Fun Times at the Carberry Motor Inn
Back in the day....I think it was a Tuesday....the Carberry Motor Inn (aka the CMI) was pretty much our home base. Lagerhead played at this venue more than anywhere else. It was the site of our very first "professional" gig, ie: the first place that actually paid us to come out and play. We made a whopping $45 each that week-end and could not have been happier. Some of my fondest memories from those halcyon days of care free rock and roll spirit come from the beloved CMI.
Our very first gig in Oct 92 was also the first time the CMI had booked a live band in something like five years. We were honoured and did our best to put on a good show. I think we accomplished that task and then some as, like I said, we went back many times after that. Not only were we the first band they had had in a long time but that night also saw the occurrence of the first real bar fight the establishment had had to deal with in quite some time as well. We were right in the middle of a blistering version of "Sin City" by AC/DC when I looked over to my left by the pool table and saw one man being rather severely beaten by three others. Two guys had him pinned to the door to the beer room while a third was hitting him repeatedly in the face with the butt end of a pool cue. I calmly suggested to anyone who was listening that someone should help the poor guy. It appeared that no-one was listening as the beating continued. After a couple more pleas for assistance the bartender finally looked up and noticed what was happening, then calmly went back to serving drinks. Enter the Meaterman. Meats, our light man extraordinaire, stood approximately 6.5 feet tall and weighed in at a slim, trim 300+ lbs. He made sure the stage was well lit and left his post at the back of the bar to see what he could do. What he could do was pick smaller men up by the back of their necks and throw them around like rag dolls. He started with the guy wielding the cue and when the other two realised what was happening they let go of their victim and ran out of the bar. By this time the bartender had decided that everyone at the bar could wait a few seconds and quickly ran over and attempted to forcibly remove Meats from the bar. The previously mentioned victim was in pretty rough shape but still managed to convince the oblivious bar tender that our guy had in fact saved him and not started any of the violence that had taken place. The guy with the pool cue had also fled the scene by this time and our new friend was taken to get medical attention and we continued on with our show. At the end of the night we commended the Meat man on a job well done and berated the bartender for not having a clue what was going on. The bar owner had been made aware of the situation and also commended both us , for not stopping our show, and Meats for getting the job done when it needed to be. All this excitement on just the first night of our two night stand!
Saturday night rolls around and we make our way to the bar for our first set. There had been a decent sized crowd the night before and we were expecting the same for this night. We come down the stairs from our hotel rooms and enter the bar to be greeted by....two people other than the staff. It seems that Carberry is a hockey town not unlike a lot of small towns around Manitoba, and there is a game on tonight. Great. We'll play to these two people and deal with it. What choice did we have? We started out the set feeling a little dejected. Playing live is always a lot of fun and in fact it's something I live for but playing to really small, unappreciative crowds can be taxing, not to mention a huge blow to the rock star ego. Big crowds who are into the show are very cool to play for. I feed off the energy from the crowd and in turn amp up my performance in kind. We had resigned ourselves to the fact that this night was going to be essentially a paid practice so we weren't trying very hard. Just going through the motions basically. Then something rather strange occurred. The two people in the bar moved to a table right up in front of the stage. They clapped and cheered loudly for every song. They danced in the aisle next to their table. They were enjoying our admittedly lacklustre performance. We were inspired to say the least. We started to return their enthusiasm in kind and ended up playing to those two people as if they were 2000 people. I was using a wireless mic and so I left the stage and joined our audience out front. I sang directly to them, danced with them and generally ran around the bar like a mad man. This inspired a the other guys in the band and by the end of our first set we were all dancing on tables and running around the room having a great time. During our break we sat down and had a couple drinks with our audience of two and passed the time chatting and thanking them while a few more people wandered into the bar. We played our next set with just as mush enthusiasm as the first to a little larger crowd of around 10 or so and went back up to our rooms during our next break to just mellow a little before finishing the night.
