In order to audition for The Cabaret at Harrahs in Reno and Tahoe we were booked back into our old stomping grounds The Driftwood Lounge in Sparks Nevada. It had changed. It had been completely remodeled. Not only that it was a whole new crowd. A good crowd but a different crowd. An afternoon audition was arranged. Gary Nieland, who was now our booking agent came down from Oregon. He was to pick up the entertainment director from Harrahs and bring him to the Driftwood to see and hear us. We performed a variety of songs. We did a couple skits, one was the old woman old man skit, I always liked that one. Gary and Ron did a great job on that one. We did a Wild West Bank robbery skit which was done under a strobe light in slow motion. It was pretty cool. I always found auditions hard to do because you are performing for one person, no crowd feed back. It’s hard to do but sometimes it has to be done that way. We did our best. When it was over Nieland took the guy back downtown and we went to our apartment to wait to hear the decision. It wasn’t long until he returned to tell us we were hired and would be appearing at both Reno And Lake Tahoe. I can’t remember how far out the booking was. We finished our engagement in Reno. It was fun to be back. We used the time to visit some old friends and to catch up on some of the entertainment in the area. We were back on good terms with our former guitar player Jimmy Jones he was living in Reno at the time so we visited him. It was a fun time and we were feeling pretty good about coming back to one of our favorite places. It always seems that on the heels of good news bad news is sure to follow. We were feeling good about our upcoming show Lounge engagement and all of a sudden the drummer is all upset. Matter of fact he served his notice he was through at the end of our Driftwood engagement. Beau, the guitar player, knew a drummer he had worked with that might be available. We contacted him. He was completely out of the business but still had the desire to play. He was currently working a day job for the department of human services in Yakima Washington. We did our best selling job and he decided to join us. I think our next booking was back in Richland Washington. A good easy job where the people loved us and we could practice and break in our new drummer. The new guy was Bob Compeau. He was a pretty easy going guy and a good drummer. It’s never easy breaking in a new guy but this one was a little easier because the former drummer had not done a lot of singing. However he had a lot of parts in skits etc. Bob was pretty adaptable and it didn’t take long to get it all caught up. Some changes had to be made but not too many. We fell back into our normal routine of working six nights a week and rehearsing five afternoons a week. We moved around the northwest for several months hitting our old familiar places until it came time to play Harrahs Reno.
Playing the big casinos was much different from what we were used to. First of all you are on the bill with at least two other acts. Each of you have different nights off. I think ours was Monday’s. Every night you are playing one hour on and one hour off. Which means you are moving your equipment on and off stage every hour. The good news is you have stage hands to help you. You don’t have to move it completely just slide it behind the back curtain. One of the groups we were on with was an Irish group that had a couple of hit records. The Irish Rovers. The were funny. They spoke that Irish brogue. We loved to listen to them talk. They had some funny expressions. One I remember I had never heard before was ” piss awful”. If something was bad they said it was ” piss awful”. I found that funny. Another thing that was different is we had a real honest to goodness dressing room. Complete with showers and everything one might want. Pretty nice.
At the time we were appearing in the show lounge, Wayne Newton was appearing in the show room. His opening act was a comedian named Jacky Kahane. One night we showed up for work it was The Irish Rovers night off. We were told Wayne Newton was sick, that Jacky Kahane would be moved to the headliner slot and we would be moved to the showroom to be his opening act. The stage hands flew into action. They moved all our equipment onto the showroom stage. They built a drum riser for our drummer. We retired to the dressing room to put on our best uniforms and to put a play list together. I thought we did a great job. We only did about a thirty minute set but it was a lot of fun.
When we got to Reno this time Susan and I were staying at a small motel on the west side of town. It was individual log cabins. It was pretty cool. One of our neighbors had a HUGE Saint Bernard dog. I think that is the reason we stayed there was because it was dog friendly and Susan had acquired a couple of Afghan Hounds. Those things had traveled with us for months and months. They were friendly, pretty dogs and for a time I even liked them. This big dogs name was Shabru. Not sure of the spelling. At the time Shannon was about four years old. She fell in love with this dog and the dog with her. She would spend hours outside with this monster sized dog. The dog would follow her around or the dog would lie down and Shannon would sit with her back leaning up against the dog. Or she would brush her and pet her. It was fun to watch and for a time I thought omg I’m gonna have to buy her a Saint Bernard. Not really. As recently as last evening I’ve heard her mention Shabru.
One weekend a large group of friends from Oregon came down to spend a weekend with us. They rented a cabin in our same motel. We would hang together during the daytime and they would go to the casino at night and attend our shows. Everything was fun until Sunday afternoon when I got sick. I have no idea what caused it, maybe food poisoning I don’t know but man I was sick. The kind of sick that makes you either sitting on the John or bending over it. As it drew closer to time to go to work i was no better. The thing about entertaining is you gotta be there. Unless you’re Wayne Newton I guess, but anyway I knew I had to find a way to get through it. I did get better as time went on but at least twice throughout the night I had to step to the side behind the curtain where one of my friends would hold a bucket for me to throw up in. He would then wipe my face and mouth with a wet rag, pop a mint in my mouth and the show would go on. Thank goodness I didn’t have a problem in the other direction. There was never a time in all the years we were on the road that one of us failed to make it to work. Back a couple years earlier Leon had appendicitis and had to take off for surgery. We hired a guitar player out of Portland Oregon to fill in for him. I am still in contact with him today thanks to Facebook.
We were in Harrahs Reno I think three weeks and then were to move to Harrahs Tahoe. It was great fun playing the show lounge and we got to see lots of our followers from years past. Reno is also the home town of Susan and of Gary’s wife Ricki. Ricki, at the time had lots of family in Reno and some of them were in the crowd every night. Susan had a very small family, none of which lived in Reno but she had lots of friends there so in some ways it was like appearing in your home town. One night as I was walking through the Casino on my way to the dressing room I heard someone call my name. I looked over and it was one of the first girls I had ever dated in Reno. Back when we came to town for the first time. She was now a dealer. We actually on at least two occasions ran into a couple of Holdenville girls that had moved to Reno to be dealers after they graduated college. One was Necia Turner the other Heather Huser. Small world
Next on to Lake Tahoe
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