The Southern Drawl Band (SDB) was booked to open for the Allen Collins Band (ACB) in Poughkeepsie, N.Y. one evening. The ACB was (essentially) Lynyrd Skynyrd, Rossington Collins (minus Gary Rossington)…pretty much all the remaining original members of Skynyrd. So, Southern Drawl Band’s management created a promotion ad for the show: a full-page ad in a music publication named Music Machine Magazine.
Trouble started when, before the show, Allen Collins Band’s manager and the show’s promoter (who owned the building) noticed the full-page ad and expressed to SDB management how there was going to be trouble over the depiction of the full-page ad (notice the font sizes of the bands’ names, see picture below). This bit of trouble was temporarily diffused by SDB’s manager by telling the ACB manager and promoter that the ad’s specifications came from “upper management.” So, before the show went on, and to pay honor to some of our music icons, we left a letter (with the SDB letterhead) thanking them for the opportunity and how much of an inspiration they were to us. Holding down the letter was a fresh bottle of Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey, courtesy of SDB.
On our way to performing our set, we walked by ACB’s dressing room and noticed that they were in a jug-passing circle with our (now nearly empty) whiskey gift. The SDB performed a solid opener then waited to see the headliner. Prior to ACB’s performance, we thought to ourselves, “Are there going to be repercussions for the ad, like not getting paid?” ACB went on stage and about halfway through their set things started to unravel for them (not in a good way): a large cymbal and stand crashed onto Allen Collins’s Firebird Gibson. In response to this accident, Allen Collins took off his guitar, walked off the stage, and didn’t come back! After the show we finally settled up with the promoter, who apologized for the ad mishap (he followed this by saying that the full-page ad in Music Machine Magazine had it right!).