A funny happened on the way to Las Vegas, or was it HELL!!!!
On January 30th 2012, The Sam Morrison Band was leaving for a one night gig in Las Vegas Las Vegas
I’ve pulled the band’s trailer a million times across the country from gig to gig. I’m very meticulous about hooking it up and making sure it is done right. It’s not only a huge responsibility, getting the bands gear to the gig, towing a trailer can be very dangerous if it’s not done right. This day was no exception. I hooked everything up, double checked the ball and receiver, latched the safety chains and had Steve help me check the lights. We were good to go. Sam, Steve, David and I hopped in my truck about noon and headed into the desert. The rest of the band was going to meet us later that night. Everything was smooth sailing.
We made it to Barstow
About twenty minutes later I hit a small wash in the road and the trailer swerved from side to side like it always does, no big deal. I gave it a little gas and straightened it out. I hit another small wash, the same thing as before but this time something didn’t feel right. I looked in the mirror and in seconds everything started going wrong. The trailer went sideways! I’m not talking about a little swerve, I’m talking sideways! I held on waiting for the safety chains to grab and…. nothing. I looked again and saw everything dragging on the ground and there were sparks flying everywhere.
“OH SHIT!!!” I yelled.
“What?” someone said.
“WE DON’T HAVE THE TRAILER ANYMORE!” I screamed.
“WHAT??” someone said.
I was swallowed up by a sense of helplessness like I’ve never felt before. I could do nothing! My truck is a F350 diesel. If you’ve ever driven a diesel truck, you know they are a little different that a regular gas engine truck or car. As soon as you take your foot off the gas, they start to slow down rather fast. As soon as I started slowing down, the trailer started to catch to me.
I thought to myself, “If the tongue buries itself in the asphalt it will catapult itself into us.”
So I floored it and got the hell out of the way. I looked helplessly into the passenger side mirror and watched our trailer, with all of our gear, hit the side of the road and go air born. All I remember hearing after that was Steve yelling, “Oh no! Oh No! Oh No!”
Thankfully, the trailer hit no one and missed a giant off ramp road sign by inches. The sign was held up on both sides by four, 2x12 planks. If the trailer would have hit the sign, it would have destroyed not only the sign but the trailer and everything it. The trailer smashed into the ground, making a huge dust cloud, and came to a rest on its side about 30 yards down the embankment in some deep sand.
I pulled the truck to the side of the road and stopped. After a few seconds of catching breath, I broke the vacuum seal that my ass had made with the seat due to the pucker effect. I got out, and hiked down the hill the survey the damage. When I got to the trailer I saw that the hitch was still attacked by the tow ball to the tongue. The receiver pin broke allowing the hitch and ball to fall out of the receiver on my truck. The pin was gone, nothing there at all. But the strangest thing was the safety chains. They were fine. They weren’t broke or ripped up at all. Just a little scratched up from being drug on the ground.
For those of you who don’t know what safety chains look like, they have a spring loaded latch on the inside of the hook so that they can’t bounce loose and come off by mistake. You have to push the latch to take them off, and if you don’t know what you’re doing it can even be tricky getting them on. I personally put them on when we left home. I checked them again before leaving Barstow
To everyone’s credit we all stayed very calm, no one freaked out at all. As we sprang into action, everyone instinctively knew they had a job to do.
Steve said, “Wait a minute boys, don’t touch anything.” and he started taking pictures for the insurance.
One of the doors was ripped to shreds. It was hanging in the way, with the latch and lock broken off. After Steve was finished taking pictures, Sam pushed it open and started pulling gear out and handing it to David.
I got on the phone and started making calls.
Within 30 minutes everyone within the organization knew what had happened. We secured a rental van in Barstow to get the gear, and after the C.H.P. had given me the go ahead to leave, Steve and I got in my truck and went back to get it. Sam and David stayed with the gear and waited for the tow truck to come get the trailer. Steve and I made it back in about an hour and a half and by this time it was dark. Thankfully, the CHP officer had stayed with Sam and David and kept his lights on so traffic would move to the side. He also shone his spotlight down the hill while we started retrieving our gear.
