The Steel Guitar Forum

This isn't really comical but it was wonderful.

One night years ago at a club in the Fort Worth Stock Yards,we were playing to packed house when I noticed this good looking girl walk in and wind her way through the crowd towards the stage.

As she got nearer she started unbuttoning her shirt and I thought please let this happen and it did,she unleashed them on us and the lead singer fell apart.

She smiles this big smile at us and slowly buttons up her shirt and walked back through the crowd and out the front door never to be seen again.

Was playing a club in Canton, Oh. Good looker comes up to the stage, points at me, and says, "You d--k is mine!" My wife (now ex) was standing next to her. Short fight later, they both got thrown out of the bar. I hadda hitch a ride home, cuz the wife (now ex) absconded with my car!

Dick Wood wrote:This isn't really comical but it was wonderful.

One night years ago at a club in the Fort Worth Stock Yards,we were playing to packed house when I noticed this good looking girl walk in and wind her way through the crowd towards the stage.

As she got nearer she started unbuttoning her shirt and I thought please let this happen and it did,she unleased them on us and the lead singer fell apart.

She smiles this big smile at us and slowly buttons up her shirt and walked back through the crowd and out the front door never to be seen again.

... and then I woke up!

I posted this on another board awhile back...same "theme"
One night waaay back I was working with a lady singer who was about 40 years old or so. She was a short gal of Spanish descent which was common around L.A., and boy could she sing. I think she could do 300 songs and not repeat. Back then we worked 9 to 2 in the bars. Anyhow, this guy tried to put the moves on her at break time. He was already pretty popped and she told him to f'off. Any how, he just kept getting drunker, and finally he came up to the bandstand that was about 2 foot high or so. He started his crap there, and she told him to get lost over the mike. He took a jump, and somehow made it up on stage standing up. He took one step toward her, and before any of us could move, she hauled off and kicked him dead square and hard in the danglers. He went over backwards and knocked himself out on the floor for a few minutes. She said over the mike that "just for everyone's information, when I say NO....I MEAN no". We would occasionally give her a heckle about it for weeks afterwards, but from a safe distance........she was sure a pleasure to work with and I often wonder where she wound up. That's been about 30 some years back now tho'.........

And this story which still makes my wife and I chuckle when either of us happens to bring it up...

During the same time or so, gals used to come in the bars wearing short skirts at times. This was back before torn tee shirts and ripped jeans, when folks actually cared about how they looked when they went out for an evening. They just didn't care how they ACTED sometimes. ANyway, we had a real young kid playing bass. Back then, sometimes a girl would spread her legs in a chair towards the band. Everyone called it "takin' yer picture". Anyway, a girl and her date sat down right in the line of sight of this bass player. After awhile she gave him a shot, and she wasn't wearing any undies. I looked over at the feller, and he was as red as a fire engine, and couldn't seem to breathe. He had just never seen that before I guess. She shot him a couple more, but he wasn't looking. In fact after that, he would NEVER look at the crowd, even when someone in the band would yell "hey, look at that!!!!". Not sure if he was scared of the gal, or afraid of her date, or both.......
I often wonder what ever happened to a lot of these folks in later years when they think of the crazy stuff they did. IF they can remeber it, and IF they survived even.

I'm guessing 10 yrs. ago in a bar and restaurant just outside of Wash. DC. Good crowd...with one big guy sitting by himself at the very front table nearest to the bandstand with about 8 empty beer bottles on his table plus the one he had in his hand.
Our band had just finished some very bluesy tune, and this big guy says to the singer,"You guys are great, but you need to put more guts and gravel in there when you sing" Maybe the guy was thinking of Howlin' Wolf type vocals? Anyway...after the next 2 tunes he's sayin', "More guts, more guts", and the singer had about all he could take, and says to the guy,"Who are you...some kinda music critic?"

Without any hesitation at all, the big guy says real loud: "NAH, I"M THE DRUNK IN THE FRONT ROW".

Truly a magic moment.

I was in a band called "The Legends" a few years ago and we were booked for New Year's Eve at the "White Tail Park" in Zuni, Virginia which is a nudist camp! We were making pretty good money and also there was a catered buffet included with the gig. We were already set up so I went ahead and got in line for the buffet. We were coming down one wall in the line and then we'd turn right as the food was on that wall. All was fine going down the wall until I made the right turn and all of a sudden saw this line of people serving themselves of the food in the trays. It wasn't bad when the ladies did it but I saw most of the guys had their "stuff" about an inch or two from the trays of food. I thought better about it and left the line and got a couple of bags of chips and a diet coke and went back to the band table........

Later I played an outside cookout at the camp with another band which was going pretty good and I was enjoying some of the "scenery". We had a little guy named Nink Horton playing the other electric guitar and we had a request to do "The Hokey Pokey". There was this huge chick at about 400 lbs. standing right in front of ol' Nink. When she'd put her whole self in or her whole self out and then shake it all about ol' Nink almost went into cardiac arrest. She's smile at him and he'd turn his back to the dancers and laugh his butt off. When they did the part about put your bare bottom in and your bare bottom out, etc. he couldn't take it anymore so he abruptly left the bandstand for an extended trip to the men's room. I think that gal's probably still jiggling!

