Lessons Learned: Glenn Smith

In the late ’80s, we promoted Alabama and The Charlie Daniels Band outdoors in Abilene, Texas. This was a huge headline tour of its day and quite large for a city of this size. It was a big deal to all country fans in the area. Even though resources for set-up and venue were very limited as the site was remote, there were many thousands who found their way there.

About 30 minutes before the first act, the local TV crew interviewed me live and asked, "What do you do if it rains?"

As I was facing south to a sun-filled sky (and was somewhat surprised by the question) I sarcastically responded, "Rain, rain. It’s not gonna rain."

I wasn’t aware that, over my shoulder, massive cumulonimbus clouds were building to 50,000 feet.

My quote kicked off the lead story on the 10pm news: RAIN … IT’S NOT GONNA RAIN followed by video of the stage and equipment tumbling end over end in 70 mph winds and baseball-size hail.

All the Alabama band members, unable to make it to the site because of the weather, watched the news report and still remind me of it.

To make matters worse, the venue was in a pasture of red clay dirt that turned to a nasty quicksand. It sucked the shoes off everyone’s feet and it sank all 15 to 20 trucks and buses to their axles. Tow trucks with winches spent up to 12 hours hauling out the vehicles. All 50 of Alabama’s crewmembers had their Nikes sucked off and we had to reimburse them – in cash.

The saga continues.

There was no ticketing company in this town so we came up with what we thought was a brilliant idea and sold tickets at all the local McDonald’s with a cute little promotion.

That night, hundreds of angry, wet, muddy cowboys raced in their oversized trucks straight to the McDonald’s, demanding instant ticket refunds from the innocent and completely unaware night managers. Things were so out of hand that police were called and McDonald’s was closed for safety reasons.

So after all of this misery, which would surely rank as anyone’s worst day ever, we returned home wet, broke, and obviously pretty down. In fact, we even wondered how much longer we might be in this business.

Then the phone rings about three days later and it is the national rep. for the beverage company who’s local distributor had sponsored that show. He goes on to say that even though it was a very bad day for everyone, he had taken notice that my wife, staff, and I stayed through it all, helped the crowd to safety and he further heard we had paid all the bills and left no one hanging.

That’s the kind of company he wanted to do business with, he said. He gave us several contracts including The State Fair of Texas, which we are now in our 19th year with! We will never determine how much "spin-off" business we received from this over the years, but it was probably quite a bit.

The other rainbow after the rain was our weather insurance paying out after about three months of nail biting.

The lessons learned: do your best, treat people fairly and pay your bills.

Oh yeah – and always get rain insurance.

 

(Glenn Smith runs Glenn Smith Presents based in Horseshoe, Texas)