The four of us then made a human chain and started hauling the gear up a very steep, very sandy embankment, (I’ve got to talk to Greg about getting a lighter bass rig), and loaded it into the truck. This took about hour. When we were done, we thanked the CHP officer for waiting and keeping his lights on for us. (Yes I’m going to send him CD’s and a SMB t-shirt.) A few minutes later we were off. All in all we were about four hours behind schedule but the gig was the next day so we were good.
The next day we had a few more challenges. It was about 300 yards from the loading dock to the stage. Thank goodness they had carts to haul everything for us. When we finally got everything to the stage our main concern was our gear. Everything was filthy, covered in sand and dust, but was it broken? Would all the electronics work? After we got everything set up, the only things that were broken were: a toggle switch on Sam’s amp, a keyboard stand (that was already in bad shape before the crash), and the bass drum hoop on a big 26” bass drum that Doreen plays on one song. Together, all of our gear weighs a ton, if not more. All this stuff had hit the dirt going at least 45 miles per hour, come to a sudden stop, and that’s all that’s wrong?!?! If that’s not an endorsement for S.K.B. and Anvil flight cases nothing is! Unbelievable!!
Now this is the part of the story where things start going bad, (I love sarcasm). We were set up and ready for sound check, and to say the sound crew were a little less than competent is putting it lightly. After a 2 hour load in and a 2 hour sound check, (to all my musician friends, yes I said two, count them two hours), it became very clear the sound crew was not on top of it at all. Think about it, just twenty hours before, four of the band members, and every musical instrument we own had just been thought hell, and these guys couldn’t plug in a speaker to save their lives! They had no idea what they were doing, and it becoming very apparent it wasn’t going to get any better. We were just wasting our time.
Sam turned and looked at me, turned back to his microphone and said, “Thanks! Sounds good! See you at down beat.”
When show time came we were having a rough time hearing, and from what I understand the sound out front wasn’t much better. We were professionals and didn’t let it get to us, and again, to everyone in the bands credit, we played really well! We just did our job the best we could under the circumstances, and ya know what? People enjoyed the show. In the words of Steven Cenker, “They can’t all be gems.”
After the show, we went out and had a few drinks, a few laughs and blew off some steam. Even Sam, who doesn’t drink much, joined us for a round or two.
The next morning everyone in the band was super tired and we just wanted to get home. However, we still had to go to the tow yard and deal with the trailer. When we got home we still had another two or three hours worth of work to do, unloading the gear and returning the rental truck. But… we didn’t whine about it, we just did it.
Through all of this did we get mad and angry? Did we yell at each other? Yeah we did…a little, but that’s human nature. Anyone in their right mind would get their feathers ruffled after going through something like this. Hell, after the crash a lot of bands would have called their agent and canceled the gig. Stuff like this can break a band up!
But then….Another funny thing happened on the way home from Vegas.
We stopped in Barstow
Then someone blew a straw wrapper at David poking him in the eye. He screamed live Beavis and we all started cracking up. Then I threw a pickle at Mandy, she returned the favor by pouring Sweet’ N Low on my burger. We all decided David’s Monte Cristo was better than anything we ordered for ourselves, so everyone started eating his food. Everything had just kind of came back to normal.
Greg said it best, “Fire burns up wood but it hardens and strengthens steel.”
At the end of the day we realized we had been put through the fire, and we were stronger and better for it. We also knew that if there was ever a time when God’s hand was on The S.M.B. shoulder protecting us, it was on this trip!!
Most of my “Bart Factor” stories are funny, light hearted tales from the road, about our silly childish behavior, and the circus that follows us from place to place. However, this one is more of a way to say thank you to all of our friends who called, sent text messages, or posted comments on Facebook and Twitter, showing their concern for our wellbeing after the crash. Your friendship and your belief in what we do in the S.M.B. means the world to us. We hope to see you all this year while we’re on the road. For all my drummer friends…….when using a drumstick for a hitch pin, don’t use a 5A. Go with a 2B or bigger. (There’s the funny light hearted part.)
God bless and until Next time.
Bart
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