There was a brief period in the history of Another Roadside Attraction when we were opening for bands that hadn’t become famous yet.
We had a new manager who was getting us some excellent gigs. At the time, I wasn’t entirely convinced of his strategy.
We were accustomed to headlining. Now we were opening for up-and-coming bands. I thought we were an up-and-coming band. Apparently, we were coming up in different directions.
One of these engagements took us to a place called the Post Office in Hilton Head, South Carolina, where we were scheduled to open for a band called Hootie and the Blowfish.
You may have heard of them.
When we arrived, there were promotional posters featuring the band surrounded by adoring fans. I thought they were cheesy.
This assessment has not aged particularly well.
Hootie played. I watched. I wasn’t especially impressed.
In retrospect, my credentials as a talent scout were becoming increasingly questionable.
After our set, Hootie’s singer did something I understood was customary for him: he got onstage and thanked the opening band. A gracious gesture, in principle.
There was, however, a joke attached. Instead of Another Roadside Attraction, he introduced us as “Roadside Distraction.”
I took it with a grain of salt. We were a rock band. We’d been called worse, and occasionally deserved it.
Dunston apparently did not share my appreciation for the joke. I can’t say exactly what was going through his head, but the name seemed to rub him the wrong way.
Meanwhile, our keyboard player, Dunston, was conducting an entirely different kind of performance.
Dunston had been drinking. Quite a bit.
In fact, he’d managed to accomplish something that required considerable dedication in those days. The bartender cut him off.
Now, being refused alcohol at a rock-and-roll establishment in South Carolina during that era was no small achievement.
But Dunston wasn’t finished making history.
The establishment had one bathroom, and apparently everybody in Hilton Head needed to use it simultaneously.
Dunston, being a resourceful fellow, identified an alternative.
A pitcher.
I will leave the precise mechanics to your imagination.
Eventually, the evening concluded, and we began making our departure. This would ordinarily involve gathering our equipment, thanking the management, and leaving quietly.
Dunston had other ideas.
As we passed the backstage door, he decided to kick it open. Then he launched the contents of his pitcher into the room.
I don’t recall whether any members of Hootie and the Blowfish were actually inside. Frankly, I hope they weren’t.
What I do remember is the parking lot. And running. And members of Hootie and the Blowfish pursuing us.
At some point, one of our guys decided the appropriate response was to throw one of their CDs back at them. I have a theory about who it was, but discretion is occasionally the better part of rock and roll.
There is something profoundly symbolic about being chased by a band whose promotional material you had just dismissed as cheesy, while somebody from your entourage uses their own music as a projectile.
We eventually escaped.
Hootie and the Blowfish went on to sell millions of records. We went on to find our van.
And somewhere in the great unwritten history of American rock and roll lies the story of the night we opened for one of the biggest bands of the 1990s and departed under circumstances that did not lend themselves to a return engagement.
I have occasionally wondered whether Hootie remembers us. I suspect they might.
— The Captain
Roadside Stories: True stories from the road, as best as the Captain can remember them.
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