This has to be the most ridiculous story ever. We were asked to play a 3 day mini tour in upstate NY near Niagara Falls, called the campfire sessions by a management company called Kalamazoo Recording and Management Company. The company invites 10 metal type bands to campsites all over the country for 3 day mini tours. So what you do is go to a campsite and set up your tents and so on and then drive to three different venues, play a show and then return to the campsite to sleep and then do that for three days from Friday through Sunday. So we thought that sounds like a cool way to get out of the area and invite more people into the Slam One Down family.
So everyone tried to get out of work as early as possible and we hit the road to Niagara Falls which is about a 6 hour drive. Our navigation system told us that we were going to arrive at the campsite around 10 and when I told the promoter that he said we were going to miss the first show. We were kind of pissed about that but new we would make it up somehow. We finally arrive at the campsite at 10:00PM. And the whole place was closed and shut down. The promoter told us where to go and we found the site.
When we arrive we saw about 6 other bands with their campsites set up. It looked like everyone was having a good time. SO we start setting up immediately. We had a canopy, two tents, a beer pong table, acoustic guitars, a fire, 6 chairs and a cooler full of about 6 thirty packs, a beer funnel, a bottle of crown royal, and a bottle of Jagermeister.
So we start attacking the booze like every good metal band does. Now remember we are in the middle of the woods, with about 6 other metal bands, a cooler full of beer and its about 11:00 PM. We are now having a party in the middle of the woods. We were singing songs by the fire, playing beer pong, laughing and having a fucking amazing time. The weird thing was out of 6 bands only 2 people came over to hang out. All the other bands went to bed around 11:30PM. Now no-one said anything to us about noise or being loud. We just went about our partying like everything was OK. It didn't seem like there is anyone around us.
Then at around 2AM, out of nowhere in the pitch black night someone walks up to us yells, "What the FUCK are you guys doing." We were completely freaked out and didn't know where he came from. It was a cop in the middle of the woods and he snuck up on us. He was flashing a light at us and Bobby was flashing his light back at him, because we didn't know what was going on. That pissed the cop off. He starts asking for our IDs and what not....One of the guys in our group was mouthing off to him a little because the cope was very rude for no reason. Now think about this for a second. What kind of cop sneaks up on people in the middle of the woods. He didn't ever pull up in a cop car he came out of the blackness of the woods....who does that. So he takes our IDs and disappears back into the blackness of the woods. So we continue to drink and do funnels.
Then all of a sudden 3 more cop cars come pulling up. I guess he called for back-up. And returns to us and says he is not going to do anything and said we have to leave the campsite at 10AM tomorrow morning. SO we are like "Cool" now we will get a hotel room and not have to sleep in the fucking woods. Most of us passed out around 3-4 AM.
We wake up around 10:30 AM to pack up and now drive to the show that we were supposed to play. This time a different cop comes back around 10:30 and said that we need to leave around 1PM which was perfect because that was the time we needed to go to the show. However, he walks up to the promoters and tells them what happens. These two kids are like 17-years old and proceeds to tell us that we are off the tour and have to go home. We couldn't understand why, we didn't do anything wrong. We didn't break any rules. See the way we look at it....if we were causing a problem, why didn't we get a warning. Someone should have come up to us and tell us we were being "TOO Loud" in the middle of the woods and we would have gladly brought it down a notch. So these 17 year olds who we have never met and apparently were at the campsite monitoring the campsite says to us well you guys were kind of loud but we didn't want to stop you from having a good time. They then allow someone to call the cops on us and then have the nerve to tell us that we cannot play the shows that we already paid $125 to play. They kept blaming it on their boss, but I didnt see any boss anywhere. At that point there was no reason to argue, we were dealing with morons.
Now that I think back, who the hell would call the cops on us. Was it one of the other "Metal" bands that we were camped out with. I mean is that the weakest thing ever. You call the cops on us and not ask us first to quiet down. That is pathetic. Or could it have been some neighboring campers who were not part of the group. Those people had to be pretty far away for our voices to travel that far and have them call the cops. Either way I would say that is the promoters fault because he should have made sure that we were far enough away from people that 10 metal bands couldnt bother them. I mean lets be realistic...there was hundreds of miles of open space I hope you didnt put us that close to other people. Plus these guys will not give back my $125.
Anyways we drove home around 11AM laughing the whole way home. I mean how does anybody manage to get thrown out of the woods by cops who sneak up on you in the black of the night. Only Slam One Down can. I guess this is the stuff that "Legends are made of" Thanks for reading....J.R.
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Sunday, June 27, 2010
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