Okanogan Part 2

Part 2 of the worst gig I ever played.

There were four of us that had made the trip to Okanogan in the van my parents had foolishly lent me. Six if you counted Toby’s mother Mardi, who sang with us regularly and made the trip up separately with her husband, Walter. We were about to play two nights at the most happening joint in a fifty mile radius (allegedly). Unfortunately, all the money that came into said happening joint did not appear to have made it past the ground floor. More unfortunately was that our rooms were not in the “money zone.”

Our rooms were the kind of rooms you would expect to see Anthony Perkins dressed in a wig and his mother’s clothes hiding in the shower, but you would be mistaken. Although incredibly heinous murders frequently took place in the fictional Bates Motel, I’m pretty sure the Bates’ rooms had things like, soap, door knobs and acceptable health code practices. Norman Bates would have run screaming from these rooms; he may have been a killer, but his modest motel was tidy.

Please understand, I do not wish to keep coming back to the rooms. There’s so much more to this story than just how bad the rooms were. It’s just that, I’m not a good enough writer to explain to you, the reader, how absolutely awful these suites were. I kept asking the guys if they were SURE they were up to date on their tetanus shots.

As we made our way to the lobby…

Did I mention that the windows in the room had long spider-web cracks in them, some of which were thoughtfully Scotch taped to avoid further breakage? Alright, alright, I’m sorry.

As we made our way to the lobby, we heard someone ask a woman at the front desk if she was the owner and she had replied that she was. We decided to walk down and introduce ourselves as the band and glean any details that might have been glossed over by Full Ride, the band that had graciously passed this gig along to us.

The owner was a little person. Not a “little person” little person, but she was not tall and not heavy. A dwarf? I don’t know. She was tiny, but not… she was very small, and had a well-kept blonde loose curl afro the size of a beach ball. We politely introduced ourselves as the band and she looked at us as if she didn’t think we were up to the challenge. Like, she sent for the Army and what she got were some Cub Scouts. It was clear to us that this woman would accept no crapola from ANYONE, and was not to be messed with or crossed. I didn’t take offense to this as I saw in her face not disappointment that we were going to be bad musicians, but that we might not be up to the task of playing her bar. The other guys got this sense too and we all assured her that we came to play and we meant business. She still eyed us suspiciously, like one would survey a creaky rope bridge over a ravine. She then advised us to get some dinner at the restaurant and make sure security knew who we were… for some reason. Security?

We went in and did our sound check and did indeed meet security. Two brawny men in T-shirts with the sleeves strategically cut off (for maximum ventilation),introduced themselves with their names but I knew them as Mullet and No Mullet. I was surprised that they had wireless headset walkie-talkies like I had only seen special operations military types use in the movies (equipment that outdated every other machine in the Caribou Inn by ten years). They were nice guys that assured us that no matter what, we would be safe and they would make sure nothing happened to us. They told us the place fills up quick on the weekend and it gets ugly fast. They said it was the only place around that had liquor, music and entertainment, and that most of the people have a lot of steam to blow off from their lousy collective weeks. We thought the headsets were a little unnecessary. We were incorrect, and we figured we were when they sincerely apologized for not having chicken wire up in front of the stage to shield us.

We had a pleasant dinner. The food and the restaurant were quite good. No complaints. The food was part of our payment and although it wasn’t fancy, it was hearty and delicious. We were seated near the bar, where we enjoyed some of the local characters swapping stories of drunken indiscretions that bordered on the supernatural.

Drunk 1: O…kay, so, we were up at the creek.

Drunk 2: Which creek?

Drunk 1: Not Witch Creek, the creek I, took Tom to fish at last,, year.

Drunk 2: I didn’t say Witch Creek… I said, “WHICH CREEK?”

Drunk 1: No, it’s the other side of the canyon… Course, we were drunk at the time.

Drunk 2: When?

Drunk 1: Then.

Drunk 3: You’re actually pretty drunk now too.

Drunk 1: No, I was drunk then, with Bill…Tom, who was with me.

