Life on the road in a Rock Band

Story#2 When it comes to travel, usually its coordinated so you are booked closely to each gig. In most cases when you are booked for a gig in the 80's, you are booked at a club or Bar for a week, in some cases its a split 3 days at one club, and 3 days at another club in the same city. But in most cases you play a week at one place , That's 6 days. Sundays are a travel day, bars and clubs where closed on that day. contracts for playing at these establishments were, the bands pay, which comes with accommodations, and occasionally a percentage off your alcohol or food if a restaurant is owned by the bar or club. I remember one time we had a 3 week gap with no gig, our Agent ask if we wanted to go to a far destination that paid a very lucrative sum of money. which also gave the band nice accommodation, excellent club discounts, with free buffet. Heck yah!. signed the contract and on our way.

Now...this gig was 2 week's in Yellowknife, North west Territories..IN THE WINTER!!!. that's right ,way up there, I think that's where Santa and Mrs Claus lives. In this band we had a older bus, (greyhound kinda bus) it was going to be a long drive, from where we were, about a 12 hour haul. Well one of our brilliant band mate made sure we had plenty of alcohol for the trip..that's right! ALCOHOL FOR THE TRIP... there were 3 in the band that were designated drivers for this trip, which they can not partake in the drinking of alcohol, 2 were road crew guys, one was the guitar player who couldn't care less about drinking.

So we decided to make a big batch of White Russian, its a alcoholic drink that consists of vodka, coffee liqueur, and milk. We had this plastic barrel, my guess it held about 60 liters of "The Drink" Now as you are thinking, you are probably saying to yourself, This is Bad!, Morons! It wasn't one of our genius moves, that's for sure. Want to say, "LOVE WHITE RUSSIANS" I really don't know how many I had during this road trip, but it was LOTS. Many rest stops, many band mates upset with this, it was not stopping at gas stations,(due to that there were not many on this trip) pulling over and using the highway ditches on our route to the City of Yellowknife, the closer we got to our destination, the colder it was outside. at one point It was like "PEEING ICE CUBES" BOY IT WAS COLD!!!. I have never seen so much ice build up on a vehicle in my life. COLD!

We finally arrived at the Hotel Club, it was late , I can't recall the time but it had to be past midnight, We check'ed in to our rooms, the front desk employee did mention to be well covered up, winter clothing etc, because bare skin at this temperature can freeze in less than 2 minutes. So how cold was it? MINUS 49 f. minus 62 f with the windchill.....never, ever ,ever felt this kinda cold in my life. on top of the cold, we had to unload our equipment into the club. The cold weather was not good for it. We had a large P.A. system, stage lights ,sound boards and all the instruments, had to be unloading, so we back the bus to the rear entrance to unload, we helped the crew , so they wouldn't freeze to death. FROZEN, I could barely move after that. DRUNK, COLD, and TIRED...Heck of a journey.

The outside temperature did not change much when we were in Yellowknife. I pretty much stayed in the Hotel for 2 weeks, THANK GOD there was a restaurant in the Hotel. "GEE'Z IT WAS COLD"

...more stories to come on , Life on the road in a Rock Band!