Also at one break time we were sitting on those chaise lounge lawn chairs and shootin' the bull a little when a female voice said "Can you play Boot Scootin' Boogie"? I started to say yes and only got as far as yeeeeeeeeeee..... as when I turned my head right, there at eye level about 6" from my face was a section of the female anatomy which is usually hidden from sight in most situations. I started gulping and couldn't speak anymore. The drummer quickly said "Yes, we'll play it for you"......Oh the life of a wandering musician....JH in Va.

Was playing one night in a bar in Akron Oh. The bar was a oval one in one room and through a big opening into the dance floor where there was tables and the bandstand. About 1am, a drunk gets up off of the barstool, and mutters to the bartender, that he is going in the other room to pick a fight. One of the tables next to the open dance floor was sitting a gentleman and his wife. They were there all evening, just having a few drinks, and dancing. The drunk walks up to him and cocks his fist back, to punch the guy. Right from the sitting position, the gentleman as he raises up, lands a square fist right in the nose of the drunk. Crack went his nose, blood all over, and the drunk lays flat out on the dance floor. Bartender, and bouncer, drag him out to the sidewalk, and mop the floor, as we keep the music going. Another time we were playing "wipeout", and some girl was shaking so much on the dance floor, that she shook her 1/2 slip down around her ankles, then tripped and fell.

Where do I start?

One night this guy kept dancing by the bandstand and every time he danced in front of our steel player, he'd do something stupid, like rake his hand across the pedal rods, or grab one of the legs and try to move the steel. Our steel player kept getting madder and madder until finally the guy did something really stupid. He stuck his hand inside the open front of the volume pedal. I guess he thought his hand would keep the pedal from moving. He learned his lesson quick enough, and the look on his face kept us laughing for a while.

In the early '80's, I was in a house band on the strip in Bossier City, LA. One of the songs we learned was Don Henley's hit "Dirty Laundry". One night, in the middle of the song, some gal took her bra off and hung it over the bass player's mic. Pretty soon, several of the girls had removed their "over-the-shoulder boulder holders" and slung them over our mics. They didn't stop dancing, and they didn't bother to rebutton their shirts. Every so often, one of them would face the stage and flash us. We played that song about once a set for a couple of months.

Same club, same band. The bass player was a real promoter, and one of the ideas he came up with was to go to local restaurants and get them to donate a free breakfast. The idea was to get them to go to the restaurant with some friends, so everybody won. The bass player would usually say something like, "I'll give a free breakfast to the first guy (girl, person) who can bring me a hairbrush (comb, keys, etc.)". One night he started his spiel, and when he got to the item, he got stuck. So he turned to me with a puzzled look on his face, like "what do I ask for?", and right off the top of my head I said "show us her t**ts". So he said "I'll give a free breakfast to the first girl who'll come to the stage and show us her t**ts". This girl raced across the dance floor, jumped on stage and asked, "Do I have to show everybody or just you?" The bass player looked at me with a "you got us into this, what do I do now?" look, and I said "Just us." She whipped off her shirt, proudly showed off what her mother gave her, collected her coupon for a free breakfast and walked back across the dance floor to her table before donning her shirt once more.

Good times.

In case you read this John, this all happened at the East avenue tavern. Another time there a very attractive lady was flirting with me as she danced with her boyfriend. She raises a finger to me to wait. They leave and she comes back alone. Shes sitting there waiting for us to finish the last set. Some guy asks her for a slow dance, and she accepts. As they were dancing, her boyfriend comes back with 3 goons, drags the guy shes dancing with, and drags him outside and beats the schmit out of him. ( I went home alone)

Ronnie, I played there years ago! My steel seat had a special clip under the seat that held my old 32 semi-auto. I used that seat at The Bridge Tavern up in Cleveland too! There was another place on Akron's Eastside, Wright's Ballroom, that had fights, knife-fights, and rumbles all the time! But East Avenue Tavern was the most commonly dangerous! Be prepared!

Sounds like some of you guys have played in some real dens of inequity!

I tho't I recalled that many of you devote your steel playing time to playing in rest homes, hospitals and mental institutions?

Surely, I must've been mistaken, eh?

Ray, some of the "punch palaces" I played in coulda put me in rest homes, hospitals and mental institutions!

When I was 14, I played one of my FIRST professional steel guitar player jobs up in Kelso, Washington. Our crowd was kinda dismal, starting at around 9:00 PM. By about 10-10:30 PM the placed rapidly filled to nearly over-flowing.

In the working man's tavern next door, some guy had settled his disagreement with another bar patron by stabbing him profusely.

That was my initiation to country-music!

I'm surprised that with my many years in bands, I was not subjected to more violence that we all know occurs in public facilities. I was LUCKY!

As a side note: I always tho't it hillarious to come out of the dance hall at around 1:30 AM, walking into the brisk, autumn-like, pre-dawn chill of the night to discover a small group of folks all huddled together near the lone automobile left near the center of the huge and now vacant parking lot. It was then that you could see the brave musketeer returning from a darkened corner of the unlit parking lot with a huge chunk of cement about to be used to break open the WINDSHIELD of his car. Seems they never tho't of the small wing windows.

