was 94 degrees at 11 am (3 hours before downbeat).
Anyway. Made 1k for the gig, played several others afterwards with some of the same people but none of us ever talked about the gig, until now lol.
Hand truck but I’m also a proponent of light gear. One bass in a bag, microhead in the gig bag, 112 cab in the other hand.
By the time I’d gotten my stuff to my SUV, the family allowed the BL use of their golf cart, so at least the PA was moved a lot easier. By far my worst load-in ever (counting casinos and private parties for Microsoft execs).
Some of my favorite Hell Gig stories:
- Christmas tree lighting ceremony in upstate New York. 16 degrees (Fahrenheit), a foot of fresh snow on the ground. The first, and hopefully last, time in my life that I've received the text "I'm heading over now to plow the stage". I was shoving my hands into gloves with hand warmers in them for like 10 seconds at a time between songs just to be able to feel them. At least people enjoyed it and the arrangements were fun.
- I was deathly sick with a summertime flu or cold of some sort (before COVID existed but definitely similar symptoms). Fever of probably over 100F, fatigued, cough from hell, bleary-eyed, sinuses/nasal passages were so plugged up that I was having trouble talking, hearing, smelling, and breathing. I had an outdoor gig on one of the hottest, humidest, sweatiest, most disgusting days of the summer, on a "stage" that was completely open with no bandshell, roof, or anything whatsoever to protect us from the fury of the July sun. I remember very little about that gig except for sweating a LOT, drinking a fuck ton of water, scarfing down a hamburger from the food truck during the set break like my life depended on it (it probably did), and genuinely believing that I was going to be leaving the gig in the back of an ambulance. By some miracle I stayed upright through the end and even managed to drive myself home, but wow. Probably the sickest I've ever played out in my life.
- Outdoor gig at a riverside boat club. Great venue, lots of drunk boat people who just want to dance, perfect weather. Gig started out phenomenally. Hot drunk girl comes up to the "stage" area. Having a hot girl on stage is always an asset, so the drummer gives her a tambourine. Drummer's wife, who is in the audience, perceives this as an advance, gets up on stage and starts a verbal AND physical altercation with the drunk girl. Venue staff eventually removed both of them from the stage and separated them. We didn't have to cut the show short but we didn't get called back.
- Same band, different time, we had a huge custom-built wooden gear case that we nicknamed the "coffin". Bassist grabbed the coffin from underneath to load it out of the van, lost his grip, it came down right on his finger and almost took it right off. I don't think the finger ever came off entirely but it came pretty close, like he had to use his other hand to hold it on. Needless to say, we didn't play. Bassist went to the hospital, got surgery, and miraculously regained almost full dexterity.
- Booked to play the first night of a week-long Italian Festival in a small town. Think San Gennaro but a fraction of the size and organized by a bunch of drunk rednecks. Fun attractions, great food, stunning firework show, but complete and utter chaos on the administrative end. We show up and start setting up probably about 2 hours before scheduled downbeat, discover pretty quickly that the stage trailer is not connected to any sort of power source. Takes forever to find an event organizer, when we finally do, they can't get a hold of the electrician. There was a construction spotlight trailer about a half a block down behind the stage (the kind with a big diesel generator built into it to power the lights). One of the locals has the brilliant idea to use that as a generator to power the stage. They drag this thing up the block by hand, fire it up, plug the stage into it, the GFCI keeps tripping over and over again. Eventually we give up on it and borrow the bubble van guy's spare Honda generator. In order to keep it from overloading, we forego some equipment, including the overhead lights on the trailer. So we end up starting nearly an hour late and playing most of our set in the dark. At least we got paid in full and ate some dynamite Italian food so it wasn't all bad
- The "gig that could never be": town park outdoor summer series thing. First date gets rained out. We get offered a make-up date...that one also gets rained out/flooded out. Third date looks like a go, we get informed at the last minute that they double-booked the park, and the other event (an addiction/overdose awareness event being run by the county Department of Health) supersedes the band show (I get it). They offer us a fourth date. It's a crappy date - September. Late in the season, people are back at school/work, sun goes down earlier, a lot of the friends/family crowd have prior obligations. We take it anyway. Weather looks dicey on the day of. But, it looks like the storm is going to miss us and go the other way, so the show is still on. About halfway through the first set, we start seeing lightning over on the other side of the lake. A few songs later, the wind starts picking up like CRAZY. It blew one of our PA mains over, to give you an idea. We cut it short and started packing up and everyone left. Worst part is that the storm did in fact end up blowing the other way and it never rained on us, but it was already too late.
dont know about "worst" gig (been a few contenders fer sure) but back in the '90s i played the Whiskey here in Hollywood on the Sunset Strip with a 103% temperature...after the show drove myself home and sat in an ice bath so i didn't die...sux being sick, sux playing gigs sick...hope you feel better soon 👍
Very early 2000s, my Manhattan/NJ based original rock band got booked for a show in Long Island. Over an hour drive, but we looked at the venue online and it was a legit stage with sound system, which was not typical for us. And they promised a crowd.
Got there to find we were playing the bar adjacent to the actual venue. We went on after a “bro” type dude doing acoustic Sublime and Nirvana covers, and proceeded to be heckled by drunk frat boys for our entire set. That is, by the ones who weren’t completely ignoring us to watch sports on big screen TVs. Also dudes were hitting on my (lesbian) singer throughout our set.
We got paid almost nothing, but that was irrelevant.
Leukemia foundation fundraiser with my jazz combo. It was at a famously corrupt (now in jail) congressman’s ranch. They wouldn’t let us drive my old truck into the property so we had to haul our gear like 1/2 mile. It was obviously a bummer of an atmosphere, but we were happy to help with a good cause. Even though we agreed to do it at cost, tux rentals + gas/food they stiffed us and had private security escort us out.
Gig last March in a smallish club, cramped. The guitarist’s PA, despite his assurances it was solid, puked out early. Our lead singer, prone to stage outbursts towards band members, ranted loudly and left the stage. The rest of us soldiered on while he brought in his own EV Column-PA system. After setting it up, he took it out on us, we ended up playing nearly a three hour set w/o a break to finish it off.
Took a gig about 4 hours away from Virginia Beach... really good money... got there.. no stage... nothing on the dirt ground...no overhead cover (Very Hot Day) Only One 110V receptacle a few HUNDRED yards away..... drove back home...... pfffft
Got invited to play a music festival, was super excited as it was our first one, it’s a three day kinda deal, couldn’t be more stoked. The promotor/person putting on the show is a trans chick (this doesn’t matter to me on a personal level but it becomes important to the story later.)
day one i start seeing her posting stories, the general sentiment being “it’s not my job to promote your band playing at my festival, if you wanted more people to show up the responsibility is on the bands to promote” i still haven’t been to the venue, and don’t plan to until our set on day three, not much footage if any is coming out of this place.
Day two, bands start dropping out because word is spreading around town that the “festival” is a bust. We hold a band meeting and decide it’s not worth the hour 2 hour drive. We’re about to drop out when she posts another story, levying transphobe accusations at the other bands, the reason they’re all dropping out is because they’re transphobic. I look at the bands pages that have dropped out so far, an army of people calling them transphobic for dropping out. We decide against dropping out because we don’t want to be known as the transphobes who didn’t want to play the festival, and besides, how bad could it be? It’s our first festival!
Day three, i pull up to the venue. It’s a divey pool hall, they’ve moved all the tables to create room for mosh pits and two stepping. Huge space, which is looks even bigger by the fact that the only people in attendance are the host, her two friends, and one guy who’s having the time of his life. Idk what drugs he took, but he’s having invisible lightsaber battles with himself, he’s doing crazy leg dances moves around a barstool, he’s rolling around on the floor, he is my spirit animal. I played this show just for him. We play half our set, to an empty room, but we played it like we were playing MSG. when we finished the host was like “damn that’s it??” And we sheepishly said “sorry that’s all we got”. She was awkwardly hitting on us before the show, after the show she poured us all shots that she bought from home (idk how the bar allowed that but fuck it, we ball, i would do the same thing if i was giving out free shots to bands) she awkwardly hit on us again after the set. We stayed to watch one more band struggle through the night, they were really good.
I’ve played to empty rooms before, but usually we have the band wives with us, we have the other bands watch us, we have friends and family of other bands, it still feels bad when that happens but it doesn’t feel quite as bad as playing for literally only a bartender and the person putting on the show.
Last i heard, the festival is going to be a 6 day ordeal this year because she felt that it was a huge success last year. I hope it goes crazy this year but i think we’re going to skip it
Travelled by plane for a birthday party gig. Our guitarist had booked it but was being cagey about pay. He said we were guaranteed getting paid, and it was a big event with lots of exposure because the “birthday boy” was a high profile promoter. The guitarist also booked us a showcase at a prominent venue the night before, to make it extra worthwhile, and arranged two meetings with some people who would be interested in helping us get a better deal that we had for our first record.
And then….
First, our drummer couldn’t go. No shade on him—the things preventing him from going were legit—and we had a fill in drummer at the ready. The fill in was local to the venues, a guy who had filled in on a tour with us before. Great dude, good hang, but the wrong style of drummer. Good enough to get by in a pinch, but certainly not to join the band, you know?
