Backstage With the Band

[benzem]

Stratguy22's comments in the "weird situation with 2 singers" thread got me thinking. 

Mine? Technically a outdoor biker party that went 'til about 3 am. BUT, we started around 5 pm! But it didn't really get going until almost midnight. Of course there were some long breaks in there. It was a casual band and our first gig. Our setlist was maybe 22 songs so we played them each several times! Ha. Drunk and freezing at the end..could barely move my fingers.

Officially it was a NYE gig. The other lead singer didn't show so I sang the whole night,  which extended til 2 am(at least). 5 sets! Couldn't hardly speak the next day.

Yours?

[modulusman]

 Back in the 80s i was playing clubs in Alaska from 10-4am 6 nights a week.  I think the longest single day was when my band was the back-up band for the country showdown. We set up at 8:00am and rehearsed with the contestants for 2.5 hours ate lunch then played the actual show which was about 90 minutes. We then had  a few hours off then played on the same stage from 8-midnight.

[tlbonehead]

I've played 2x4 hour gigs in a day a number of times.

[dan88z]

I've done the 2 full gigs in a day a couple times. The longest ones at a single venue were a place where you alternated an hour on/hour off with a DJ, from 9pm to 4am. We slept in the dressing room between sets.

One of my current band's 1st gigs was a 6x60min set gig for the seasonal outdoor deck opening of a waterfront restaurant. This also goes in the pile of nightmare gigs, not because of the length, but for the end result of dealing with the management. Another story for another time...

[Potts]

I normally do a bunch of double 3 hour gigs in the summer. But the longest solo gig was probably 5 hours.

[joshmac]

St Pattys Day we always do an afternoon 12-4 then an evening 6-12 kind of deal. That makes for a decently long day

[n9ne]

The two that come to mind:

A private after-hours place in Tuscaloosa AL.  The club manager told us, "You boys start around 9:00-10:00 PM, and play whatever you want and take as many breaks as you want....I don't care.   There won't be hardly nobody here.   But as the other places shut down, we'll be packed with people....so at 1:00 AM,  you have all your best stuff ready, and you play straight through until it slows down around 4:00-5:00 AM."   I remember finishing our set and walking out of the club just as the sun was about to come up.   Seemed very surreal, loading out of a club when it felt like we should have been eating breakfast.

Also played a club that rotated three bands per night starting at 8:00, with each band playing two sets.   So after you played your first set, you had to wait three hours to start your second set.    Plus, you had soundcheck from 6:00-7:00.   It wasn't too bad if you were the first band to go on, because you were done around midnight.....but the third band had to soundcheck at 6:30 or so, then start their first set around 11:00 PM, then their second set at 2:00-2:30 AM.   Made for a long, slow night.   (Hardly surprising that most of the bands were half-drunk by the time they started their second set.  But that's what happens when you ask folks to sit and wait in a bar for three hours.)

[delaware dave]

In 2009 I did a 12-3 show with a dead band, a 6-9 live studio recording and a 10-1 gig in a club next to the studio. We had to carry our equipment from the studio to the club. Fortunately a bunch of people helped us with the equipment. I was exhausted. About 7 years ago I played with a dead band and we did a 9-2 gig with one 35 minute break. My fingers, back and legs were killing me. It was an hour drive home to boot.

[Miko Man]

Not quite the same thing, but the bagpipe band I'm in has a rather long St. Patrick's Day, as you can imagine. We meet at 7:30 AM (yikes!) to play our first bit at 8:00 AM (outdoors, no less, for a flag raising), and then go from there to other venues thru the morning. It's hit-and-run piping from about 4:00 to 11:00 PM, doing the local pub crawl. Mark C.

[guido61]

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Miko Man wrote:
Not quite the same thing, but the bagpipe band I'm in has a rather long St. Patrick's Day, as you can imagine. We meet at 7:30 AM (yikes!) to play our first bit at 8:00 AM (outdoors, no less, for a flag raising), and then go from there to other venues thru the morning. It's hit-and-run piping from about 4:00 to 11:00 PM, doing the local pub crawl. Mark C.

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No, not quite the same thing.   I think blowing through bagpipes all day long would be MUCH harder....

[SeniorBlues]

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guido61 wrote:

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Miko Man wrote:
Not quite the same thing, but the bagpipe band I'm in has a rather long St. Patrick's Day, as you can imagine. We meet at 7:30 AM (yikes!) to play our first bit at 8:00 AM (outdoors, no less, for a flag raising), and then go from there to other venues thru the morning. It's hit-and-run piping from about 4:00 to 11:00 PM, doing the local pub crawl. Mark C.

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No, not quite the same thing.   I think blowing through bagpipes all day long would be MUCH harder....

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Speaking of physically difficult gigs, a trombone player once told me that the hardest gigs he ever played (he'd be 85 if he was still with us) was a circus gig.  Think about all the up tempo melodies you associate with that venue.

Five sets a night, six nights a week used to be the norm when I was young.  One club here in DC was also an after hours gig, so tack on two more sets on Saturday/early Sunday.  Another club in Boston had a Saturday afternoon matinee.  At least we didn't have to move equipment.