Drunk 2: Bill was with you.

Drunk 1: Tom was with me, and Bill stayed home. He’ll tell you we … wait, was I telling you the creek story?

Drunk 3: Did you say Tom was a witch?

Fascinating.

We took the stage at 9pm. For those of you not familiar with how a cover band works, they typically start around nine and play until the bar closes at 1:30am or so. You get a ten to fifteen minute break from playing about every 50 minutes to an hour or so. We call it playing, and it is fun, but it is also hard work. As a drummer, I’m told that I expel the same amount of physical energy as a professional basketball, football or soccer player. I would believe that is a fair assessment. But this night, I was sick with a throat infection. I had to sing lead and backup in a room that was so thick with tobacco smoke, you would have thought that a plantation had caught on fire. Tonight, purely from a physical point of view, was going to be one of the toughest gigs I had ever played.

I climbed behind the drum set and heard the pop of the amplifiers come alive. Toby called out our first song, a Garth Brooks tune that was sure to please the crowd in Okanogan. Nope. I heard the groans and the booing before I even peered out to see what the audience looked like. Lights were shining down on us on the stage and it takes a while for your eyes to adjust to being able to see into the audience. There were more people in that giant ballroom than I’d ever seen at one of our gigs. The place was packed to the gills. There must have been close to 150 to 200 people out there, and they did not care for our song selection. At. All.

After speeding through the first tune, we made a friendly plea to the audience and asked them for what they wanted to hear. Doom, utter doom, loomed over us as we gave them permission to call out what they wanted to hear. To keep it simple, we had half the bar wanting Slayer, Megadeath, or some other metal bands I had never even heard of. The other side of the bar sure didn’t want to hear any bubble gum pop music like the Garth Brooks we just played. They preferred Country music and they were prepared to angrily scream, both musical camps, until they heard what they wanted. The crowd got out of hand very quickly.

There’s this joke that you can use to diffuse the situation when someone heckles you. It is designed to turn the tables on the yelling audience member and embarrass them to get the crowd back on YOUR side. It goes like this:

Audience Member: You Suck!

You: Now sir, let’s quiet down, I don’t come to your place of work and knock the broom out of your hand, spit on the toilet you’re trying to clean, push the wrong happy meal combo button on your touch screen…etc.

Or if you want to go for the jugular, the joke infers the audience member is a prostitute. Typically the joke happens, tables turn, audience member shuts up.

We couldn’t do that here. For one thing, there were too many of them. The other thing was that anything we thought up had a better than average chance of hitting too close to home for some of these folks. The joke would cease to be absurd, which therefore would be too literal and mean. That’s not only impolite, but would have probably got us cut, shot or very badly beaten. And all the mullets and headset walkie-talkies in the world wouldn’t be able to save us from THIS crowd.

I looked to the back of the bar at Mullet for some kind of guidance. He just gave me the thumbs up, nodded and brushed his fingers at us to just keep going like everything would be okay.

We just started running our song list, and as the alcohol started lubricating the anger and distaste in the minds of our audience, the booing gave way to cheers and applause. But the trouble wasn’t over yet.

Normally, when a fight breaks out at a bar here in Seattle, the place shuts down for a while. Everything stops, people stare, the music grinds to a halt, grief counselors are brought in, its a big darn deal. But in Okanogan, an altercation broke out every ten minutes or so, with people being ejected from the bar each time. But new people would come in and THEY would start to get pushy. It was then that we saw the value of the wireless headset radios.

At one point, I looked over to the left of the stage to see a very large woman reach across her table and without standing up, lift another woman almost completely over her head, swivel 90 degrees to her left and begin to slam the woman in her clutches repeatedly into a fire exit door. The door was blocked shut by several feet of snow that had been plowed against the building outside, but that did not deter the woman doing the slamming. Again, without standing, the sitting woman used the other woman as a battering ram to finally open the door enough to push her body completely out the door, kicking and screaming. The woman then pulled the fire exit shut, put her cigar back in her mouth and continued listening to the rest of the conversation at her table as if nothing had happened. Part of me was appalled at seeing such a violent act of inhumanity displayed from one person to another. Yet a different part of me was relieved that the exit door I had been eyeing as my escape route was now cleared to be open. Mullet and No Mullet didn’t even bother to step in and investigate. I guess they figured if the woman didn’t even stand up, it wasn’t worth the bother walking over there. Plus, I think that lady could have taken them.