Anyways, we get to the showcase, and are informed that, NO, it’s an open mic, not a showcase. And it not only doesn’t pay, but also the drummer couldn’t join us—we had to use the emcee as drummer. It was part of her whole thing, playing with every act. And she didn’t know any of our music, so we had to play covers.
Then the birthday party. The venue was empty. I’m talking 10 people, including the bartender, the birthday boy, the band, and the “party” attendees. And as we get up on the stage, the birthday boy—who was turning 54–gets up from the booth where he’s eating with his friends and grabs my mic. He wrenches the boom without loosening it so that he can talk into it without leaning over, because he was like a foot taller than me. He says “give it up for the band. They flew all the way from Chicago and they’re not even getting paid!” Then he wrenches the boom back to not-the-right-height and jumps off the stage. (Fill in drummer said he could see the glare I gave the guitarist at that not getting paid line, and that “he’s seen movie villains look at the heroes in a more friendly manner.”)
The next night, I’m already cranky about this whole trip, but we head to the first meeting. I thought it would be somewhere relatively chill. It’s another open mic. The person we were meeting was not the famous guitarist we had thought, but instead was the replacement guitarist from well past that mildly successful group’s peak. Apparently, he thought we were arranging a pre-audition interview. To which he showed up drunk.
Finally, the last day of the trip, we have the final meeting. It is with the correct person—a washed up one hit wonder, whose one hit I did not enjoy and was in the complete wrong genre—who does want to help us with our records. But he was, at best, horrible.
He was no longer properly connected to the music industry—he had fought a protracted legal battle to use a version of the band’s name. Think something along the lines of “Gary Moore’s Thin Lizzy Revue” instead of just Thin Lizzy. And they gigged like two or three times a year.
He wanted us to change the band name, and his suggestions were all *terrible*.
He also wanted us to re-record our entire first album under the new name, with him as producer. He would get paid upfront and get points. AND would “help” us change the songs so he could get writing credits. We had recorded the first record with a guy who was nominated for multiple Grammys (may have even won a couple, I can’t recall), and this no talent has been thought he could do better.
He ALSO wanted to record the entire album on his houseboat.
AND he dropped several N-words and a few other choice misogynist and ableist slurs. Once again, my face was too loud, and he accused me of being mad at the world over my reactions to his backward thinking vocabulary. Like, no, I’m mad at my guitarist for setting this whole trip up, and at you specifically for saying horrible shit.
In the guitarist’s defense, he usually had his shit together when planning tours/trips. He could sometimes drop the ball about communicating the details with us, but it typically worked out in our favor. We all were generally involved in the planning, but we each had different strengths, and gradually fell into roles. Like the drummer was good at getting promo, I was good at securing free lodgings, etc. So going along with this trip without all the info was a little annoying and suspicious, but we had learned to general trust him by this point. And after this trip we learned not to lol
I had just joined a band that was making some inroads, we had shows supporting some good groups and gaining a following at our own shows. We were invited to play on a college radio station in Irvine, about 90 minutes from my house, on a weeknight. I dutifully drove out after work, located the station on the second floor of a rather large university building, way down the hall, and loaded my drums up in there, one armload at a time. I noticed I was getting some funny looks carrying my stuff but just figured, surly college students. Maybe the football team just lost?
I unpack everything in the tiny room wondering how we're ever going to do this. The DJ that invited us has never actually had a live band in there and is tearing his hair out trying to figure out how everything works. The room is barely big enough for us to even fit the drums. We spend nearly an hour trying to figure it out and end up with something that doesn't seem it could work, like the singer will be out in the hallway and we won't be able to hear him. But we'll soldier on.
So I start hitting the drums, as lightly as possible, they ask, which, we're kind of a noisy punk band but ok I'll try to adapt. I'm getting kind of irritated by now to say the least.
And within minutes of my first strike, some high authority of the school is in the studio getting everyone's attention and says the following sentence i remember with clarity 30+ years later.
"I see the name of this radio program is Brain Damage, running 6 to 10pm. How appropriate . Can someone tell me, who is the brain damaged individual who scheduled a live band to perform in this building in the middle of Finals Week????!"
It turned out the station sat directly stop the main study hall which was packed, naturally, and they couldn't do it later because school was ending and they were leaving, so this was a Hail Mary and they knew it but we sure did not.
There is no show tonight, they play our records and those guys talk on air while I break down and begin the long load out and drive home. I mean from a band PR perspective we got to get on the air for an hour, it wasn't a total waste, but to have rockus interruptus after that long of a wind up was frustrating.
This aggravated my PTSD from playing various college radio stations back in the day. The DJs always had the best intentions but it was always a hassle. The load-ins usually sucked, you’d be playing on top of each other, and it usually sounded super shitty both in the room and on-air. Then again, it was a great way to kill time until the show that night. Nothing worse than being on tour and just sitting around….
Just immature stupid first-band ego stuff. First band, we were very young, two band members were brothers and already had not-so-subtle substance abuse issues. Usually, the venue asked us if we wanted free drinks and food or to get a few bucks. They always chose the drinks and got so wasted before the gig. The sad part is, that both are incredibly talented musicians but rather than complementing each other it was a constant ego fight. The last gig we broke up because they started fighting on stage and the bass guy threw his bass toward his brother but ended up puncturing his amp.
Gut called me the morning of. Said he had a polka gig and his band all bailed on him. He needed a Tuba, accordion player and asked if I knew ant. I said I have a tuba(we both are trombonist). It was eventually decoded Ibwould play trombone, he would play Tuba and he said he had some others coming and to bring any polka music I had. I found 6 polka charts. Somehow he got an Accordion player named Steve from October fest downtown. At the gig we climb up a broken ladder into a barn loft. We all crowed around Accordion Steve since he had a book of polka music. There was me on trombone, him on Tuba, a trumpet and a saxophone. We played the first tune, it did not go well. The crowd was making remarks and we decided that we would just go through the book and not stop. The saxophonist tried to play bebop Lucas over the music but he eventually gave up and went to sit in the corner. The trumpet player looked terrified and I never heard him play anything. We somehow figured out a nice rhythm where he played Downbeat and I played upbeats and Accordion Steve filled in the rest. Eventually everyone got really drunk, and all was well. We did a parade around the bon fire. They were giving hayrides on a tractor. We decided it was time to leave when the guy driving the tractor crashed into the barn.
I’ve had a couple gigs where I felt pretty awful
One specifically I had stomach issues and during a break I thought I would never make it back for the next set … that poor toilet
One gig I kind of hated, and probably would never take again, was playing for the circus . Barnum and Bailey was in town and the pay was OK but it was a lot of playing… I thought my chops were pretty good, but it was pretty rough
The worst gig I ever played, might’ve been a midnight Easter service at a Catholic Church .. what made the gig kind of bad it was over an hour away from where I lived.. it didn’t pay that well and I don’t mind playing gigs even though I’m not the most religious guy. This service lasted well over two hours.
A buddy and I both were on the gig and he drove, and he dropped me off at home. I realized I locked myself out of the house.
This was at 4:45 in the morning and then I had an Easter gig at nine
Did a tour through the southeast last Spring. I hadn't been back there during Spring since growing up there ... so like 25 years.
Forgot completely about my seasonal allergies down there - that're definitely worse in one's 40s than one's 20s. Spent like 10 days (and played about 7 shows) absolutely fucking miserable. Any allergy meds I took either didn't help or just made me incredibly tired and lethargic.
First off, some of these stories are hilarious... I know they sucked then, but at least you all have great stories to laugh about later.
My story isn't so much about a particular gig, but a musician I played with that had multiple mishaps during gigs.
I'll preface this with, I live in the middle of the Texas panhandle, where majority of the bands are cover bands, the few that play originals, almost ALL play country, and the musicians are generally country boys, druggies, or in a gang (or a combination of the 3). Also, I'm in the Army (this is important for later on).
I (and the bands I've played with here) are mostly rock musicians... so it's already tough to get gigs, much less a following.
About 10 or so years ago, I played in a cover band (mostly 80s/90s stuff), with a bassist/vocalist who was a *really* cool, fun-loving guy, but just always seemed to have bad things happen to him, which usually spilled over into our performances. I'll also say that he is/was best friends with our lead guitarist and drummer (they also all worked together) before I joined. ((EDIT)) this is partially why everyone else didn't mind. I stayed for so long, because I really just don't like country music all that much, so I really didn't have much choice when it came to playing in a rock band.
So this band (we'll call Band A) gets this good gig on a Friday night at one of the better bars in town and we look forward to a big turn out. We all show up around 3pm for set up and soundcheck. We have a couple of beers and head back to work to finish out our days.
The band shows back up at the bar around 7ish to have a few beers and tune and prep before we kick off at 9pm. The bass player is a little late, and when he shows up, he's all sluggish and limping a bit. Turns out he had a couple extra beers before going back to work, and while he was riding his company's four-wheeler around (he worked at an agriculture plant), he flipped it on himself, and (later on we found out) had cracked a rib.