Flash forward about half an hour and we make our return to the bar. Apparently the hockey game was over by this time and the local team had won. The place was absolutely packed to the rafters with a lot of happy people when we came back in. We literally had to push our way through the crowd to get to the stage. Our friends from set one were still right up front and most of my performance that set was directed at them. We were having a blast. This was, as I mentioned earlier, our very first bar gig and I was thinking "I hope every show goes like this!" At one point during the set I was sort of lost in the moment and singing with my eyes closed during a particularly emotional part of whatever song we were playing at the time. I opened my eyes to the sight of the two bartenders and a waitress (apparently extra staff was brought in after the previous nights mayhem) running past the stage with fire extinguishers. Hmmm, I thought, this can't be good. We finished the song we were playing and took a quick inventory to make sure none of our gear was on fire. It turned out that someone had set a paper towel dispenser in the men's room alight. Smoke was billowing out of the room and down the hall, filling the bar until someone opened the back door, allowing the noxious cloud to dissipate. With everything under control we finished our set. Taking time to notice that the WAY TOO FREAKIN BIG PA SYSTEM we had brought along had been cranked up loud enough that we were actually rattling plaster off of the ceiling in various places around the bar. Ahh Rock and Roll. Louder is always better and no one but us seemed to notice that the place was falling apart around them. We ended up renting this particular PA system pretty much every time we went out and it was always way more powerful than what we ever needed.
At the end of the night we were sitting with the staff while they took a break before finishing the closing process. Doors were all locked and everyone but us was out of the bar. We were casually shooting the breeze when the bar owner came in and joined us. He looked around and noticed a few spots were there was an awful lot of dust and chunks of ceiling on the floor and looked kinda pissed. He asked the staff if there was anymore trouble like the night before and they told him of the fire. He inquired about the plaster everywhere and we admitted that we might have been a little loud but the staff defended us saying that the place was absolutely packed and the volume was not overly excessive at all. They then proceeded to tell him about the way we performed for the two people that were there at the beginning of the night. This impressed him and he opened a case of beer and we all sat around drinking for free until the very wee hours of the early morning. He also paid us $22 more than the agreed upon rate because he felt we deserved it for making the effort to entertain his patrons. Fee beer and more money! We were living the rock and roll dream for sure. As I mentioned earlier we made a grand total of about $45 each after expenses that week-end. If the bar owner had not paid us extra I'm sure we would have come home owing money to someone. Like I said, that PA was WAY TOO FREAKIN BIG for the places we played. Way too expensive too. This whole week end was just the beginning of our long term relationship with the beloved CMI. More stories from this hallowed ground next time....
Our very first gig in Oct 92 was also the first time the CMI had booked a live band in something like five years. We were honoured and did our best to put on a good show. I think we accomplished that task and then some as, like I said, we went back many times after that. Not only were we the first band they had had in a long time but that night also saw the occurrence of the first real bar fight the establishment had had to deal with in quite some time as well. We were right in the middle of a blistering version of "Sin City" by AC/DC when I looked over to my left by the pool table and saw one man being rather severely beaten by three others. Two guys had him pinned to the door to the beer room while a third was hitting him repeatedly in the face with the butt end of a pool cue. I calmly suggested to anyone who was listening that someone should help the poor guy. It appeared that no-one was listening as the beating continued. After a couple more pleas for assistance the bartender finally looked up and noticed what was happening, then calmly went back to serving drinks. Enter the Meaterman. Meats, our light man extraordinaire, stood approximately 6.5 feet tall and weighed in at a slim, trim 300+ lbs. He made sure the stage was well lit and left his post at the back of the bar to see what he could do. What he could do was pick smaller men up by the back of their necks and throw them around like rag dolls. He started with the guy wielding the cue and when the other two realised what was happening they let go of their victim and ran out of the bar. By this time the bartender had decided that everyone at the bar could wait a few seconds and quickly ran over and attempted to forcibly remove Meats from the bar. The previously mentioned victim was in pretty rough shape but still managed to convince the oblivious bar tender that our guy had in fact saved him and not started any of the violence that had taken place. The guy with the pool cue had also fled the scene by this time and our new friend was taken to get medical attention and we continued on with our show. At the end of the night we commended the Meat man on a job well done and berated the bartender for not having a clue what was going on. The bar owner had been made aware of the situation and also commended both us , for not stopping our show, and Meats for getting the job done when it needed to be. All this excitement on just the first night of our two night stand!
