On a cold winter morning, a couple of weeks
after I had finished up teaching a course in "The Psychology
of Music" at the University of New Hampshire, I found a classified
ad in a Boston newspaper reading: "fiddler wanted for country
band, auditions being held." As it turned out, I had been
experimenting with blues fiddle and had been playing electric
violin in a local small time blues band along with a sax, guitar,
bass, drummer, and vocalist. Our biggest venue had been the local
American Legion Hall.
When I went to Boston to audition for the fiddle job, they also
were auditioning electric lead guitar players. While waiting my
turn to play, I got to jamming with a particular guitarist who
was strongly blues oriented. He was a great player and we hit
it off immediately, trading solos and exchanging riffs and by
the time they called me in to play, he was asked in also. We were
both called back and hired and within a few days we were off to
Nashville. Just prior to my audition the band that hired me had
made it all the way to the national finals of the Seagrams 7 Country
Band Contest. Although they had only made to second place in the
nationals according to the judges, the president of the Seagrams
company had preferred them to the winners.
Our Nashville agency booked us into a continual stream of week
long gigs and after a month of rehearsing on stage in public at
honky tonks in Alabama, Mississippi, Ohio, and New York, the Seagrams
company contracted us to play for a private party in Arizona.
They flew the band out to Scotsdale for a weekend, putting us
up at a fancy resort with unlimited use of the facilities. We
did a two hour performance on Saturday night at a western style
theme park that the company had rented. In the middle of our gig
in a large room, the barn doors opened and in came a scantily
clad "cowgirl" riding the biggest brahma bull that I
have ever seen. As the bull wandered directly towards the stage
the band ground to a halt and I backed in the other direction
fiddle close in hand! Fortunately for everyone concerned, a couple
of "cowboys" rushed in to lead the bull back out the
way he had come.