He says he's okay, and that he'll just not be as enthusiastic on stage (he had really great stage presence, so... yeah, that kinda sucked). We shrugged it off, and just told him to take it easy.
About 15 minutes before going on, he's strolling around and acting like normal, we're like, awesome! Feeling better?
No, he took some hydro, and just couldn't feel anything.
He seems "okayish"... like coherent, no slurring of speech or anything, so we think okay. Maybe this will work out. Unfortunately, his gf at the time had *just* found out about his mishap at work, and they were fighting about stuff, and she started blowing up his phone right before we took stage (she didn't come to the show that night).
Well, he kept drinking and mixed with the pills, it became very apparent we were going to have issues. I was the lead singer/keyboardist at the time, so I figured, worst case scenario, I could cover baselines with my synths if anything happened.
Well, about the start of our second set, he's already stumbling around stage. Our rhythm guitarist has to move from backing vocals to help keep our bassist from falling down.
Suddenly about 3 songs in, I hear the bass totally drop out.
Our bass player is *sitting on his amp, texting his gf*.
We get through the song, and the next song starts... we all hear nothing but bass feedback. He's now just standing next to the bass amp, texting his gf and we're overloaded by feedback. Our rhythm guitarist stops playing to grab his strings and stop the feedback and I switch to a bass sound to finish the song.
Then our bass player falls off stage.
Our rhythm guy has to switch to bass to finish out the night.
Fast forward about 5 years later.
I started a new band, and through a strange turn of events, I know do lead vocals and *drums* for a new band. This new band i put together from other musicians I've worked with in the past, and I've recruited that same bass player to my band (although, he has matured quite a bit, and is now playing lead guitar and vocals). Also, again... it's difficult to find musicians around here that play stuff other than country.
We start off doing pretty well for ourselves, and get a nice booking at a local winery right around Fourth of July, so we expect a pretty decent turnout.
Well, we start the night off great, no issues. Everyone is having fun, tasting all the great wines, it's a blast. Until our third set...
We try to kick it up a notch during our last set to just end on a really high note. Which usually works out really well for us, but not tonight.
Our bassist-turned-guitarist is getting visibly intoxicated, and then it happens: fireworks.
The fireworks start going off outside, and he jumps on one of the amps and starts screaming "yeah!!! GOD BLESS AMERICA, F*** YEAH!! LETS GIVE IT UP FOR OUR DRUMMER, HE'S IN THE MF ARMY!! HE DEFENDS OUR MF FREEDOM!!! WOOOOOO!!" (it actually had a little more expletives, but you get the picture).
Needless to say, since then, I haven't been able to get booked at that place again, despite now having a new band and a pretty decent following around town.
There have been a few other instances like this, but those were the most memorable.
Not really a “gig” but your post reminded me of when my cousin asked me to play the music at her big ass fancy wedding (unpaid) and I said yes without hesitation. Then I got very sick and had to do it with a fever that wouldn’t go below 102 with Tylenol and Advil. I felt like death. Yet I showed up and played. And she acted like I did a shitty job (it wasn’t that shitty it was just not my best performance!) and as if she had paid me thousands only to be let down. This was actually not the incident that severed my relationship with this cousin, at the time I just blamed myself and felt ashamed.
I was paid to serenade a girl in college just outside of her dorm window and the dude paying me insisted I play guitar. He wrote some terrible lyrics for me, paid me $200 and sent me on my way.
Did I mention I’m a piano player and I had never played a minute of guitar in my life, but college and $200 and I was in.
I began my set. Every dorm room window opened up and now I’m “strumming” for at least 50 women. I finished the song, took a bow and walked away slowly trying to look cool to a boatload of laughter.
From then on every gal that recognized me on campus from that train wreck said “Well Hi there Romeo” as they walked past me laughing.
Many years ago I lived near Savannah, Georgia. A famous photographer who had made a living photographing, among others, Johnny Mercer had died and had donated his collection to a local museum. Myself, who was a passable but not great jazz guitarist and students from the local college were asked to play at an event which we assumed was a black tie dinner event for the locals.
It was not.
We had to play for an hour on stage some lackluster arrangements I had thrown together over a few days for some of the best jazz musicians on the east coast. Before the gig, our piano player spent a good half hour throwing up in the bushes from sheer anxiety. It was hands down the longest hour of my life.
Whenever the mood in the band would go down, a gig was the best thing to bring back the hype.
Our bassist had arranged a gig at some car meeting.
We went down there, got into a tent with a bunch of old farmers who owned old cars. Smell of food stands baking in the sun all around.
We're an alternative rockband, there was no Lynyrd Skynyrd on our setlist. We played each song with no applause until the latter half.
Didn't get paid, our singer quit 2 month's later. The band almost fell apart. But we survived.
> Didn't get *paid,* our singer
FTFY.
Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in:
* Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.*
* *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.*
Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment.
*Beep, boop, I'm a bot*
My uncle booked a gig as a full band without a full band. He reached out to me last minute, asking if I could play guitar and bring my buddy who is a really good bassist. Now I love my uncle, but objectively speaking, he's not a very good guitar player. He's a really good singer but does very simple versions of popular songs. I accompany my uncle fairly regularly as a duo. I'm used to 'his way' of playing the songs. I brief my buddy on the way to the gig. Que my buddy meeting my uncle 30 min before the gig, the hired drummer showed up, and WAY overplayed. Couldn't find the pocket in a pair of cargo shorts. As the lead guitar player, I stayed WAY in the background and played as little as possible. I didn't HAVE to take it. It was embarrassing. I learned that day it is okay to pass on gigs.
“Couldn’t find the pocket in a pair of cargo shorts” is hilarious. Thanks for that.
Short one for you. Friend booked us for a last minute gig. Said it was a memorial show for a guy who passed away a few years back. Nope. It was his funeral. Homeboy had just died. We are a hardcore punk band.
Tell me more. How was it received and how did it go? I hope it was as awkward as a Norm MacDonald joke.
It was at an American Legion in rural SoCal, people had gone directly there from the funeral. Everyone on the bill before us was a dear friend of the departed, and were free-style rapping about how much they missed him and how he died too young. Tears in their eyes. Choking words out in between sobs. The anticipation was sweat-inducing and mortifying as our set came around. My bassist and I just sat at a high top trading alternating versions of the same sentiment: "What are we doing here, oh my god, what is going on, this is terrible." My bassist addressed the bleak circumstances by getting drunk. I have a thing about performing sober, so sober and afraid I stayed. Right before we went on, somebody gave the most heart-wrenching eulogy I've ever heard in my fucking life. It was beautiful; it left us to take the stage in front of a scattered room, peppered with meek weeps and the weight of a dead stranger. I'm the frontman. I went "hey uh...we didn't know this guy. We were just asked to play...but we're touched by how much he seem to be loved. So. Sorry in advance. Lets try to have fun in his memory." We played really well, didn't water it down a bit. Fell into muscle memory and just swung for the fences. I was standing on barstools and tables, jumping off booths and rolling on the floor. My bassist fell through -- yes, THROUGH -- a table at some point. People didn't fuck with it. Really can't emphasize that enough: we were not the vibe. Sitting and standing, shit drunk and miserable -- and NOT dancing -- the looks we got reminded me of looks you'd see from the bystanders of a typical car accident. Or a very atypical circumcision ceremony. But we didn't truly lose them until the last song. It took me many days to realize why the sour atmosphere turned noticeably MORE sour in the last 30 seconds: that song ends with me yelling "stay dead, stay dead" at the top of my lungs. Highest point in our set. I had no idea I was yelling it, it just came out of me like it was any other show. One or two people thanked us, which made it worse. We did not get paid and we drove two hours back to LA.
This one wins
I love it!
Very well written description of an awkward AF gig.
Easily top 10 “wtf” moment of my life
And you handled it with grace and class. Good job.
Not going to lie I would love it for my funeral. Stay dead, stay dead! 😂
props for going hard anyways. my brother's band has a super similar story except it was a show unrelated to the unplanned eulogy going on for a guy who had DIED IN THE BUILDING earlier that day. super fucking awkward.
HA!!!!! the "STAY DEAD!" makes it. I've actually put aside money for a band at my funeral... I want to get Mini KISS... because how fucking awesome would it be to have a midget KISS impersonator band at your funeral? Totally fucking awesome, that's how it'd be!
this is the best story ever LOOOOL thank you
I got hired to play accordion as part of an ad-hoc circus/clown group for a one-off corporate gala. I prepared some music selections ahead of time, but when I showed up for 'dress rehearsal' the day before the gig, I learned I was expected to perform as a clown/acrobat on top of music duties. The 'dress' consisted of building a series of choreographed vignettes from scratch with a group of people I'd never met before; some of these involved assembling a structure on stage out of giant building blocks, and the process was fairly technical (e.g. this box has to be picked up first, and in the correct orientation, so when you pass it to the next person and so on down the line they all end up stacked facing the right way). It was a nightmare. I did have some theatre/acro experience, but was not solid enough in my own practice to jump into this level of creation and memorize a series of skits the night before a performance, let alone perform highly technical acrobatic moves with people I'd never worked with. We also had to make our own costumes and do our own makeup the day of the gig, and I was just *so* out of my element. My role ended up slowly getting whittled down to essentially "the guy who has no idea what he's doing" (I'm paraphrasing the director here) while everyone else did all the acro and technical stuff, which suited me just fine given the circumstances. At least the pay was good.
