We played another benefit gig tonight in a tiny little Arkansas town called New Hope. A benefit gig is what I call a freebie gig. Because we don't get paid a nickel for doing them. In fact it costs us money to do them. Gas isn't cheap these days and when you're pulling an enclosed trailer full of music equipment behind you the gas mileage goes to hell no matter what kind of vehicle you're using to pull it. I don't mind doing things to help people out. Tonight we helped raise money for a guy with cancer that has medical bills stacking up on him. But with my current financial situation I feel like we should be putting on a benefit show for me and my family. People around here always seem to pull together and raise money to help some people out with medical bills etc. Its one of the things I like best about living in the south where there still seems to be a little humanity left in the world. But not everyone gets a benefit in hard times. Its usually a "somebody" that gets the benefits and rarely a real poor person who probably needs it the most. It is what it is I guess.
One thing for sure I have learned about having a band is that there is no lack of people that will hit you up to do a free concert. Its always for a worthy cause, but still. When you are as poor as I am right now its hard to pull something like that off. A free benefit performance is NOT free to the band. It costs us money to do it. As in gasoline to get bet to the gig and back. Not to mention every bit of the amount of hard work that goes into setting up and breaking down the equipment.I figured it put one night out of curiosity and divied what we made on a paying gig and it was pretty much minimum wage at best.
As usual I'm broke and way behind in bills still. Somehow my internet is still working and I still haven't tackled that bill. Right now we're struggling to keep electricity on and the house payment made.That's a never ending thing for me these last 5 years since my motorcycle accident. Since its looking more and more like social security is going to give me the shaft I'm left not knowing what the hell I'm going to do. My situation is so bad that I am literally nearing homelessness. I've got a 600 dollar electric bill sitting on the table with the rest of the bills and the house payment is late again this month. And on top of that the note on the house is up for renewal. Basically I feel like I'm pretty screwed at this point. We got so far behind last year that the banker was nice enough to let us slide and refinance. We had gotten 6 months behind on payments when he did that. But when he did that for us he also told us we were now on a one year renewable note and not one payment could be late. So far 3 have been late since that refinance. I know he's trying his best to help up out but there's only so much a banker can do since they have some pretty strict rules they have to follow. Especially since the post 9/11 economy. The "Patriot" Act included lots of new rules for banking institutions also. We use a private family owned bank who until 9/11 pretty much played by their own rules. They were THE bank to deal with around here locally. But now they have been clamped down upon by the mighty powers that be big banks and things have changed drastically.
I know that if worse comes to worse he will give us a chance to sell the house before foreclosing. Since I currently live with my ex-wife and she got the house in the divorce my hands a tied as to anything I have a say over. And the fact that I have no income to speak of just makes me that much worse off. What I'm looking at and seeing as a good possibility right now is that if she ends up losing this little dump we call home, she can get herself a place with rental assistance since her health is shit and she can't work a regular job and we have a son who lives at home she can get herself a place for practically nothing. But if she did I wouldn't be allowed to live there according to rules. And a single disabled guy who for some reason can't get disability to acknowledge what their own doctors say about me I'm screwed. Reading through the ALJ's decision letter on my disability hearing looks like I'm reading a decision that has nothing to do with my case. Even the first paragraph of that letter told me something reeked bad. The Administrative Law Judge (ALJ) stated that "even though the client was aware of his rights to representation he chose to represent himself". That statement alone should nullify his decision in my case. I DID have an attorney and he was present at my hearing and did a lot of talking on my behalf including cross examining social securities own expert/doctor witnesses just to clarify what we heard when they made their statements regarding my medical and mental conditions. Both expert witness doctors basically testified in my favor for disability. They agreed with the same doctors that social security sent me to that basically said "this man is disabled in my opinion". The "judge" based his entire decision on a question I answered on the initial application that basically said I felt I was capable of feeding a dog and letting it in and out of the house. Its insane ... that's all I can say about it.
