Brothers Osborne, Live From The Top Of Its Tour Bus

For Brothers Osborne, the old show biz mantra “the show must go on” held up Saturday night in Hanford, Calif., after a slight mishap with the Fox Theatre ceiling – even if it meant taking the performance outside and on top of the tour bus.

Five minutes before the concert was supposed to begin, a piece of flat plaster from the venue’s proscenium arch fell onto the stage. Fox Theatre owner Dan Humason told Pollstar that it fell two to three feet away from the area that had been worked on during the venue’s recent $3.5 million ceiling restoration. He noted that it “must have taken a lot of vibration during the restoration or the installation of the new roof.”

The band didn’t care and wanted to still play but Humason was forced to postpone the concert. “Safety first. That’s all that matters. Don’t want to have anybody get hurt and nobody was hurt,” Humason said.

The evening could have ended there, with disappointed fans going home. But instead, the band decided to relocate outdoors for a 30-minute set.  

– Brothers Osborne Rock Hanford
“Everybody’s been calling saying how great it was, and, ‘Oh my god. You guys made lemonade out of a lemon,’” Fox Theatre owner Dan Humason said.

  

The venue’s stagehands and the band’s crew moved the drum kit, guitars and amps onto the top of the tour bus, with the bus generator supplying the power.

“We had a small mini mixer that we use for movies that we looked at and said, ‘Well, that will work,’” Humason said. “We just had these parts we put together and put a couple of speakers on top and by golly, they had a show. And it was really cool. And then it started to rain and they didn’t care. They kept playing.”

“Everybody’s been calling saying how great it was, and, ‘Oh my god. You guys made lemonade out of a lemon,’” Fox Theatre owner Dan Humason said.  

Humason pointed out that “contrary to some reports, there was no panic in the theatre.”Instead, after the announcement was made, fans went outside orderly. The bar stayed open and continued to sell beer and popcorn.

Brothers Osborne’s tour bus was set up in front of the venue’s neon marquee and the crowd outdoors covered the street and flowed into the nearby park. At one point a police office and sheriff came by and asked if everything was OK. Humason says the venue thought it might be in trouble because they didn’t have a permit but they explained what had happened and the officer “gave us a thumbs up and drove on.”

When Pollstar spoke to Humason Monday morning he said that engineers and contractors that were involved in the venue’s restoration had evaluated Saturday’s incident and determined it was caused by their work. He was waiting for one more engineer and an architect to examine the situation before announcing whether this week’s events needed to be called off.

He assured readers that the ceiling will be fixed in time for the first concert of 2017, a Jan. 27 show by Robert Earl King.

“We want this hall to be able to rock and we need to do whatever we can to make it safe and so it’s being determined now what we need to do. … Everybody from Johnny Cash to George Strait has been through and we don’t intend on stopping. So we’re going to make it as safe as we can and continue,” Humason said.

Oddly enough, the Brothers Osborne experienced a similar incident in Boise, Idaho, with a piece of the proscenium falling at the Egyptian Theatre at the end of the band’s Nov.27 show.

A new date for the Hanford show hasn’t been announced yet. Fans can hold onto their tickets for the new show or receive a full refund, including service fees.  

The Fox Theatre’s restoration took place over two years following a March 2014 ceiling collapse. Jackson Browne had the honor of reopening the venue on April 30.