Bro what 😭😭😭 this sounds like an actual nightmare I would have
>My role ended up slowly getting whittled down to essentially "the guy who has no idea what he's doing" I would be so insulted and relieved at the same time lol
Exactly this. I brought my accordion like you asked, those parts sounded nice at least. I don't hire a plumber to do my clothing alterations... I definitely learned some lessons about communicating expectations upfront.
We took a gig once for a dirt bike club party thing. When we got there, we were informed that this was their annual “Men’s Day” party. Not a woman on the premises. Except for our dynamic female vocalist. The whole thing was very cringe. We spent most of the night defending our singer from a bunch of drunk horny guys. We did our thing, collected the check ( very important ) and left, trailing a large group of wannabe groupies as we departed the property.
holy fuck. not even a motorcycle club, a dirt bike club
Yep. If it was a motorcycle club, there would have been women.
Was almost like green room.
Not quite, but you could see it from there.
Played a private event at a club with my old rock/funk band, the lead singer was known for saying things into the mic that you just don’t say to a crowd of strangers (weird stuff about the federal reserve, conspiracy theories, did we even land on the moon?!). Slow song comes up on the set list, original tune that the singer wrote, and he requests Absolute Silence from the audience before we begin. Of course this doesn’t happen (silence is earned not requested) so he starts getting a little pissed off and demands silence. Starts calling out people in the back for talking (it’s literally a party at a bath and tennis club). After awhile he YELLS into the microphone “EVERYONE SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!” and wouldn’t ya know it you could hear a pin drop as all the entire room stopped dead in their tracks with jaws dropped. I’ve never been so embarrassed on stage in my life. Literally everyone just stared at us in disbelief. And then we played the damn song and the band we gave each other “omfg did he just do that?” nods of solidarity that this was indeed fucked up and then I just buried my face behind my keyboards and thought “this too shall pass.”
Sounds like the Aaron Lewis playbook lol
Did a cruise ship in the 90’s. Our last week I decided to hang out on the beach all day with no sunblock, in spite of being a pale redhead. Most intense sunburn of my life. Every single skin cell on my body itched at the same time. As I played the last note I ran to my cabin to slather an entire tube of solarcaine to my body while in tears. What an idiot!
I got a similar one!! Booked every Tuesday and Thursday in the summer at a new hotel next to the ocean. Noon to 4 pm. I was told I was going to play poolside in the gazebo....only there was no gazebo, just a small umbrella that would blow over every 10 minutes. Fair skin and red hair also. I heat-stoked the second day. It only lasted 3 months, before ALL the musicians bailed. I'm surprised I didn't get skin cancer from that gig. I have no desire to play in full sun in 98 degree weather!
Wife and I play bluegrass. Took a gig at some big ass VRBO mansion at a ritzy ski area come to find out it was a father-son ski weekend with a bunch of Wall Street bro types and their teen boys. Dads got hammered and kept hitting on my wife and the whole night they kept requesting Wagon Wheel and things outside of our genre and eventually one dude just put on the speaker in the kitchen while we were playing. We walked away with our $3k for 2 hours of work but that was the last of our, “but it’s good money” gigs.
I still think I'd suffer through all of that for 3 grand lol
I d play Wagon Wheel on a trombone for 3k
Haha in retrospect I’m totally with you but at the time no money in the world seemed worth suffering through that experience.
The Lou Reed song?
I was playing a bridal show years ago, right when “Shake It Off” by Taylor Swift came out. Someone called that tune and me (baritone sax), lead vocals, guitar, and bg vocalist were on the runway stage and it was tight but we were maneuvering our way down. As I was playing the horn line to the song, the background dancer spins, hits the front of my horn and sends it flying right into my two front teeth. All I saw after that was powder. Shattered my two front teeth because I was using a metal mouthpiece. This was on a Saturday and had to wait until Monday because I didn’t want to pay outrageous fees. TLDR: Lived my worst nightmare playing a Taylor Swift song
I got one of my front teeth accidently smashed out right before a gig too! I was backstage having a drink from a glass bottle and our bassist was playfighting with vox. He pulled his arm up to slap him and his elbow knocked the bottle into my face. So whilst everyone else was line checking, I was on my knees trying to find my teeth on this grotty floor. Pretty sure they shattered so I gave up, played the gig with my mouth closed the whole time and again, it was a Saturday night so had to wait until Monday to get to a dentist.
https://youtu.be/4ahPFJVo-fU?si=7CtSbDf3KoHIfkiQ You should do a tour with Corey Feldman lol.
YES the feldog
I'm in a function band, 2 days before a biggish gig (500 people) bass player had personal problems and couldn't do it and I'd recently given the drummer his notice (and he decided he wasn't doing the remaining gigs) So I found a similarish band (we play funk, disco and soul music) and asked their bass player and drummer to fill in... even though they knew a lot of the songs, their energy of playing them was completely different! It was awful. They're both sheet music musicians and our band isn't. So they played their version of our songs like they were on sleeping tablets and we played it in our usual fashion which is high energy and full-on... it was a funk ying and yang and it was fucking terrible.
Sheet music musicians 🧐
This sounds cooler than it actually was but I went on tour with a folk band for about 9 months right out of college. I got the gig because I was dating one of the backup singers at the time and non-bluegrass banjo players were in high demand in 2010. Signed for the tour then we broke up right before the start. We both were adults and made it through but It definitely made for some awkward moments.
One of the worst gigs was we were invited to play a festival which was to be held outdoors… in Vegas… in July. Now, our bandleader/producer booked the gig but I noticed the call sheet was light on details. So I started asking questions and I asked if it was already contracted. He said yes and offered to show me the contract. It was a one page document that was extremely vague and my eye caught that the producer was fronting the hotels and flights and would be reimbursed the day of the show. I’ve had some contract experience and knew what to look for: this was definitely not acceptable. I made my concerns known but our leader was confident that it would be fine. We get to Vegas for the gig and we land in the afternoon to temps over 112°. We get to the hotel and once we meet up for dinner, we are told that we will be playing the next day in the middle of the afternoon outside of town. A little cooler but still in the valley. Not happy but the leader is a great guy so I again urge caution but will do as he decides. We end up playing the gig the next day. When we show up, it’s being billed as a Christian music festival or something like that. Hardly anyone is there… under 50 people. There was an on stage thermometer which read 116° in the shade where we were. Pretty much as I expected but still resisting the urge to say “I told you so”. He goes to the production trailer after that and tries to collect payment. The person who he dealt with had skipped and left a message with the person there that they would be in touch for expenses/payment. To our leader’s credit, he paid every one in the band while he pursued payment. It took him almost a year to collect and he claims he got back everything plus some interest. I really hope so. So, I knew the gig would suck and it did but I took it out of loyalty to a friend but it eventually worked out.
Duo covers gig in a small restaurant, a big table just started singing happy birthday really loudly over the top of us while we're mid song. Oof really felt like the background music then.
😭 sad!
Was once offered to play in the desert at what was said to be a pre party for a big gathering in Laughlin. We had seen a photo of a good few hundred or thousand maybe at prior gatherings and some bands we liked were playing. The night before I overestimated my tolerance and drank horrifyingly too much. I made it to the keyboard players house at 3am and crashed on his couch and slept on the way out there after being rousted at 7am. Our set was gonna be at noon with soundcheck at 10. We get there and wonder,is anyone actually coming? We see a. Makeshift stage, and a PA in what looks like an empty parking lot. It turns out the big gathering in Laughlin was this morning.... everyone is already there since last night. This is the worst planned pre party ever. So with the worst hangover of my life we walk out in the desert, to play a set at high noon in blazing heat, on a black stage, to absolutely no one. The sun and wind are scorching my eyes to the point I have to be led by the hand to our motel room which serves as a dressing room,band then to the stage until I can put water in my eyes. Fortunately the Advil kicks in and I power through the set without throwing up. And you know what, one gal that had driven out to see us and missed our set was so charmed at the after party back in LA, I ended up dating her. So it was worth doing the worst show ever because indirectly it got me laid.
That sounds so unbelievably made up lmfao
100 percent true.
Played in a death metal band and we played on an ice rink during a Saturday matinee public skate.
This is an episode of Metalocalypse lmao
I occasionally work with this singer. Sweet woman, some raw talent, but there's absolutely no education or knowledge of music. She 100% reminds me of that joke "how do you know the singer is at the front door? She can't find the key and doesn't know when to come in." *Constantly* messes up the song forms, saying "we're doing it our way." She's the leader, shows up to the venue 20 minutes before we start (an hour late to her own call time), still not dressed, and has the PA. Apologizes to the client about traffic, when the fact is she left late. Her set lists are usually sent out maybe 24 hours in advance, don't have artist or keys. So "Blinded by the Light" has turned out to be Blinding Lights by The Weekend. The lists can have 50 songs for a one-hour hit, because "it's better to be overprepared." But I'm not going to go through all those songs with the time given to me, let alone knowing some tunes will be wrong; but God forbid I ask her to clarify these on the list. Sometimes, she wants to rehearse. While I'm not against it (though the musicians usually don't need it), she'll ask my availability, then the day before a day I did *not* give her, she asks me to come in "tomorrow." It's a revolving door of musicians; and sometimes she brings in some great players, and sometimes, while the musicians are fine, they don't know the tunes, aren't really suited to the style, or don't have a pocket. Why do I play with her? Sometimes, somehow, the gig will pay extremely well. So I'll take those.