[guido61]

I've had gigs that stretched out all day long.  Sometimes weddings can drag on for hours.  And I've done the two-gigs in one day thing.

But the longest single gig I can remember was years ago at a club in Reno.  In Nevada, there's no cutoff time for drinking, and after doing 5 sets, we were offered money by the clubowner to play an additional set.  And then another.  And then ANOTHER.  We turned down the offer to do an 8th set.  7 was plenty!

[SpaceNorman]

There's a local town festival that we play every year that is definitely a marathon. 

The event is an Art/Crafts festival that shuts down the entire main street business district ... roughly two blocks long - as well as the city park that sits at one end of the business district.   There's a "festival" beer tent located in the park that has constant music - as well as a couple of local bars that set up a tent in the street that do live entertainment as well.  

We play a concert in the park (2 - 1 hour sets with a 10 minute break) on Thursday night, a full 4 set night under outdoor tent in front of one of the bars in town on Friday night.  On Saturday it's 3 one hour sets in the festival beer tent at one end of town ... followed by a full 4 set bar night under the outdoor tent that we play under on Friday night.

The two full "back-to-back" gigs on Saturday - coming on the heels of a full 4 set night on Friday and a pretty decent two hour show on Thursday is definitely an endurance event for us - especially the vocalists.  It's a fun weekend though ... especially if the weather is good.  We consistently see 4-6 private event bookings as a result of having been seen at one of our festival performances.  

[WynnD]

We used to play at one of the casinos. That day after loading up the van started at 3 PM with the drive up, the ugly unload and setup. Dinner, show, tear down, ugly loadup and return home by 2:30 AM 11.5 hours not including loading and unloading my van. (Another hour.) Glad they quit calling us. (Think my concern for my equipment that they insisted had to be unloaded and the car moved before dragging it all inside may have pissed them off. The policy pissed me off. It wasn't their livelihood sitting on the floor outside the casino door.)

[n9ne]

The most brutal 24 hour stretch I've done was loading the truck early Saturday , driving 6 hrs to the gig, doing a full load-in and setup, playing 10-2....then loading everything back up and driving all night to make a 10 AM load-in for a 2-6 Sunday afternoon gig, then loading everything back up and taking it back to our warehouse so we could get the rental truck turned in on time Monday morning.

Started working around lunchtime Saturday and worked pretty much straight through until about 10 PM Sunday. That was rough.

[SeniorBlues]

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n9ne wrote:
The most brutal 24 hour stretch I've done was loading the truck early Saturday , driving 6 hrs to the gig, doing a full load-in and setup, playing 10-2....then loading everything back up and driving all night to make a 10 AM load-in for a 2-6 Sunday afternoon gig, then loading everything back up and taking it back to our warehouse so we could get the rental truck turned in on time Monday morning.

Started working around lunchtime Saturday and worked pretty much straight through until about 10 PM Sunday. That was rough.

That's a serious round trip . . . . 

While we're looking at variations on the "most grueling" theme, how about the longest drive from one gig to the next.  No overnight layover.

Five of us packed up after a gig in Williamsport, PA, drove to Tampa, FL and played that night. Seventeen hours, IIRC.

[guido61]

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SeniorBlues wrote:

, PA, drove to Tampa, FL and played that night. Seventeen hours, IIRC.

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That sounds pretty brutal!  I can't remember doing anything quite like that, but I might have in all the years.

One of the craziest (in a completely different way) I remember was this:  We were playing 2 consecutive Tuesday-Saturday night weeks in Phoenix, when we get a call to play a record label showcase in LA on the Sunday in between.   The only way to really make it work is to have the road crew pack up the stuff Saturday night, drive to LA, and then drive back and set up so we can play on Tuesday night while the band flies to LA and back so we can get some decent rest in between shows.

Would have worked out fine (well, the roadies probably have a different opinion about that) except for the fact that the truck broke down coming back from LA on Monday.   So after we get back to Phoenix, a couple of us in the band have to rent a truck and drive out to where our truck is, transfer all the gear, and head back to Phoenix and set it all up in time to play Tuesday night.  Not to mention having to deal with the broken down truck during the next week so we can leave town and get to the next city the following week.

Ah....those were the days!

[modulusman]

 About 5 years ago we played our usual Thursday night guest ranch gig at 11pm then immediately drove 550 miles to N.Dakota for a 4th of July street dance. Finished loading out about 3am and got to bed at 4am saturday morning. I had a total of 1 a half hour of sleep since Thursday morning when I got up for work at 7am.

[Gremson]

I was part of an improv theatre group for a while, playing background music and minor acting pieces
One of their yearly events was the 25-hour Improvathon!
It would start at 4pm and go till 5pm the next day. Consisting of twenty-five 45-minute sketches with a 15 minute break in between. I played background music on guitar for every single sketch.
By the time it was over I had rubbed the side of my left thumb raw from sliding up and down the neck so much. Other than that I was just tired. It was a really fun gig!