Saturday night rolls around and we make our way to the bar for our first set. There had been a decent sized crowd the night before and we were expecting the same for this night. We come down the stairs from our hotel rooms and enter the bar to be greeted by....two people other than the staff. It seems that Carberry is a hockey town not unlike a lot of small towns around Manitoba, and there is a game on tonight. Great. We'll play to these two people and deal with it. What choice did we have? We started out the set feeling a little dejected. Playing live is always a lot of fun and in fact it's something I live for but playing to really small, unappreciative crowds can be taxing, not to mention a huge blow to the rock star ego. Big crowds who are into the show are very cool to play for. I feed off the energy from the crowd and in turn amp up my performance in kind. We had resigned ourselves to the fact that this night was going to be essentially a paid practice so we weren't trying very hard. Just going through the motions basically. Then something rather strange occurred. The two people in the bar moved to a table right up in front of the stage. They clapped and cheered loudly for every song. They danced in the aisle next to their table. They were enjoying our admittedly lacklustre performance. We were inspired to say the least. We started to return their enthusiasm in kind and ended up playing to those two people as if they were 2000 people. I was using a wireless mic and so I left the stage and joined our audience out front. I sang directly to them, danced with them and generally ran around the bar like a mad man. This inspired a the other guys in the band and by the end of our first set we were all dancing on tables and running around the room having a great time. During our break we sat down and had a couple drinks with our audience of two and passed the time chatting and thanking them while a few more people wandered into the bar. We played our next set with just as mush enthusiasm as the first to a little larger crowd of around 10 or so and went back up to our rooms during our next break to just mellow a little before finishing the night.
Flash forward about half an hour and we make our return to the bar. Apparently the hockey game was over by this time and the local team had won. The place was absolutely packed to the rafters with a lot of happy people when we came back in. We literally had to push our way through the crowd to get to the stage. Our friends from set one were still right up front and most of my performance that set was directed at them. We were having a blast. This was, as I mentioned earlier, our very first bar gig and I was thinking "I hope every show goes like this!" At one point during the set I was sort of lost in the moment and singing with my eyes closed during a particularly emotional part of whatever song we were playing at the time. I opened my eyes to the sight of the two bartenders and a waitress (apparently extra staff was brought in after the previous nights mayhem) running past the stage with fire extinguishers. Hmmm, I thought, this can't be good. We finished the song we were playing and took a quick inventory to make sure none of our gear was on fire. It turned out that someone had set a paper towel dispenser in the men's room alight. Smoke was billowing out of the room and down the hall, filling the bar until someone opened the back door, allowing the noxious cloud to dissipate. With everything under control we finished our set. Taking time to notice that the WAY TOO FREAKIN BIG PA SYSTEM we had brought along had been cranked up loud enough that we were actually rattling plaster off of the ceiling in various places around the bar. Ahh Rock and Roll. Louder is always better and no one but us seemed to notice that the place was falling apart around them. We ended up renting this particular PA system pretty much every time we went out and it was always way more powerful than what we ever needed.
At the end of the night we were sitting with the staff while they took a break before finishing the closing process. Doors were all locked and everyone but us was out of the bar. We were casually shooting the breeze when the bar owner came in and joined us. He looked around and noticed a few spots were there was an awful lot of dust and chunks of ceiling on the floor and looked kinda pissed. He asked the staff if there was anymore trouble like the night before and they told him of the fire. He inquired about the plaster everywhere and we admitted that we might have been a little loud but the staff defended us saying that the place was absolutely packed and the volume was not overly excessive at all. They then proceeded to tell him about the way we performed for the two people that were there at the beginning of the night. This impressed him and he opened a case of beer and we all sat around drinking for free until the very wee hours of the early morning. He also paid us $22 more than the agreed upon rate because he felt we deserved it for making the effort to entertain his patrons. Fee beer and more money! We were living the rock and roll dream for sure. As I mentioned earlier we made a grand total of about $45 each after expenses that week-end. If the bar owner had not paid us extra I'm sure we would have come home owing money to someone. Like I said, that PA was WAY TOO FREAKIN BIG for the places we played. Way too expensive too. This whole week end was just the beginning of our long term relationship with the beloved CMI. More stories from this hallowed ground next time....
posted by The Big FUGR at
11:58 AM
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