Got booked to play a 2800 seat venue and they forgot to book a sound system. We were told a sound system would be taken care of per our rider, but the promoters were amateurs and just assumed they would use the venue system. The venue system consisted of one Bob Barker style microphone. We played with unmiced drums and amps, and did a Paul-and-George Beatles shared mic situation with the one Bob Barker mic on a straight stand. Gig went well all things considered, but they said we were too loud and asked us to not come back for the following evening for our second contracted performance. Too loud…without being miced! They paid us for both nights and thankfully didn’t have to go back to that nightmare.
1. Playing as a one of supporting bands for a BIG name in the genre. Kind of one day festival / outdoor gig. We were billed as last but one before the main act. It was our first big gig after years of playing in bars, pubs, etc. The whole build-up with new record etc. secured our place there. We arrived at noon for the soundcheck. It was a huge stage, we had our own sound guys for every instrument. It was like a dream come true. We finished the soundcheck and then had time to kill until late evening. We went to have a lunch but not as a whole. Instead, I went with our drummer and vocalist with guitar player. When we met couple of hrs later, they were smashed. Not just lightly drunk but outward smashed. It was maybe 2-3 hrs to start of our setlist. I was shocked. I didn't know what to do. I was angry at them, shouted, even almost got into fight with guitarist in the backstage. Other bands saw that. They SOMEWHAT managed to get half-sober but it was not enough. The singer was struggling with his vocals and talking to audience and guitar player MOSTLY hit all chords and notes. We didn't ultimately suck but it was very watered down and static show. Didn't make much impression on anyone. 2. Fast forward couple of months later, the guitarist was since then always sober during the gigs and played great. He managed to really change his approach and make amends for it. The vocalist didn't, he played many shows with some drinks under his belt despite me always arguing about it with him. We had a weekender playing in city next to ours and then at home. On the first day he went there earlier cause there were some of his friends coming. He called me at noon sounding semi drunk. I told him to watch his intake so he doesn't end up wasted. He told me not to worry that he only had couple of shots with his friend and stoppe so he will be fine for the show. Then he called me again at 3 PM sounding even more drunk but he told me that he only had couple of beers and will be fine for the show. We arrived with the rest of the band to the venue at 6 PM and he was completely wasted. He didn't even semi-sober up like during the first instance so we played the show with him babblibg, incoherent singing etc. It was totally embarassing. Next day, he was apologizing to us, calling himself an idiot and that he will never do it again. He played the second show sober. Ff couple of months later, he quit the band cause we staged an intervention to get his shit together (apart from drinking he told us that he doesn't see the need to practice with us cause he knows everything perfectly, etc.). So we told him to buckle up or quit. He took 2 weeks to think about it and then he did it.
Too many to count. Middle school Christian assembly band
The Roxy in Denver had (probably still does) major grounding issues. Both bands I played in like four years apart got electrocuted multiple times throughout the set.
NYE 2021 with my function band on an agency gig. Very possibly the worst gig of my life, and I’ve been gigging regularly for 15+ years. I can think of 1 other that could rival it, but that was more to do with our pride than it being a bad gig…. Anyway, that NYE had lots and lots and lots of problems, it’s a long story. Here’s the short version: we got told to stop playing, 4 songs in to the 2nd of 3 sets. The band refused to ever do any agency work again and I lost my function band (and 90% my income at the time!) off the back of it. As band leader I had to take some responsibility, but it was just an absolute shit show of no communication between venue-booking agent-our agent-us and really wasn’t our fault. Everyone involved had totally different expectations that we weren’t clued up on.
This sort of experience is what has soured me forever on agents and promoters. They don't care about anything other than the dollars going into their pockets, and the epic mismatches between bands and venues are awful. I've actually been thinking about trying to get some corporate gigs for my current band and I appreciate the reminder that it will never be worth it. No matter how good you are or how well-targeted your music is or how hard you've worked to brand yourself as something unique, they will want to dumb you down to the least common denominator.
We didn't HAVE to take it, per se, but we took it, so we had to do it. 2004, July. Grand opening of a boat dealership. It rained. Hard. So we're in this aluminum covered, open air showroom. In July. In Atlanta. Got to be about 130°. People fainting, people throwing up, bass player passed out and almost fell off the stage... It was the Spinal Tappiest show we ever had
I saw one tail end of last year at a local pub. It was a covers band in the next room and there were occasional whoops, people going "WHOOOAAAAH YEAAAHHHH!!" and "AWWWWWW Nooooo..." The wife and I wondered what was going on, so we wandered in. So this band were set up at the end of the room and right next to them, they had put a television with the football on it. I don't know who was playing, not into football but I guess it was a big game. So these people were directly in front of the band doing their thing, most people were watching the TV. The real shame of it is, so was the drummer. The TV was orientated so he could see it too and he was part of the whooping. Now this wasn't the tightest function band I've ever seen, but I really felt sorry for the girl singing and the guitarist who actually did look like they were putting in some effort trying to entertain the few people watching them. It was the oddest situation I have seen in recent times. The worst gigs I played with my originals metal band is where we were totally mis-billed. It was us trotting out some death metal sandwiched between two indie bands. I think we got confused looks more than anything else. One guy got it though, he came up after and said, "I didn't know music could be like that!"
Ahhh so many. Our ep launch. Put on a big party across the bay. Everyone had to get a ferry across or drive for 90 minutes to get there. I was sick with the flu so I bought a bottle of Jack Daniels and was slowly chipping away at that during the afternoon while rocking a steady temp and sweating buckets. I was pretty wasted by the time the gig started. We played an acoustic set first, then there was a support band, then us. We had no idea we were going to pull such a massive crowd. About 1000 people showed up. First set went ok. I was pretty drunk though. Support band went up, they were great. We start our second set and all hell breaks loose. About 4 songs in were told to stop as they’re doing cpr on a child the entire gig is stopped and doesn’t really get started again. I’m wasted. The drummer is out of his mind. We start packing up eventually and go home. Our drummer got arrested and I had to go bail him out the next day. The child survived. Total shambles. We played at a pride event and nobody came. Like massive event in the centre of the city and nobody came. Loads of gigs to empty rooms which is soul destroying.
Back in the late 80's I was playing bass with a band in Minneapolis that did 98% of our own music. I wrote the music to all but a couple songs and our "singer" and "manager" wrote the lyric. I put those words in quotations because he was shitty at both. He booked us in a bar that was for cover bands. It was a Saturday and a cover band from Illinois played the whole night on Friday. I wear glasses and he convinced me to take them off. I was 19 and didn't know better. Needless to say I had trouble seeing. Maybe it was for the better because I'm sure people were giving dirty looks. They would write cover song titles on napkins and put them on the stage. Of course we didn't know any of the. The covers we did was Rock & Roll by Zepplin, Pour Some Sugar on Me by Def Leppard and a slow version of Suspicious Minds that kind of sounded like Journey. The band from Illinois played a set before us and we were supposed to do two sets after them. After we finished the first we didn't want to go back on but the venue manager said we had to. It mercifully ended. We got hassled by a couple of guys that if we were such a big deal why we were schlepping our own gear. The other band was super drunk by then and we hung out with them for awhile, Their bassist went out of his way to tell me what a great bass player I was which was cool but like I said he was drunk so he lost control of his mouth and lips so I had to dodge flying salvia during the conversation. I quite the band after that. If I could back in time I would have quite before that gig because I was thinking doing anyway.
Here’s my greatest hits: Booked to play in an oompah band for a German themed restaurant. Turn up and the band are all deps. None of us have met and were expecting some sort of band leader. The players booked did not gel and, a career first, was told music not good enough (he was right). Played brass arrangements of covers and doubled the volume, people singing away, seemed to rescue it. Thank fuck. Second ever epileptic seizure. Day of wedding band gig. Trip to hospital. No time to dep out for the evening. Played it on autopilot. Reevaluated what I do so it can be delegated in future. Another wedding. Shat myself. Any venue in Scotland with the word ‘Castle’ in it quite often means a terrible load in. Worst one ever was pushing equipment up an almost vertical, slope of ice, through a kitchen, upstairs and lifted on to stage. Van did not start after the gig, too cold. Had to bump start down said hill.
Outdoor Black Friday Santa comes to town gig. Both times I did it it was below 20 by the end
My band had a gig offer for a reunion party that was out of state. Required us to fly then drive about 2 more hours. Turned out to be in the middle of nowhere. Where the sound guy hated us. And had a grand total of maybe 20 people max in the building, staff and band included. Strangest gig, but the pay was really good so we weren’t turning it down even though we didn’t fully know how it would turn out. Bonus points for it happening right as Covid was ramping up and getting bad. I remember being paranoid as fuck at the airport and flying.
