D. CLEA – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the pop band, D. CLEA, talk about some of their crazy moments from touring. You can check out the feature, after the break.

There was a period of time in our early days as a band when we were working with a manager long-distance, and because of this, we would often find ourselves in situations where what our manager had been told in email correspondence and what we actually found upon arriving at shows on tour were very different things. This manager had come across a show opportunity for us that sounded pretty decent, though. We would play a 45 minute set in which we were encouraged to play our own original material, and we would be paid well. Well, it just so happened that this event we would be performing during was an annual banquet for a well-known wildlife conservation organization (which shall remain nameless). Needless to say, we were an odd fit for the night’s musical entertainment, and little did we know, the oddities had just begun.

Once we unloaded our gear onto the pop-up stage, the event coordinator greeted us and told us our performance slot would be during cocktail hour. What she may have forgotten to mention was that this would be immediately after a soul-killingly awkward charity gun raffle; what she did mention, however, was that she hoped we were excited as she was for our hour and a half set. One and a half hours. Words cannot express the paralyzing anxiety we felt, knowing we had only prepared half the amount of material, as we had originally been told to do. When it came time for us to bring music to the hearts of many, we tried to stretch our set’s length in any way we could: long drum intros, multiple instrumental breaks, ending each song with a slowly decaying final note…even so, our set was at only about an hour. We pulled out the last song we had, a cover of “Dreams,” by Fleetwood Mac. Now, up until this point, those in the crowd had been mingling and roaming, visiting the open bar, and saying hello to acquaintances, but when we got a few seconds into “Dreams” the people began to dance, and they had “I haven’t had this good of a time since I don’t know when” written all over their faces. Well, with a reaction this strong, we had to give the people what they wanted, and mind you, this was the only song we had left in our repertoire. This is where things may have gotten out of hand. What started as a ploy to entertain our audience, and possibly (definitely) pad our set a bit (a lot) turned into us having played “Dreams” for over 15 minutes. In fact, we played the song so long, that the event coordinator herself made eye contact with us from across the room so that she could personally give us the “cut it the heck off” gesture, you know, the one where someone wags their hand in a sideways karate chopping motion in front of their neck. By this time, the jamming had become like second nature to us, but we all managed to find the inner strength of will to halt the song’s vicious cycle and bring it to it’s somewhat anticlimactic close. Soon after, we were driving home in our usual fashion: crammed into the van along with our gear, all the while sharing a good laugh as we debriefed over the rare evening we had just survived. To this day, when from a nearby radio we hear that signature drum fill intro, and Stevie Nick’s voice starting to sing about thunder only happening when it’s raining, you will see our eyes light up as we recall the night we are for certain that we did NOT leave ‘em wanting more.

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