Doublebassist Jason Heath has a great blog, and part of what makes it great are his stories from the front lines of freelancing – here is a great story about the demise of his car:
This is the worst gig story ever.
I’ve told a lot of gig stories on this blog. Some of them are humorous, some are annoying or cringe-worthy, but none even come close to this one. This is the sort of surreal tale that you might see in the movies, but it actually happened to me.
Ever since high school, I had driven old hand-me-down cars from my parents. Typically, these were decent cars with a lot of mileage on them (my dad worked 65 miles out of town at the time), and I drove them until they started to fall apart. At that point they were passed along to my little brother (who would have wrecked them anyway), and I got the next one in line.
This pattern continued through college and beyond into the first few years of my freelance career. As I got on more solid financial footing in my career I knew it would soon be time for a new car of my own. The ever increasing odometer on my hand-me-down Subaru (200,000 miles, 210,000, 220,000…..) made me see the writing on the wall, and I knew I would be paying a visit to a dealership soon.
One reply on “gig horror stories”
Thanks for letting folks know about my story, Charles! You know, and I was running away from my flaming car with my bass, it occurred to me that some members of the orchestra I was playing with that evening could be caught in the massive traffic jam that I had just caused. Sure enough, the next night someone came up to me and said, “Hey, I SAW you, man!” That freeway was the easiest route back from Indiana to Chicago, and most people in the orchestra lived in metro Chicago. I wonder what I would have thought if I looked out the window and saw some guy running past me with a bass in the middle of the night while screaming….