What Not To Do

a.k.a. "Lessons you'd be better off learning from me,
instead of learning them the hard way".

I had a couple of stories that I thought were worth sharing...I'm sure there will be more as I think of them, and I will add them to this page when I do. Meanwhile, here's a start.

BEEN CAUGHT STEALIN'

Wanna hear a great story about how a seemingly petty thing can come back years later and bite a band in the ass?

It was fall of 2002 and Phix was just getting started on our first major national tour. It was show #2 of a tour that was 28 shows long. We got to Carbondale, IL a couple hours early, so we stopped by a local mom & pop music store in town to pick up some guitar strings and drumsticks. While the four members of the band were in the front of the store talking with the owner, the guy who we had brought along as our sound engineer was in the back of the store, and he decided it would be a good idea to steal a Sans Amp bass preamp--a small, but fairly expensive item. None of us knew he was doing it (although I do remember being onstage later that night and seeing that particular preamp and thinking to myself, "gee, I haven't seen that before").

Anyway, shortly after we left, the owner of the store noticed that the item was missing. He went back and looked at his security tapes and figured out who the culprit was. Of course, he thought we were all in on it--because we had been in the front of the store with him, he figured that we must have been purposely distracting him so that our soundman could steal the preamp.

So the guy absolutely FREAKED OUT. He showed up during our show, video camera in hand to make sure that he could get evidence of us using his preamp. He had told the entire security staff at the venue what happened (of course telling them that ALL of us were a bunch of thieves). As soon as the show was over, they all rushed the stage yelling and screaming. Of course at this point I still had no idea what was going on. They ended up re-claiming the preamp without much further confrontation, and I guess they were nice enough not to call the cops.

BUT, it did not end there. Remember how I said that it was show #2 of a 28-show tour? So the owner of the store got on our website, found ALL of the contact information for ALL 26 of the venues that we were playing on the rest of the tour. He literally called and e-mailed EVERY SINGLE ONE of them, telling them to watch out for Phix because we were "a bunch of thieving fucks" and that sort of thing. I swear to god, he must have spent a whole afternoon on the phone. And you should have seen the e-mail he sent us. It was one of the most angry, foul-mouthed things I have ever read in my life. This guy was PISSED.

So now WE had to go on damage control. We dropped the sound engineer off at a Greyhound station in Chattanooga the next day, and told him to figure out his own way home. We contacted all 26 of the venues, saying that the problem had been eradicated, but that we would need them to provide a sound engineer for our show since ours had been fired. And for the rest of the tour, we'd show up at the venues and the production guys would be saying, "so guys...what the hell happened in Carbondale?" It was incredibly embarrassing and frustrating to have to spend the rest of the tour apologizing for a stupid thing that someone in the crew did.

And here's the punch line: To this day, Phix STILL can't get a gig at the Copper Dragon in Carbondale because they have not forgotten the incident. Of course they just remember mom & pop store owner's side of the story--we never got a chance to tell them our side, and at this point the story is so ingrained in their minds that they literally will not speak to us. So Phix has been effectively blackballed from the town of Carbondale. It's also worth mentioning that the management & crew at the Fox Theater here in Boulder got wind of the situation and that particular soundman has been effectively blackballed from the Fox--they will not let him work there.

ROCK STAR MOVE

Back on one of our first tours several years ago, Phix arrived in Santa Cruz to find that our show was not listed ANYWHERE in town--it wasn't on the venue's calendar, it wasn't in the city entertainment papers. We could find absolutely no evidence that anyone in Santa Cruz knew we were going to be there. So we got angry with our management and the local promoter, and decided to cancel the show. Well, sure enough, quite a few people in Santa Cruz HAD heard about the show, and showed up to find the venue closed with no explanation or anything. People were pissed, and naturally they got on the internet and vented their anger to a national audience. To this day, over four years later, there are still people in Santa Cruz who remember that day and hold it against us.

Bad move .

THE MORAL OF THE STORY #1: DON'T BE A JERK TO ANYONE

Musicians, promoters, and production people talk to each other. Fans talk to each other. If you are a jerk, that is the FIRST thing that people remember about you. I can think of a few great musicians who are known to be less than nice, and believe me, it's the first thing that anyone says when they talk about those people..."Yeah, he's a good guitar player, but he's kind of a dick" (Steve Kimmock bitching at the audience in Denver for talking during his songs is a famous one around here). And conversely, if you are good AND you are nice, people will ALWAYS remember you positively.

THE MORAL OF THE STORY #2: TREAT ALL GIGS SERIOUSLY

No matter how few people you see out there in the audience, play your heart out. I have found over and over that you absolutely NEVER know who is in your audience. There could be only three people there, but one of them could be the promoter of a major festival (it's happened to Phix before). Or, even if there's nobody famous or particularly important there, if you treat the gig like a joke, I can just about guarantee that one of the people in the audience will go home, get on the internet, and tell the whole world what a dick you are. And conversely, if you play your heart out to those three people, they will be BLOWN AWAY, saying, "man, there was nobody at that show and that band KICKED ASS." They will be fans for life.