Continue to just believe.
Quite few years ago when I was in a rock and roll band with five guys and a girl the only thing we really had going for us was that we could play pretty good, were energetic, unafraid of going on the road and totally believed we’d be discovered. We bounced all over the country and while we were never discovered, we all survived. No small feat in those days!
That part of my life is just a memory these days but this afternoon in the parking lot of the Village Market it came back to me big time. As I sat in my car listening to Jim Rome on sports talk radio and waiting for my girlfriend to finish shopping I noticed a young woman timidly approaching some of the folks leaving the store. She was holding a compact disk and showing it to the people she was talking to. Finally the people she was talking to left and she saw me and walked slowly towards my car. I watched her coming and rolled down the window.
“Hello my name is Spring and I’m in a band. Here is our CD we’re trying to sell. We’re trying to get some money together for gas to keep going south where we have a job next week.” Now I can tell you she wasn’t hustling, she was totally sincere. I know it might sound funny, or crazy, to be traveling and not having enough money for gas, but I could see in her eyes she believed they would get to their next job and that being broke was just a minor obstacle. I didn’t have enough to buy the CD but did give her some money for gas, promising that I’d get the CD someday if they ever made it! Now I might sound crazy, but let me tell you why I gave her some cash.
The band I’d been in had several agents, a couple were good, a couple not very good or trustworthy, but they always had us going somewhere. My first experience of being broke on the road and on the verge of breaking up was in Wyoming. We were returning from a job in the suburbs of Chicago where the club that we were playing had changed ownership our second night and we got the boot! We’d desperately called all over and one agent landed us a job for the next week in Montana if we could get there. That being the only option we pooled all our cash including our drummers’ birthday gift from his Grandmother, and headed west. As our straggly caravan pulled into the truck stop in Wyoming, our last stop before Montana, we knew we had just enough money for gas to get to our destination but nothing for food and we hadn’t eaten anything except oatmeal cookies some girls had given us as we left Chicago.
However, we had no choice but to continue and as we started up the trucks in the Wyoming dawn a voice called out from the truck stop restaurant. “Hey you guys, come over here.” It was a waitress standing by the door with a big pink box. “Here, we know you guys don’t have two nickels to rub together so here are some old donuts and maple bars and 20 bucks the guys inside chipped in. Now get going and make music to make em smile!”
Fueled with pastries and excitement for our next job we blasted across Montana to begin another chapter in a life filled with hope and promise! Hopefully Spring and her musical gang like we did; will continue to just to believe!!!!
To reach Rick Schultze email yarick@pioneer.net