Security was big, but respectful. They handled themselves professionally and methodically. Even when they were slapped, pushed, yelled at, spit on, spilled on and probably bitten, they didn’t get angry, they just kept calm, picked up the offending party or parties and casually walked them out the door. Coordinating expertly on their headset mics, they could work their way around the crowd and warn one another of any danger of being hit with a bottle or thrown up on.

The first ten minute break, I think we all stayed on the stage instead of our usual mingling with the crowd. Today, you could look any of us in the face and ask us why we stayed on the stage for that first break and we would all answer the same way. We were terrified. Any sane person would have been. That first set, although ending well, with lots of dancers still drew several looks from audience members that we had never seen before. One person stared all of us down individually and pulled his finger around his neck, slowly; which meant, he either wanted to slit our throats, OR measure each of us for a dress shirt collar size.

Buddy Holly was there. Not the spirit of the band leader of the Crickets, who famously died in an airplane crash with The Big Bopper and Richie Vallens, but the actual Buddy Holly, frozen in time, alive and thriving in Okanogan, Washington in the mid 1990’s. Historian’s will be interested in knowing that Buddy, in horn-rimmed glasses and the Pomade raven black signature haircut was now living as a woman in the North Central Washington town. OR… There was a woman in her twenty’s that looked exactly like Buddy Holly the day before the music died. Either way, she got the band’s attention and seemed to be enjoying herself to our song selection, none of which were tunes penned by Holly. Dave, my friend from pre-school on up was the rhythm guitar player of Longshot and the heart and soul of the band, looked at “Buddy” and then to me and asked if I would go score an autograph . I declined, but every time she came into view on the dance floor, Dave would catch my eye and give me a look like THE Buddy Holly had just walked in. The joke did not get old.

As the night came to a close, the bar began to filter people outside. I just sat behind the drums utterly pooped. My sore throat had survived singing through the smokiest night I’ve probably ever played, but it felt worse. I wondered if I could even make it through another night of this. Normally I would immediately go strip off my sweat soaked clothes (I work hard back there) and hop into a nice hot shower to rinse clean the film or grime that accompanies such a night of drumming in the honkiest of honky tonks. However, facing the prospect of a hotel room that a Zagat’s guide would undoubtedly review with the words” BURN IT”; I wondered if my parents had any wet-nap packets outside in the van’s glove box.

As I was realizing there was no hope of an EPA approved shower, we watched as our brand new bass player, Erik, was invited to an afterhours party at a local’s house. He accepted. The rest of us thought he was out of his mind, but in hindsight Erik had simply found a way out of our hotel room predicament. The group, including Buddy Holly, whisked him away and he was GONE. With no idea where to and when or IF he would be back, we honestly worried for his safety.

I climbed off the bandstand and Mullet walked up to us and told us we did great job. We asked if it was always this rowdy and he said no. No Mullet chimed in and said Friday night is always the slow night, because not everyone comes out after working hard all week. He said it would really pick up the next night. It’s like they had planned to tell us this way. We congratulated them on keeping the peace and trudged up the terrible stairs to our certainly terrible night of sleeping.

I took one look back at the still illuminated stage with all of our instruments set-up and ready to play the next night, the “rowdier” night, and couldn’t help but think of another band miles away. Full Ride was leaving the stage somewhere at the exact same instant (as per Washington State Law). I imagined the leader of the band was thinking of us, and beginning to giggle and share an enormous laugh with the rest of his band mates about what he had done to their rival band.

I plotted my revenge, but first, sleep… terrible, awful sleep.

To be concluded in Okanogan Part 3, The Final Chapter.