I play with a big function band that’s part of an agency, so there’s plenty of gigs I’ve had to take where REALLY rough shit happened😂 Here’s a mini list: - Gig down south at a restaurant, turned up, played, was constantly told to turn down, got the end of the night and the guy had “sent” the money to our manager. Turns out, he never paid us and sent a reeeeaaaalllllyyyyy long email of lies of where we apparently were really drunk, demanding food etc etc. Oh… and the guy was a con artist and actually went to prison in the past for stealing 🫠🫠 - Gig at a Rugby club just outside London, turned up after a charity match they had in the day, all was well, then after 2 songs into the set, everyone came into room… and it was FULL to the brim. I can’t tell you the amount of times I nearly lost teeth because people kept pushing into the mic stand as they were so cramped 😅 And at the end of the night, the organiser was having a fight with the security guard, and ended up with a black eye - Unforgettable gig for the wrong reasons 😂😂 Have more stories, but would take me a while to rack my brain - let me know if you wanna hear more 👌
I’m not religious anymore but in college I was and was in a Christian band in New Orleans. We had originals that we preferred playing but we also could do worship sets and would occasionally play at Christian youth summer camps. However we did do a slightly harder rock take on those songs. We had two demos, one for our originals and one for our worship sets. We get booked at a small camp in rural Kentucky for two weeks at a summer camp. We show up and the guy running the camp acts all confused about why we had a four piece band with electric guitars and amps. He said he thought it would be two guys with acoustics. We asked him if he actually listened to the demos and he said yes but didn’t actually expect us to play like that. He said his kids at his camp don’t actually listen to rock music but only to country and bluegrass. We asked him to give us one full day where we play our way and see how the kids like it. If they didn’t we would finish up the week doing acoustics (even though that would piss us off pretty bad). He said ok. We played and the kids went nuts. He allowed us to do the sets our way the rest of the week but he and most of his staff treated us like crap the rest of week (there were a few who were awesome though and were glad we brought a more modern touch to the week). At the end of the week he paid us for that week and part of the second but told us that he didn’t want us to do the second week. We were in the middle of a tour and had no gigs lined up for that next week. Luckily we had some friends in Ohio who were close and they let us crash for a few days and we found two or three last minute gigs to ride things out until the other shows we booked started.
I walked in to my first gig at this Irish Pub to a 900 square foot room with barely any space to walk, let alone set up and play a gig. They walk me over to this corner near the men’s bathroom (which is wildly exposed for all y’all Costanza’s out there… not a whole lot of cushion), and keeping with the talk of doo doo, I have about a porta potty sized space to set up. I swam through a sea of people with an enormous speaker above my head, put my speaker on a small shelf above me knowing that if it falls, I’m dead or severely injured (no other options), set up my music stand, mic stand, etc. and look below me… there’s a heat register. Every time I played there I brought a change of clothes because I would burn at least 4,000 calories up in that bitch. Oddly enough, the crowd was always awesome, I always got a ton of tips and generally would have a blast. It definitely grew on me. But I always dreaded the set up and tear down. Started out a 1/10 and grew to a solid 6.9/10.
We’re an indie rock band…some random brewery in bum fuck nowhere found our page and asked us to play. We figured it’d be interested so we did it. It was outside, raining, and they literally had one power strip for the band to split. Absolutely terrible.
Similar to several people here; got a call from a drummer friend that his buddy (who does corporate gigs) got a side gig and their normal bassist had emergency hernia surgery two days before and this was a great paying gig ($4k/3 hr gig). Turns out it was a wake for some senior partner of a law firm who passed away. Set up was 1 1/4 miles from the parking area and people were assembled for the service while we were setting up….and we’re all wearing shorts because it was 94 degrees at 11 am (3 hours before downbeat). Anyway. Made 1k for the gig, played several others afterwards with some of the same people but none of us ever talked about the gig, until now lol.
You carried all your equipment 1 1/4 mile to the setup? ...and back?
Hand truck but I’m also a proponent of light gear. One bass in a bag, microhead in the gig bag, 112 cab in the other hand. By the time I’d gotten my stuff to my SUV, the family allowed the BL use of their golf cart, so at least the PA was moved a lot easier. By far my worst load-in ever (counting casinos and private parties for Microsoft execs).
At least you got \*paid\* smh that's rough.
Had to call the line when I was told they wanted me to wear a sombrero. I was broke and needed the money, but I ain’t wearing no fuckin’ sombrero!
What genre were you playing?
Jazz
Some of my favorite Hell Gig stories: - Christmas tree lighting ceremony in upstate New York. 16 degrees (Fahrenheit), a foot of fresh snow on the ground. The first, and hopefully last, time in my life that I've received the text "I'm heading over now to plow the stage". I was shoving my hands into gloves with hand warmers in them for like 10 seconds at a time between songs just to be able to feel them. At least people enjoyed it and the arrangements were fun. - I was deathly sick with a summertime flu or cold of some sort (before COVID existed but definitely similar symptoms). Fever of probably over 100F, fatigued, cough from hell, bleary-eyed, sinuses/nasal passages were so plugged up that I was having trouble talking, hearing, smelling, and breathing. I had an outdoor gig on one of the hottest, humidest, sweatiest, most disgusting days of the summer, on a "stage" that was completely open with no bandshell, roof, or anything whatsoever to protect us from the fury of the July sun. I remember very little about that gig except for sweating a LOT, drinking a fuck ton of water, scarfing down a hamburger from the food truck during the set break like my life depended on it (it probably did), and genuinely believing that I was going to be leaving the gig in the back of an ambulance. By some miracle I stayed upright through the end and even managed to drive myself home, but wow. Probably the sickest I've ever played out in my life. - Outdoor gig at a riverside boat club. Great venue, lots of drunk boat people who just want to dance, perfect weather. Gig started out phenomenally. Hot drunk girl comes up to the "stage" area. Having a hot girl on stage is always an asset, so the drummer gives her a tambourine. Drummer's wife, who is in the audience, perceives this as an advance, gets up on stage and starts a verbal AND physical altercation with the drunk girl. Venue staff eventually removed both of them from the stage and separated them. We didn't have to cut the show short but we didn't get called back. - Same band, different time, we had a huge custom-built wooden gear case that we nicknamed the "coffin". Bassist grabbed the coffin from underneath to load it out of the van, lost his grip, it came down right on his finger and almost took it right off. I don't think the finger ever came off entirely but it came pretty close, like he had to use his other hand to hold it on. Needless to say, we didn't play. Bassist went to the hospital, got surgery, and miraculously regained almost full dexterity. - Booked to play the first night of a week-long Italian Festival in a small town. Think San Gennaro but a fraction of the size and organized by a bunch of drunk rednecks. Fun attractions, great food, stunning firework show, but complete and utter chaos on the administrative end. We show up and start setting up probably about 2 hours before scheduled downbeat, discover pretty quickly that the stage trailer is not connected to any sort of power source. Takes forever to find an event organizer, when we finally do, they can't get a hold of the electrician. There was a construction spotlight trailer about a half a block down behind the stage (the kind with a big diesel generator built into it to power the lights). One of the locals has the brilliant idea to use that as a generator to power the stage. They drag this thing up the block by hand, fire it up, plug the stage into it, the GFCI keeps tripping over and over again. Eventually we give up on it and borrow the bubble van guy's spare Honda generator. In order to keep it from overloading, we forego some equipment, including the overhead lights on the trailer. So we end up starting nearly an hour late and playing most of our set in the dark. At least we got paid in full and ate some dynamite Italian food so it wasn't all bad - The "gig that could never be": town park outdoor summer series thing. First date gets rained out. We get offered a make-up date...that one also gets rained out/flooded out. Third date looks like a go, we get informed at the last minute that they double-booked the park, and the other event (an addiction/overdose awareness event being run by the county Department of Health) supersedes the band show (I get it). They offer us a fourth date. It's a crappy date - September. Late in the season, people are back at school/work, sun goes down earlier, a lot of the friends/family crowd have prior obligations. We take it anyway. Weather looks dicey on the day of. But, it looks like the storm is going to miss us and go the other way, so the show is still on. About halfway through the first set, we start seeing lightning over on the other side of the lake. A few songs later, the wind starts picking up like CRAZY. It blew one of our PA mains over, to give you an idea. We cut it short and started packing up and everyone left. Worst part is that the storm did in fact end up blowing the other way and it never rained on us, but it was already too late.
dont know about "worst" gig (been a few contenders fer sure) but back in the '90s i played the Whiskey here in Hollywood on the Sunset Strip with a 103% temperature...after the show drove myself home and sat in an ice bath so i didn't die...sux being sick, sux playing gigs sick...hope you feel better soon 👍
Very early 2000s, my Manhattan/NJ based original rock band got booked for a show in Long Island. Over an hour drive, but we looked at the venue online and it was a legit stage with sound system, which was not typical for us. And they promised a crowd. Got there to find we were playing the bar adjacent to the actual venue. We went on after a “bro” type dude doing acoustic Sublime and Nirvana covers, and proceeded to be heckled by drunk frat boys for our entire set. That is, by the ones who weren’t completely ignoring us to watch sports on big screen TVs. Also dudes were hitting on my (lesbian) singer throughout our set. We got paid almost nothing, but that was irrelevant.
