Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5

One year, Newman was asked to play at a festival hosted by a small college in northern North Carolina. After contractually agreeing to play the show, something came up right before the gig and our keyboard player and drummer bailed on us. So, we asked their counterparts from Beaver Traffic Jam to come play with us. They were supposed the headline the second night, and being pretty good friends or ours, they agreed. We had one rehearsal the night before the festival to work out a few songs, but essentially we’d have to improvise the whole thing.

The day of the show, I drove down early with the “borrowed” keyboard player and drummer to get set up. Our bass player (from Exit 118) planned to drive down by himself after work and meet us there. We rolled into town about two hours before our sound check, loaded out, ordered some pizza, drank a few beers, hung out with the students, and smoked a few (read: “too many”) 5-foot bingers (wait, what?).

So, now you need to know a little bit about the school that hosted this affair. It is a literary arts school. Kids go there to learn how to write poetry, prose, journalism, etc. They also prided themselves on being the first fully handicap accessible campus in the nation. Somehow it made sense that there were lots of stoners. But, not only were there a lot of stoners, there were a lot of stoners in wheelchairs. At first it was a little freaky, but I have to say, these were some of the coolest people I have ever met. Most of them had all of their wits about them, but had just been dealt a bad hand by being hit by trucks, attacked by sharks, sucked into jet engines or simply born without legs, etc. These were people who had dealt with serious hardships and were committed to leading regular lives despite their physical challenges. Consequently, they were awesome people! The non-handicappers called the handicappers “wheelies”, and the wheelies called the non-wheelies “leggies”. It was a completely non-judgemental paradise where you had to climb on the top bunk to take a bong hit, and when you finished, you had to help lift the next guy up there to do the same.

While we were waiting for our turn to play, we shared with them our concerns about not being the “practiced” band they thought they had hired. No one seemed to care. They said we didn’t even have to play if we didn’t want to. We were even handed our check before taking the stage. That really took all the pressure off, especially behind our eyes, and we were ready…ish.

We walked out to the venue and watched the first band. It was a high-school punk band from somewhere in southern North Carolina. They were OK, but my main interest was in the beer garden. The “beer garden” consisted of two kegs set up inside a 10’x10’ chain link fence with two gates labeled “EXIT” and “ENTERANCE”. Yes, I meant to spell that wrong. The sign’s creator, however, had not. We got such a big kick out of the idea that this literary school had smoked itself stupid, that we stole the misspelled sign to make a point.

We drank a few beers and watched that first band from behind the crowd. Everyone was dancing and moving around, especially the Wheelies. Right in front of me, one of them fell out of his chair. I immediately raced over to help him. My friend grabbed my arm and pulled me back. “Don’t help, man. They hate that.” I stood there and watched while he climbed himself back into his chair and began to bounce around again, only to fall over a few minutes later, rolling in the grass, laughing at himself. As I looked around the field, I noticed that this was happening all over the place. They were jumping out of their chairs like popcorn, all of them laughing, getting back in their chairs, and falling over again. I fell over from laughter and found myself face to face with the guy in front of me. When we stopped laughing, he said to me. “Man, isn’t this AWESOME!!!?” It was.

The bass player finally showed up about 10 minutes before our scheduled start time. This was just long enough for him to take a seat on the top bunk before jumping on stage. And there we were, a patchwork band, with no set list, very little practice and no idea how we’d fill 3 hours of music. The festival MC came on stage, grabbed the mic and began his spiel.

“How ’bout a big hand for those guys…, thanks to so-and-so for something or other…, make donations over that way…, beer garden is over there, show your ID to the girl sitting under the sign labeled….HEY! Where’d the sign go?”

That’s when our keyboard player held up the stolen sign.

The crowd roared.

The MC turned around, looked at the sign and laughed. Then he whispered to me, “you guys ready?”

“Nope.”

He smiled and turned back around. “Please welcome to the stage from Richmond, Virginia…. En-ter-ance!” And we started into the Allman Brothers’ “One Way Out”.

We managed to crank out 3 hours of music without a set break. I have no idea what we played or how it sounded, but the crowd loved it. I feel like there was a String Cheese “Jellyfish” in there somewhere, but who knows. We bounced more wheelies than I’m proud to admit. When we finished the show, the sound guy asked if we wanted a copy of the tape. No, we collectively decided, it can’t be legendary if proof exists that it wasn’t.

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