Tuesday 4 December 2012

Sam Thredder / Slabdragger

Name: Sam Thredder
Band: Slabdragger (facebook.com/Slabdragger)
Where: Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA.
ED: Two days in and we have our first USA submission. I read this story via a comment Sam left on Dean (Witch Cult)'s Facebook and asked him to send it over.
I played a terrible show at a pool hall in Springfield, Missouri with my old band Frightener and Pulled Teeth. It sucked so bad. The promoter was a fucking jock dick so we thought "yeah, let's go to our next destination and sleep in the van."
Next destination was Tulsa, Oklahoma. It was about 2am on a deserted country road in Oklahoma and we noticed a Jeep behind us. It pulled up to the side of us at some traffic lights and some woman poked her head out the window and shouted "HEY!! ARE YOU THE GAAAAHS IN FRAAAAGHT'NER?" 

Lo and behold, the middle of the night before we were meant to play and we've encountered the promoter and his Missus driving their SUV back from Walmart.
They invited us back. "Follow us" they said. We did.
We entered their abode which was filled to the brim with animals, various cats, 2 dogs (one called Hoya), a budgie (called Zoli), thick as fuck shag pile carpet, a table full of baby clothes and loose tobacco, a dude asleep on the couch wearing a Godsmack T-shirt and a DISGUSTING smell, acrid and chemically (probably crack or meth or something). 
The promoter (who was apparently Straight Edge) showed us his "amazing" CD collection which only consisted of Hatebreed/Madball/AF/etc, regaled us with stories of partying with Derek from Sepultura, Bonz from Stuck Mojo, Lajon from Sevendust and a couple others I can't remember (these are all black guys by the way, he was blatantly pre-emptively defending some kind of racism that might have happened).
He gave the tokers in the bands some weed which was cool, but weird as fuck seeing as this dude was SXE.
We all eventually fell asleep. The next morning we were all awoken by what seemed like three separate families and their children running around; shouting, cooking bacon & eggs and offering it to everyone (both bands were 90% veggie/vegan). A proper Gummo wake up call!

One by one, we all woke up and made our way scared to the front lawn. They were all saying stuff like "Come back in, we'll make y'all breakfast", "We got some salmon, for the vegans", etc. We were all tired as fuck, pretty repulsed by the place & the people and just wanted to get the fuck out of there.


The guy came up to Dom from Pulling Teeth and said "I'm glad none of y'all are African Americans, come check this out." He took Dom to his kid's toy cupboard and pulled out a potato cannon made from a drainpipe and an oven lighter. On the side, in capitals with red Sharpie, was written 'N*GGER GITTER'. He took it out to show all of us and fired a wet rag up the street, making a woman come out of her house shouting that she'd call the cops.


We made our excuses and left after the promoter tried to get us to come to the park with them before the show for a barbeque. NO WE SHALL NOT.


We drove to the venue, parked up, worked out [how to play] Metallica's 'For Whom The Bell Tolls' and just  waited to play. It was a good set but a terrible day.


Moral of the story: don't ever book a show in Tulsa.


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