A Quick Update About the 89' Tour

The Awakening Concert Dates 1988-89

I was just downstairs pooling through a huge box of stuff from The Awakening days. It has bank statements, record company press info, and all sorts of boring stuff that should have been shredded years ago!

Well... amongst this array of paperwork was a tour itinerary and Union contracts from 1989. Actually there's info on our 88' gigs too. I guess I should start there.

In 1988, while still working on Into Thy Hands, we had a number of local gigs. One gig in particular somehow skipped my memory, but wow... it was a significantly bad event in our history!

It involves a 'festival' date we did in Haliburton, Ontario on May 21st, 1988. I'm assuming we would have JUST finished the recording of Into Thy Hands, so we anticipated a great outdoor gig to kick off our finished work (even though we didn't have product yet!). I remember this gig well, because the lady who was putting it all together had never promoted a show before, and she was going into some serious debt to pay for us and an established US big-name artist. (So big, that I completely forget his name!). Being that it was going to be an outdoor, un-covered event in the middle of May (when you never know what you're going to get weather-wise), we asked her if she had looked into an alternate venue, should there be rain. She repeatedly told us that "the Holy Spirit will not allow rain." She had faith that everything would work out perfectly.

Well... we all know where this is going, right?!!

It poured rain the whole day of the event. It was so bad, that there was virtually no music during the day-time leading up to our evening slot on the Saturday night. The 25,00o people she said this festival would draw ended up being literally, 50 or 60 people. It was a total disaster. We still did our show, kind of... but the few people that were there for the show, were seated inside an equipment truck watching it from quite a distance away. The so-called big-time American celebrity guy may or may not have even performed. If he did, he played to tracks, so it made no difference.

Well... our contract shows that we were to get around $1000 for our show. At the end of the nightmare, she could barely pay enough money to get the US guy flown home again. She ended up owing us all the money, and it literally took her over a year to pay us back. I'm pretty sure she never promoted a concert again! (and may have switched religions too!)

How could I have forgotten that one?!!

Anyway... on my sheet of info, I saw the Freedom Festival info listed, so I can now confirm that our performance at Blowfest took place Saturday, June 25th, 1988 at approximately 3pm. We got paid a solid $1000 for this gig, which for us was pretty great.

It's amazing to look back to these days and realize just how little we got paid to play. In fact, I think we even had some degree of reservation about calling our income - "payment!" Most of the sheets I found have this term listed as "Honorarium." Pretty sad.

(And on a side note... I also found a contract we signed with American singer/songwriter/bassist Rick Cua, who was a moderately successful Christian artist in the 80's. We hired him to come up to Canada to play at our Alternative Entertainment Club. He came up with his bass and played to tracks, so he had virtually no expenses. But I was shocked to find out how little we paid him (or more specifically, our MANAGEMENT paid him) for his work. We would have paid his travel expenses, but I think he drove up to Canada rather than fly. We had to provide him with a meal and a hotel room, and after all of that, we only paid him $500 in CANADIAN funds, which was at that time probably around $420 US! Wow... that a guy who actually had a track record was doing a crappy gig for lousy money is a really sad thing. I get paid more money now to show up at a gig with just my bass and play for an hour!!)

Ok... I also see that we played the Kingdom Bound festival at Darien Lake, NY on August 26th and 27th of 88'. Apparently, there was also a promotional trip to Nashville in early August, which I don't recall at all, but it makes sense. Into Thy Hands got released in July or the end of June.

OK.. onto the 1989 tour.

According to the itinerary and contracts I found, our trip began on Thursday, February 16th of 1989. In almost a full month away, we performed 10-12 concerts, possibly a few others that weren't clearly marked. Here's where we played:

Feb 18: Portland, Maine (at the Holiday Inn!)

Feb 19: Peterborough, New Hampshire (I have no memory of this!)

Feb 22: Belmont Church in Nashville. (We played for free)

Feb 23: WE GOT CANNED FROM REUNION (and had we been drinkers, we would have gotten plastered! Oh well!)

Feb 24: Atlanta, Georgia (We played in Georgia??!!)

Feb 25: Ocala, Florida.

Feb 27: Sarasota, Florida

(one of these two shows was at a Roller Skating Rink!!)

Feb 28: Coral Springs, Florida (club 777)

March 3: Pace High School in Pace, Florida

March 4: PANAMA CITY, FLORIDA (MORE ON THIS IN A MOMENT!!)

March 10: Susquehanna, Pennsylvania (best gig and best paying gig of the tour!)

March 11: Somewhere in Pennsylvania.

(this is odd. I remember our final date of the tour being at some pizza place in Buffalo, but I just found a contract for this exact venue and it was from 1988! Interesting. Anyway.. I'm still fairly certain that this final gig of the tour was in some tiny venue, and it's the place where my live recording came from.)

March 12: headed home.

Ok... so Panama City.

As you might recall, this was the place where the pastor made an emotional plea for more money from the audience to help us out, something lovingly referred to as a "love offering." As the record shows, he never paid us a cent of that offering money, and thus we left Florida hoping that someday a member of the Bush family would go there to really finish the place off for good!! (Just kidding. Am I?!!)

Well get this!!

On the contract with this place... which I'll just go ahead and name by name:

Living Word Fellowship in Panama City, under the wise leadership of Hayward Miller. (Obviously with a name like Living Word, you know they take their WORD seriously!!)

Ok... I'm heaping it on pretty thick... but seriously if this guy is still in the God Business, it would be great if someone would go collect our love offering from him by force, and maybe sit him down and make him watch Benny Hinn shows while listening to Fergie music!!!)

Ok... kidding again.. trust me.

Here's the good part. According to our contract, he was to provide us with a whopping $300 cash payment. (Wow... I used to make more money playing at the friggin' German Beer Hall in Delhi Ontario playing polka's and waltz's with a crappy, weekend bar band!) And according to the contract, he agreed to pay us extra from the OPTIONAL LOVE OFFERING!!

Wow... so even his contract said that if he had a love offering, that he would pay us that money. So he doubly lied to us!

God bless you Hayward Miller. Your mother would be proud!!

Ok anyway... to conclude this fairly ironic episode of the blog... I will let you all know that I found the contract for what would be the final Awakening live performance... at Creation Festival 1989 in Pennsylvania. Our show was Thursday, June 22, 1989. We played the main stage during the afternoon and got paid $500 US for it. This was our final show. We were booked to play at Kingdom Bound in August of 89', but by that point, the band had broken up, so we had to break the contract and refuse to play that gig.

So there you have it. Anybody want to come over to my place and go through all of our record company income and expense reports?!!!

Oh, by the way... I've now uploaded 3 concert videos from the 1988 Freedom Festival to YouTube. Here is the link:

http://www.youtube.com/user/roxxytans

Take care.

Ian - June 25/09