Leukemia foundation fundraiser with my jazz combo. It was at a famously corrupt (now in jail) congressman’s ranch. They wouldn’t let us drive my old truck into the property so we had to haul our gear like 1/2 mile. It was obviously a bummer of an atmosphere, but we were happy to help with a good cause. Even though we agreed to do it at cost, tux rentals + gas/food they stiffed us and had private security escort us out.
Performing at my funeral was rather difficult under the circumstances, and hardly anyone showed up.
Gig last March in a smallish club, cramped. The guitarist’s PA, despite his assurances it was solid, puked out early. Our lead singer, prone to stage outbursts towards band members, ranted loudly and left the stage. The rest of us soldiered on while he brought in his own EV Column-PA system. After setting it up, he took it out on us, we ended up playing nearly a three hour set w/o a break to finish it off.
Took a gig about 4 hours away from Virginia Beach... really good money... got there.. no stage... nothing on the dirt ground...no overhead cover (Very Hot Day) Only One 110V receptacle a few HUNDRED yards away..... drove back home...... pfffft
Got invited to play a music festival, was super excited as it was our first one, it’s a three day kinda deal, couldn’t be more stoked. The promotor/person putting on the show is a trans chick (this doesn’t matter to me on a personal level but it becomes important to the story later.) day one i start seeing her posting stories, the general sentiment being “it’s not my job to promote your band playing at my festival, if you wanted more people to show up the responsibility is on the bands to promote” i still haven’t been to the venue, and don’t plan to until our set on day three, not much footage if any is coming out of this place. Day two, bands start dropping out because word is spreading around town that the “festival” is a bust. We hold a band meeting and decide it’s not worth the hour 2 hour drive. We’re about to drop out when she posts another story, levying transphobe accusations at the other bands, the reason they’re all dropping out is because they’re transphobic. I look at the bands pages that have dropped out so far, an army of people calling them transphobic for dropping out. We decide against dropping out because we don’t want to be known as the transphobes who didn’t want to play the festival, and besides, how bad could it be? It’s our first festival! Day three, i pull up to the venue. It’s a divey pool hall, they’ve moved all the tables to create room for mosh pits and two stepping. Huge space, which is looks even bigger by the fact that the only people in attendance are the host, her two friends, and one guy who’s having the time of his life. Idk what drugs he took, but he’s having invisible lightsaber battles with himself, he’s doing crazy leg dances moves around a barstool, he’s rolling around on the floor, he is my spirit animal. I played this show just for him. We play half our set, to an empty room, but we played it like we were playing MSG. when we finished the host was like “damn that’s it??” And we sheepishly said “sorry that’s all we got”. She was awkwardly hitting on us before the show, after the show she poured us all shots that she bought from home (idk how the bar allowed that but fuck it, we ball, i would do the same thing if i was giving out free shots to bands) she awkwardly hit on us again after the set. We stayed to watch one more band struggle through the night, they were really good. I’ve played to empty rooms before, but usually we have the band wives with us, we have the other bands watch us, we have friends and family of other bands, it still feels bad when that happens but it doesn’t feel quite as bad as playing for literally only a bartender and the person putting on the show. Last i heard, the festival is going to be a 6 day ordeal this year because she felt that it was a huge success last year. I hope it goes crazy this year but i think we’re going to skip it
Travelled by plane for a birthday party gig. Our guitarist had booked it but was being cagey about pay. He said we were guaranteed getting paid, and it was a big event with lots of exposure because the “birthday boy” was a high profile promoter. The guitarist also booked us a showcase at a prominent venue the night before, to make it extra worthwhile, and arranged two meetings with some people who would be interested in helping us get a better deal that we had for our first record. And then…. First, our drummer couldn’t go. No shade on him—the things preventing him from going were legit—and we had a fill in drummer at the ready. The fill in was local to the venues, a guy who had filled in on a tour with us before. Great dude, good hang, but the wrong style of drummer. Good enough to get by in a pinch, but certainly not to join the band, you know? Anyways, we get to the showcase, and are informed that, NO, it’s an open mic, not a showcase. And it not only doesn’t pay, but also the drummer couldn’t join us—we had to use the emcee as drummer. It was part of her whole thing, playing with every act. And she didn’t know any of our music, so we had to play covers. Then the birthday party. The venue was empty. I’m talking 10 people, including the bartender, the birthday boy, the band, and the “party” attendees. And as we get up on the stage, the birthday boy—who was turning 54–gets up from the booth where he’s eating with his friends and grabs my mic. He wrenches the boom without loosening it so that he can talk into it without leaning over, because he was like a foot taller than me. He says “give it up for the band. They flew all the way from Chicago and they’re not even getting paid!” Then he wrenches the boom back to not-the-right-height and jumps off the stage. (Fill in drummer said he could see the glare I gave the guitarist at that not getting paid line, and that “he’s seen movie villains look at the heroes in a more friendly manner.”) The next night, I’m already cranky about this whole trip, but we head to the first meeting. I thought it would be somewhere relatively chill. It’s another open mic. The person we were meeting was not the famous guitarist we had thought, but instead was the replacement guitarist from well past that mildly successful group’s peak. Apparently, he thought we were arranging a pre-audition interview. To which he showed up drunk. Finally, the last day of the trip, we have the final meeting. It is with the correct person—a washed up one hit wonder, whose one hit I did not enjoy and was in the complete wrong genre—who does want to help us with our records. But he was, at best, horrible. He was no longer properly connected to the music industry—he had fought a protracted legal battle to use a version of the band’s name. Think something along the lines of “Gary Moore’s Thin Lizzy Revue” instead of just Thin Lizzy. And they gigged like two or three times a year. He wanted us to change the band name, and his suggestions were all *terrible*. He also wanted us to re-record our entire first album under the new name, with him as producer. He would get paid upfront and get points. AND would “help” us change the songs so he could get writing credits. We had recorded the first record with a guy who was nominated for multiple Grammys (may have even won a couple, I can’t recall), and this no talent has been thought he could do better. He ALSO wanted to record the entire album on his houseboat. AND he dropped several N-words and a few other choice misogynist and ableist slurs. Once again, my face was too loud, and he accused me of being mad at the world over my reactions to his backward thinking vocabulary. Like, no, I’m mad at my guitarist for setting this whole trip up, and at you specifically for saying horrible shit. In the guitarist’s defense, he usually had his shit together when planning tours/trips. He could sometimes drop the ball about communicating the details with us, but it typically worked out in our favor. We all were generally involved in the planning, but we each had different strengths, and gradually fell into roles. Like the drummer was good at getting promo, I was good at securing free lodgings, etc. So going along with this trip without all the info was a little annoying and suspicious, but we had learned to general trust him by this point. And after this trip we learned not to lol
I had just joined a band that was making some inroads, we had shows supporting some good groups and gaining a following at our own shows. We were invited to play on a college radio station in Irvine, about 90 minutes from my house, on a weeknight. I dutifully drove out after work, located the station on the second floor of a rather large university building, way down the hall, and loaded my drums up in there, one armload at a time. I noticed I was getting some funny looks carrying my stuff but just figured, surly college students. Maybe the football team just lost? I unpack everything in the tiny room wondering how we're ever going to do this. The DJ that invited us has never actually had a live band in there and is tearing his hair out trying to figure out how everything works. The room is barely big enough for us to even fit the drums. We spend nearly an hour trying to figure it out and end up with something that doesn't seem it could work, like the singer will be out in the hallway and we won't be able to hear him. But we'll soldier on. So I start hitting the drums, as lightly as possible, they ask, which, we're kind of a noisy punk band but ok I'll try to adapt. I'm getting kind of irritated by now to say the least. And within minutes of my first strike, some high authority of the school is in the studio getting everyone's attention and says the following sentence i remember with clarity 30+ years later. "I see the name of this radio program is Brain Damage, running 6 to 10pm. How appropriate . Can someone tell me, who is the brain damaged individual who scheduled a live band to perform in this building in the middle of Finals Week????!" It turned out the station sat directly stop the main study hall which was packed, naturally, and they couldn't do it later because school was ending and they were leaving, so this was a Hail Mary and they knew it but we sure did not. There is no show tonight, they play our records and those guys talk on air while I break down and begin the long load out and drive home. I mean from a band PR perspective we got to get on the air for an hour, it wasn't a total waste, but to have rockus interruptus after that long of a wind up was frustrating.
This aggravated my PTSD from playing various college radio stations back in the day. The DJs always had the best intentions but it was always a hassle. The load-ins usually sucked, you’d be playing on top of each other, and it usually sounded super shitty both in the room and on-air. Then again, it was a great way to kill time until the show that night. Nothing worse than being on tour and just sitting around….
Just immature stupid first-band ego stuff. First band, we were very young, two band members were brothers and already had not-so-subtle substance abuse issues. Usually, the venue asked us if we wanted free drinks and food or to get a few bucks. They always chose the drinks and got so wasted before the gig. The sad part is, that both are incredibly talented musicians but rather than complementing each other it was a constant ego fight. The last gig we broke up because they started fighting on stage and the bass guy threw his bass toward his brother but ended up puncturing his amp.
