Subtle Hint: The Shows

The “Hello Cleveland” tour began in May of 1991. Those of you familiar with the movie This Is Spinal Tap will get the reference. We had a full band, a fifteen song set, a rehearsal studio, demo tapes, and a lot of ambition. We would play anywhere, anytime, free. And we did. We had a lot of success, though not exactly the type of success we were expecting.

As I wrote earlier, I got my first experience playing live with Free Reign. The first show was an indoor talent contest, where we were limited to one song. So I was onstage for about five minutes. It was truly strange. The odd thing that stuck with me was that when you’re onstage, you’re absolutely blind. You can’t see anyone or anything two feet past the stage, in the darkness of the room. It was a bit disorienting. Oh – and the stage is beastly hot, something like at least ninety-nine degrees. And time goes by fast.

Three months later Free Reign played an outdoor music festival, organized by Per, who was not only our singer/main songwriter/guitarist but also a member of the college student council and the sponsor of the outdoor music festival. There were two other bands playing, but we got the choice spot – headlining. We played five songs in our thirty minute set (lots of gabbing by Per to the audience between songs and extended guitar solos by the band). Again, it went by fast. But what a feeling!

Then a two-year dry spell, until I hooked up with Steve and Rich again, this time with Mike a full-fledged member of the band. I don’t recall who was drumming for us (probably Rob the Rush fan), but that summer we did a little show called “Town Day” (the town still insists on anonymity, I’m afraid). It was at a park, outdoors, a beautiful day, and there was this ten-by-twenty foot block of cement about three feet off the ground that the band set up and played on. We had a half-hour set and ran through about ten of the older tunes in front of a crowd of about twenty or thirty people. We recorded it, too, and it came out satisfactory. We also had the distinction of being the only band that day (there was only one other act, a solo Dylan-esque balladeer) to have a train roll by behind us for five minutes, leisurely and laughingly drowning out our sound. Oh well.

That winter two things happened. One, we got John on drums, completing our lineup. And two, Steve, Bob and I rented a massive house a few towns over. Tumblers suddenly clicked into position, and three months later, we booked our first show of the tour, which would last for about twenty shows over the course of five months before crashing completely to a halt.

The m.o. was simple. We enticed people to show up to see us play with an invitation to a party at the house we rented, free. We bought the beer, they showed up. And the amazing thing was – it worked, more often than not. After a while some people just showed up to the parties and not the shows, but we had some friendly pinky-ring-twisting talks with them. The only problem was that by the end of the summer the parties were getting scary. I’m talking about fifty or sixty people stumbling through your house, drunk or worse, and you not knowing half of them. But most of the time a good time was had by all. In other words, there were no casualties, legal or otherwise.

The majority of the shows were at two dives in Newark and Jersey City. Basically just places for bands to play and their friends to watch. In other words, no drinking. We soon learned that no drinking meant no crowds. Hmmm. There is (or was) a semi-famous chain of clubs dotting the Jersey shore we also played a lot at, and these had liquor licenses. Thusly, they were packed with more people, say, at a ratio of ten- or twenty-to-one compared to the other clubs. So we tried to focus on them. We also played a couple of random bars here and there, a battle-of-the-bands type thingie one rainy night, another outdoor gig if I remember correctly, and, later that fall, two clubs down in Greenwich Village, NYC and one somewhere else in lower Manhattan, don’t recall where. Our biggest show was as an “opener” for the band Law And Order, a band you don’t remember now but was actually moderately successful in the very-early-90s.

What was a typical show like? Steve usually booked the gigs; he was on good terms with the various promoters and club booking agents we came in contact with. Sometimes Rich or Mike did, too. Usually for a Friday or Saturday, but we occasionally played odd Thursday, Sunday, or mid-week gigs. Not often, though, ’cause of the whole party aspect of it. We tried to get at least one quality rehearsal the day before every show, depending on how “important” it was, but we were still rehearsing regularly at Steve’s garage, at least two or three times a week.

We’d all meet at the garage a few hours before the show and load up all our equipment. John and I both had trucks, so we could carry most of the amps and drum kit. Rich and Steve would carry the instruments in their cars; Mike would hitch a ride with someone. We’d get to the place, set up our equipment, and then, usually, grab some dinner. There was an awesome Chinese place in Jersey City we frequented a lot. Then, we’d come up with a finalized set list. A beer or two for those who could handle it (i.e. still play competently), meet and greet with friends new and old, then sit through any bands on before us. Smoke your last cigarette, then – on to the stage! John would announce “Hello, Cleveland,” tap his sticks, and we’d launch into the first tune.

Nothing too strange or weird happened on stage to me. Once I broke the low E-string just before the last song of a set – “Kicked in the Face,” whose main riff prominently bounced up and down on said string, so I had to fake it (this was in the early days before you brought a back-up guitar with you). Steve, always a little manic on stage, leaped from a speaker cabinet off to the side of the stage and his knee crashed against a monitor, tearing ligaments somehow. The next show he sang on a stool, his leg immobilized in a brace. Mike and I always seemed to bond onstage, communicating and moving around; I enjoyed playing with him. Rich was kinda monolithic, immobile, a hairy madmen cranking out beautiful or frantic guitar solos, but that was his image.

One thing imprinted itself indestructibly on my mind during those couple of months, one thing only, really. And that is … the sound of clapping, anywhere from a dozen to five hundred people clapping for you, for something you did, for some feeling of appreciation or excitement or entertainment that you instilled in them … that sound is something I will never forget, as the lights go down on stage and you’re standing in darkness and the crowd is clapping for you.