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Unusual gifts from drunk dude

This happened several years ago, but I'm new to TB so worth telling...

Blues/Classic Rock 4-piece. We're playing at a DIVE bar. I mean a a dive next to a gas station out on the county line in an area the cops call "felony flats". No stage, just a spot off to the side. But we get our beer comped, so consider it a rehearsal.

Skinny older guy - 60+ - is drunk, hitting on all the younger women and dancing like a maniac. Runs into me twice in the middle of a song. Crashes into the singer/guitarist once. He's pretty out of hand and he LOVES our guitar player.. like maybe a little too much.

So we take a break and the guy disappears outside for a few minutes. He comes back with a bunch of CDs of his favorite guitarists and wants to give them to our guitar player. Nice enough, but he's obviously smashed. So after the guitarist gets tired of trying to politely brush him off, he finally accepts.

Guy disappears again.. guitar player has his back to the door. Guy comes back in with a really fancy engraved dagger - the collectible type. Out of the guitarists's view he whips it out of the sheath and then shoves it right in the guitar player's face. Scares the crap out of him. :p

But he's not trying to be scary. It's got some crazy dragon artwork all over it.. it may not have even been sharpened.. Guy was super proud of it and wanted to give it to the guitarist. It took several minutes to convince the guy he didn't really want to give it away.

The look on the guitarist's face was totally worth the trip out to BFE. :p
 
How desperate are you for practice sessions that you agree to play in a place called felony flats for no more than beer?

Or are you alcoholics as well?

Where is your sense of adventure? I've been playing in a place when a guy got shot, another time when two guys got in to it and one busted the other one in the mouth with the butt of a pool cue, cuttings, and my favorite, girl fights over a guy. :hiding:
 
Where is your sense of adventure? I've been playing in a place when a guy got shot, another time when two guys got in to it and one busted the other one in the mouth with the butt of a pool cue, cuttings, and my favorite, girl fights over a guy. :hiding:

My sense of adventure is there behind that wall your smiley is hiding behind.
 
My sense of adventure is there behind that wall your smiley is hiding behind.

Even my sense of adventure had it's limits. I refused to play the "Grand Reopening After The Shooting".

The place where we were playing when the guy got shot was shut down by the Florida bureau of investigation for a couple weeks while they did their do, then the owner decided to have an all day cookout/party to jump start his business after being shut down. The gunplay was the result of some family trouble between the bar owner and some former in law and the bad blood was still high so I told our kinda sorta manager (guitar players wife) I had no interest in going back to the shooting gallery when she called to see if I could do the big party. She got kinda put off because I turned her down but by the time she talked to everyone, she was the only one who thought it was a good idea.

The big party went off without another shooting but around 10 that night there was a BIG fight that sent several people to the hospital.

Ahhhh, the joys of life on the (really really) dive bar circuit.

:D:D:D
 
Few things..

1) I didn't say it was a GOOD band.:p It was 15 years ago and I was willing to do anything to play in front of people.
2) I didn't book the gig. It was foisted on me by the drummer and guitarist. Not having a say in booking was one of the many reasons I wound up quitting.
3) We did get paid, but only enough to cover expenses. Knowing they would comp our tab and not giving a f*** if we got asked back made it bearable.

Never had anybody shot at one of my gigs. But once I went out to see a friend of mine and just as we were pulling up to the place he called my cell phone. A guy had been mugged and stabbed and then dumped in front of the bar. He manged to stumble in the door and collapsed.

My friend's band started packing up their gear and the bartender says, "Why you guys leaving?" Umm.. maybe the big pool of blood in the doorway? :rolleyes: We all went up the street and had a few drinks.
 
I have on several occasions gotten drunk "fans" that want to smoke me out- when I respond, "no thanks- I don't smoke anymore, it makes me anxious" they always try to give me weed to smoke by myself, because somehow their weed is special. I have only accepted a few times when I am playing with people that burn- one time a guy insisted and gave me a quarter of "really mellow sesamilla (sorry- don't know the spelling) as a tip for playing his party- after i turned down a giant bag of neon green and purple weed. Made sense that he over paid us in cash (farmer). Drunk stoners are friendly folks- the funny thing is that I am a middle age dude with a beer gut- the least stoner looking guy of people I play with and I am the one that always gets offered weed.
 
Funny post OP, but I would be very leery of accepting too much actual stuff from a fan. I would sort of point in the direction of tips. You were wise to turn down the dagger.

As far as gigging for beer in a somewhat dangerous dive bar, I think a gig is worth more than a rehearsal, in terms of experience and band improvement. When I was younger, and not so short on time and long on commitments, bands I played with would have gladly played a dive for free beer. In fact, we did pretty much every chance we got.

Rehearsal is important, but so is gigging. Gigging provides experience that cannot be obtained in rehearsal.
 
...
Guy disappears again.. guitar player has his back to the door. Guy comes back in with a really fancy engraved dagger - the collectible type. Out of the guitarists's view he whips it out of the sheath and then shoves it right in the guitar player's face. Scares the crap out of him. :p

...

Well, "shoves it right in the guitar player's face" means the guitar player is in a lot of pain and bleeding, or dead and bleeding.

"Shoves it right in front of the guitar player's face" might be a better way to put it, less misleading.

Just sayin'...
 
I have on several occasions gotten drunk "fans" that want to smoke me out- when I respond, "no thanks- I don't smoke anymore, it makes me anxious" they always try to give me weed to smoke by myself, because somehow their weed is special. I have only accepted a few times when I am playing with people that burn- one time a guy insisted and gave me a quarter of "really mellow sesamilla (sorry- don't know the spelling) as a tip for playing his party- after i turned down a giant bag of neon green and purple weed. Made sense that he over paid us in cash (farmer). Drunk stoners are friendly folks- the funny thing is that I am a middle age dude with a beer gut- the least stoner looking guy of people I play with and I am the one that always gets offered weed.


+1
This HAPPENS ALL THE TIME in Southern WV. Especially around harvest time :D. I live right smack in the middle of the Eastern United States version of, The Emerald Triangle. It gets rrreally crazy around here come October/November.