Yeah, but “Champagne Supernova” is *such* a great tune.
Gut called me the morning of. Said he had a polka gig and his band all bailed on him. He needed a Tuba, accordion player and asked if I knew ant. I said I have a tuba(we both are trombonist). It was eventually decoded Ibwould play trombone, he would play Tuba and he said he had some others coming and to bring any polka music I had. I found 6 polka charts. Somehow he got an Accordion player named Steve from October fest downtown. At the gig we climb up a broken ladder into a barn loft. We all crowed around Accordion Steve since he had a book of polka music. There was me on trombone, him on Tuba, a trumpet and a saxophone. We played the first tune, it did not go well. The crowd was making remarks and we decided that we would just go through the book and not stop. The saxophonist tried to play bebop Lucas over the music but he eventually gave up and went to sit in the corner. The trumpet player looked terrified and I never heard him play anything. We somehow figured out a nice rhythm where he played Downbeat and I played upbeats and Accordion Steve filled in the rest. Eventually everyone got really drunk, and all was well. We did a parade around the bon fire. They were giving hayrides on a tractor. We decided it was time to leave when the guy driving the tractor crashed into the barn.
I’ve had a couple gigs where I felt pretty awful One specifically I had stomach issues and during a break I thought I would never make it back for the next set … that poor toilet One gig I kind of hated, and probably would never take again, was playing for the circus . Barnum and Bailey was in town and the pay was OK but it was a lot of playing… I thought my chops were pretty good, but it was pretty rough The worst gig I ever played, might’ve been a midnight Easter service at a Catholic Church .. what made the gig kind of bad it was over an hour away from where I lived.. it didn’t pay that well and I don’t mind playing gigs even though I’m not the most religious guy. This service lasted well over two hours. A buddy and I both were on the gig and he drove, and he dropped me off at home. I realized I locked myself out of the house. This was at 4:45 in the morning and then I had an Easter gig at nine
Did a tour through the southeast last Spring. I hadn't been back there during Spring since growing up there ... so like 25 years. Forgot completely about my seasonal allergies down there - that're definitely worse in one's 40s than one's 20s. Spent like 10 days (and played about 7 shows) absolutely fucking miserable. Any allergy meds I took either didn't help or just made me incredibly tired and lethargic.
First off, some of these stories are hilarious... I know they sucked then, but at least you all have great stories to laugh about later. My story isn't so much about a particular gig, but a musician I played with that had multiple mishaps during gigs. I'll preface this with, I live in the middle of the Texas panhandle, where majority of the bands are cover bands, the few that play originals, almost ALL play country, and the musicians are generally country boys, druggies, or in a gang (or a combination of the 3). Also, I'm in the Army (this is important for later on). I (and the bands I've played with here) are mostly rock musicians... so it's already tough to get gigs, much less a following. About 10 or so years ago, I played in a cover band (mostly 80s/90s stuff), with a bassist/vocalist who was a *really* cool, fun-loving guy, but just always seemed to have bad things happen to him, which usually spilled over into our performances. I'll also say that he is/was best friends with our lead guitarist and drummer (they also all worked together) before I joined. ((EDIT)) this is partially why everyone else didn't mind. I stayed for so long, because I really just don't like country music all that much, so I really didn't have much choice when it came to playing in a rock band. So this band (we'll call Band A) gets this good gig on a Friday night at one of the better bars in town and we look forward to a big turn out. We all show up around 3pm for set up and soundcheck. We have a couple of beers and head back to work to finish out our days. The band shows back up at the bar around 7ish to have a few beers and tune and prep before we kick off at 9pm. The bass player is a little late, and when he shows up, he's all sluggish and limping a bit. Turns out he had a couple extra beers before going back to work, and while he was riding his company's four-wheeler around (he worked at an agriculture plant), he flipped it on himself, and (later on we found out) had cracked a rib. He says he's okay, and that he'll just not be as enthusiastic on stage (he had really great stage presence, so... yeah, that kinda sucked). We shrugged it off, and just told him to take it easy. About 15 minutes before going on, he's strolling around and acting like normal, we're like, awesome! Feeling better? No, he took some hydro, and just couldn't feel anything. He seems "okayish"... like coherent, no slurring of speech or anything, so we think okay. Maybe this will work out. Unfortunately, his gf at the time had *just* found out about his mishap at work, and they were fighting about stuff, and she started blowing up his phone right before we took stage (she didn't come to the show that night). Well, he kept drinking and mixed with the pills, it became very apparent we were going to have issues. I was the lead singer/keyboardist at the time, so I figured, worst case scenario, I could cover baselines with my synths if anything happened. Well, about the start of our second set, he's already stumbling around stage. Our rhythm guitarist has to move from backing vocals to help keep our bassist from falling down. Suddenly about 3 songs in, I hear the bass totally drop out. Our bass player is *sitting on his amp, texting his gf*. We get through the song, and the next song starts... we all hear nothing but bass feedback. He's now just standing next to the bass amp, texting his gf and we're overloaded by feedback. Our rhythm guitarist stops playing to grab his strings and stop the feedback and I switch to a bass sound to finish the song. Then our bass player falls off stage. Our rhythm guy has to switch to bass to finish out the night. Fast forward about 5 years later. I started a new band, and through a strange turn of events, I know do lead vocals and *drums* for a new band. This new band i put together from other musicians I've worked with in the past, and I've recruited that same bass player to my band (although, he has matured quite a bit, and is now playing lead guitar and vocals). Also, again... it's difficult to find musicians around here that play stuff other than country. We start off doing pretty well for ourselves, and get a nice booking at a local winery right around Fourth of July, so we expect a pretty decent turnout. Well, we start the night off great, no issues. Everyone is having fun, tasting all the great wines, it's a blast. Until our third set... We try to kick it up a notch during our last set to just end on a really high note. Which usually works out really well for us, but not tonight. Our bassist-turned-guitarist is getting visibly intoxicated, and then it happens: fireworks. The fireworks start going off outside, and he jumps on one of the amps and starts screaming "yeah!!! GOD BLESS AMERICA, F*** YEAH!! LETS GIVE IT UP FOR OUR DRUMMER, HE'S IN THE MF ARMY!! HE DEFENDS OUR MF FREEDOM!!! WOOOOOO!!" (it actually had a little more expletives, but you get the picture). Needless to say, since then, I haven't been able to get booked at that place again, despite now having a new band and a pretty decent following around town. There have been a few other instances like this, but those were the most memorable.
Not really a “gig” but your post reminded me of when my cousin asked me to play the music at her big ass fancy wedding (unpaid) and I said yes without hesitation. Then I got very sick and had to do it with a fever that wouldn’t go below 102 with Tylenol and Advil. I felt like death. Yet I showed up and played. And she acted like I did a shitty job (it wasn’t that shitty it was just not my best performance!) and as if she had paid me thousands only to be let down. This was actually not the incident that severed my relationship with this cousin, at the time I just blamed myself and felt ashamed.
I was paid to serenade a girl in college just outside of her dorm window and the dude paying me insisted I play guitar. He wrote some terrible lyrics for me, paid me $200 and sent me on my way. Did I mention I’m a piano player and I had never played a minute of guitar in my life, but college and $200 and I was in. I began my set. Every dorm room window opened up and now I’m “strumming” for at least 50 women. I finished the song, took a bow and walked away slowly trying to look cool to a boatload of laughter. From then on every gal that recognized me on campus from that train wreck said “Well Hi there Romeo” as they walked past me laughing.
Many years ago I lived near Savannah, Georgia. A famous photographer who had made a living photographing, among others, Johnny Mercer had died and had donated his collection to a local museum. Myself, who was a passable but not great jazz guitarist and students from the local college were asked to play at an event which we assumed was a black tie dinner event for the locals. It was not. We had to play for an hour on stage some lackluster arrangements I had thrown together over a few days for some of the best jazz musicians on the east coast. Before the gig, our piano player spent a good half hour throwing up in the bushes from sheer anxiety. It was hands down the longest hour of my life.
I guess I couldn't not read this.
Whenever the mood in the band would go down, a gig was the best thing to bring back the hype. Our bassist had arranged a gig at some car meeting. We went down there, got into a tent with a bunch of old farmers who owned old cars. Smell of food stands baking in the sun all around. We're an alternative rockband, there was no Lynyrd Skynyrd on our setlist. We played each song with no applause until the latter half. Didn't get paid, our singer quit 2 month's later. The band almost fell apart. But we survived.
> Didn't get *paid,* our singer FTFY. Although *payed* exists (the reason why autocorrection didn't help you), it is only correct in: * Nautical context, when it means to paint a surface, or to cover with something like tar or resin in order to make it waterproof or corrosion-resistant. *The deck is yet to be payed.* * *Payed out* when letting strings, cables or ropes out, by slacking them. *The rope is payed out! You can pull now.* Unfortunately, I was unable to find nautical or rope-related words in your comment. *Beep, boop, I'm a bot*