Most places around Akron OH. had decent crowds, but a few places in Cleveland you could writs a book about. Another good story. There was a place called "the nut house". They had all sorts of gags like air holes in the booths, shock coins placed on the bar, They could electrically lock people in the vestibule, between the outside doors and inside doors. The greatest was, the rest rooms were downstairs in the basement. In front of the "ladies room", stood a cigar store indian. The indian had a "woody" on it, and was hinged to a very sensitive micro switch. When a lady would touch it, it would move, and upstairs, all the bells and whistles would go off. The look on their faces was priceless. Or a lady would slide into a booth to sit and if she sat over the air hole the bartender would give it a blast of air.

I don't remember that place Ronnie, but I played about 3 years straight at The Touch Of Gold on Brookpark. Saw a lot of strange stuff there too! Never much violence there. Do you remember that dive called Topper's? Filthy place.

Ray Montee wrote:...I tho't I recalled that many of you devote your steel playing time to playing in rest homes, hospitals and mental institutions?...

Well Hank Williams Jr. was singing at some McCain raillies, and he had a steel guitarist in his band, so that's about as close to a mental institution as one of us is going to get.

I am extremely disappointed that my favorite music blogs are getting involved in politics.

The nut house was on the corner of W25th and Denison. Across the street was the Denison theater, where we did stage shows, and Dottie West sang every Saturday night. Her husband Bill West played steel there. I used to know the owners of The Touch of Gold, if my memory is correct. They used to come out to the Forestview where we played before opening the T.O.G. I never played at Toppers, but played The Rose Lounge, and Jerry played steel for us before going with Buck. Also played Sun Valley, Twin Gables, and the Prince and Pauper, with Gene Walker. I went in the T.O.G. once and Freddie Little was on steel, taught by Chick Donner.

Gees...These stories are really interesting. I might add another....When working the Trocadaro Club in Lacrosse, Wis. in the early sixties, the club owner had a microphone installed in the ladies restroom. Every now an then the band, who had control of the switch, would switch the mike on and boy what stories you would hear when a couple girl friends were in the restroom talking about their boyfriends or whatever......Also....Talking about someone being stabbed...In Tampa, Fla. in Hebor City, very rough at the time, we were playing the first time in this bar on a Sunday afternoon. I was just a young kid and was really surprised to discover that we would be playing in a cage with a lock on the door. I found out that one and only time there what the cage, which was quite high, and the locked door were for.....Patrons would actually throw bottles at the band and there was a stabbing right in front of us. Unbelievable. Sure was glad to get out of the place never to return.
Dave Burley

Ronnie,
Do you remember the Avalon Ballroom on W. 25th? We opened for Alan Jackson the day his first song hit #1. The owner called the cops to guard us as we loaded up our gear after the gig! He said he was tired of bands getting robbed!

Most comical thing seen whilst performing????
Mmmmmmmmmmmmm, Brothers eyeball peeking through the keyhole!

No seriously, Me being whiskied up on Telecaster, a bunch of girls came to dance on stage,
[lots of hotties] one went down on her knee's in front of me, I grabbed her by her ears, as she does her imitation, the audience were diggin this drunkfest, jam out, free for all, pass the bottle around the band, gig! My wife went running off the stage, who was dancing around behind ME, and looked at me and said, How could you be so discusting??
I looked back, Discusting???????
Ah those were the days!!

The club owner insisted we get wild, and gave us a bottle of Crown! He said, lets get it on, i want every man hammered on the bandstand!
OK boss! yes sir boss! You got it boss!
man.... that was a long walk home!

Back in the early 80's i was playing a place in newport Beach, Jose Murphys, with a really great great singer, Bob Gulley....Bob Gulley and the Exploding Pintos.

Every Friday night during our second set, three drop dead gorgeous women would wind their way towards the bandstand wearing long coats. They would then 'present themselves' while we were playing.

Of course they always left immediately and even though this went on for several months, no one ever discovered who they were.

Ah, the good ole days, or is that the ole good days!

SS

Life is mostly Attitude and Timing (this was a timing thing)

My band has had our share of drunk people cavorting about while we play, but the drunkest dancers always seem to bust their a**es during one particular song in our set..."Fall Hard."

while playing w: a cover band round paris, a client comes up to the bass player between tunes a asks him to play " petite fleur" (sidney bechet)& slips him 10 francs
well the fellow comes back since he has'nt heard the tune & the bass player says : " be patient, we'll play it"
they did'nt
so the fellow returns & says " heck, i paid for the tune why don't you just play it ?! "
the sound man came round considerin' the fellow was causin' trouble (which he was'nt) & pushes him away into a nearby client's table
whereupon, the client grabs the poor fellow & start gettin' heavy w: him
whereupon 2 bouncers get in on the act & throw the poor fellow out of the joint
he shortly returned lookin' rumpled & finally got " petite fleur"
not really funny, but true