So going back to the freebie gig we did tonight. I think at one time there might have been 12 to 15 people who actually pulled a lawn chair down close to where we were playing and listened to us. As usual (it seems) our bass player let us down AGAIN and couldn't show up for the gig. He didn't even let any of us know until Friday night when he didn't show for practice AGAIN and the gig was Saturday. Its actually Sunday as I'm writing this at 2am still a little steamed over the whole thing. We couldn't find a stand in bass player even though we did try. He doesn't know a lot of our songs though either so it might have turned out not so great anyway. We have jammed with the guy twice now though and he's good. There's no doubt in my mind that he could easily step in and take our current bass players place. And once he got the songs down and pretty well memorized he would literally play circles around our current bass player. Don't get me wrong though, our current bass player is pretty damn good in general. And he's a walking jukebox to boot. And the best part about him is that he really harmonizes excellent with our lead singer. He sings some of our songs himself and does pretty good but tends to slow down or something when he plays and sings at the same time so he's best at singing backing vocals.
One little problem about the guy .... he's a bad alcoholic. I mean BAD bad. I know where he's at too because I used to be the same way until my motorcycle accident crippled me for life. I didn't drink anything for about a year after my accident. And then one night it was Halloween and there was a big party going on and long story short I got drunk. First time since my motorcycle wreck. That was a huge mistake! I rolled my truck that night 3 times. It broke my collar bone (seat belt) and bruised me up and cut me up pretty good but it didn't break any of the screws or rods in my back luckily. Got another DWI out of that one too. My second in a little over a year. That's when I finally said "fuck drinking" and I have never been drunk again since. I will drink up to 3 beers at a gig and once or twice had 4 but that's it for me. Sometimes I just drink ice water or Dr Pepper with ice in it. Lately that's all I've been drinking on stage since the beers are 3 dollars a piece for a draft beer at this pizza place we've been playing lately. So far they haven't charged us for ice water or Cokes but they sure will charge you for a beer lol. For years I've always thought bands got to drink beer for free as part of the gig. Maybe that's for bands that use contracts and have riders on them but its not for us regular Joe bands I guess. Anyway, our bass player has gotten drunk at a lot of our gigs and he can't slowly drink or anything. He gets two at a time (not kidding) and guzzles them down in no time. A few gigs ago at the pizza place his wife ordered 2 pizzas at about 20 bucks a piece and drinks for her and two kids (she doesn't drink alcohol btw) and at the end of the night when the waitress brought the bill, shit hit the fan!! We knew he was in deep shit for some reason but we didn't figure it out until days or maybe a week later. As soon as we were done playing she told him to get his ass in the car NOW and "lets go". We had to pack his bass and equipment up for him and take it home. We found out later that the bill for that night was well over 150 dollars. So I got to thinking, 40 bucks maybe on pizza and just say 2 bucks times 3 for drinks. I think refills are free. There's 46 dollars on pizza and drinks for her and the kids. The rest of the bill was out bass players beer tab. If I remember correctly the bill was $153.and change. That's 107 dollars in beer. That's more than the gig even pays! The beers there cost 3 dollars a piece so that's like 35 beers he drank that night. He tripped and fell on the stage during a break and totally destroyed the music stand we were using. My music stand, and he never even offered to replace it or say "sorry" either.
But this is nothing new really. He's been known to get torn down at a lot of our gigs. I think our third gig was the time he puked on the stage next to his mic stand. And if you say anything to him he gets mad and wants to fight somebody. His wife gives the rest of us these go to hell looks all the time like she despises us or something. Its almost like she blames us for his drinking, whether anyone else is drinking or not. The rest of us can take it or leave it, nobody else is much of a drinker and we know better than to get too tipsy. I know one thing, its quite a sight to see a person playing bass and blacking out drunk at the same time. He starts just playing a different song or something and you look over at him and his head is down and his eyes are closed like he's passing out. A few times in practice sessions I thought he was about to fall on his face any minute. That's when its time to shut it down for the night. It gets downright embarrassing at times though at gigs. I think its a matter of time before his wife makes him quit playing with us. Its a shame too but he just won't cut the drinking out or even down. When he drinks one its like a trigger that makes him want to chain drink until he passes out I guess.
Well I'm signing off for now. Don't know what the coming days have in store for me. They're due to shut our electricity off on the 30th. So much for the free internet connection lol. May as well try to laugh about it, beats crying and I'm getting tired of that shit anyway.
Peace, Love and Music ............ Hopeless Musician in Arkansas :/
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