Tour Stories part 5

Continuing with Adulterous Woman's 1993 tour story, the Bar None showcase was, as i have been building toward from the last two chapters, an almost complete disaster. We arrived at the recording studio which was to be the venue for the showcase, unloaded and set up our equipment. The label guys weren't there yet, just the owner of the studio. As we set up he explained to us that the studio had recently been broken in to, and a bunch of gear was stolen by a former employee, or so they believed. Once all of our instruments were ready we asked the guy about the PA for our vocals. I can't remember but i think he was surprised that we hadn't brought our own (who do we look like, REM? Most independent bands don't tour with their own PA. Geesh!). Anyway he began further explaining that the theft left them with little to use for PA. And once he set up what they had, that point was made very clear. It was worse than the PA at Boo-Boo's. But on the bright side, at least there was no bar conversations that we would have to compete with.

Glenn Morrow showed up with his secretary and Bar None's then co-owner, both of whose names i have forgotten. As i recall the partner was a older, thin Scottish guy with a salt and pepper beard and mustache. The secretary i can't recall anything about. I was too nervous, and nerve-wrecked. What i can recall is that they were all really nice. Glenn mentioned that his sister liked us from the Boo-Boo's performance. During the showcase they all listened attentively and gave encouraging comments between songs. However, what i remember most is that we sucked even more than we had the night before at the club. Only this time, we knew that they knew it, too.

We were getting seriously bummed by all the bad turns of events on this tour. After our showcase set, Glenn and company asked what our plans were for the next day. We said we had to get going by late morning, and they invited us over to the Bar None offices in the morning to talk to us once they'd had a chance to talk it over between themselves. That night we cursed our luck with bad PAs and wondered what the conversation would be like with them.

In the morning we headed to their offices down near the waterfront. They invited us in and immediately started showering us with tapes and CDs of their current catalogue of artists. We took this at first as a good sign. Wouldn't you? However, once we heard what they had to say we realized that it was pretty much a kiss off, but certainly a very nice one. Better than the CBGB one, that's for sure.

To be fair, to us as well as them, Glenn and his business partner did say that they could see potential in us, and they liked a few of our songs, especially one called "Meet the Wife of the Devil", and they hinted at possibly doing a single of it at some point. They wanted us to keep in touch and send them more demos. We never did, which is something i'll talk about in the next Tour Stories chapter.