Risks of the road
On Monday, April 6, several musicians were killed trying to get to a gig in Atlanta after playing Sunday night in Spartanburg, S.C. If it sounds familiar to longtime Atlanta music scene watchers, there's a reason.
On Easter Sunday 1992, Atlanta lost two member of the band Jody Grind and performance artist Deacon Lunchbox when their van was hit while returning home from a gig in Pensacola, Florida.
Soon after the accident, AJC music writers Steve Dollar and Russ DeVault wrote the story below about the dangers of life on the road for touring bands. Sadly, the passage of 23 years hasn't changed that. Monday's accident is sad, unfortunate proof.
The story below was first published on April 22, 1992.
The Ellen James Society bought a new van Tuesday, an imposing 15- passenger Ford model.
"It's the biggest, beefiest van they make, " says Chris McGuire, vocalist for the Atlanta rock band, which logged 57,000 miles on the road last year in a worn '87 Chevrolet van, one with a makeshift loft in the back for sleeping.
Like many Atlanta musicians, Ms. McGuire has been shaken by the Easter Sunday truck crash that claimed the lives of Jody Grind band members Rob Clayton, 22, and Robert Hayes, 24, and performance artist Deacon Lunchbox, 41 (aka Tim Ruttenber).
For at least 100 or so Atlanta-area bands whose careers require frequent road trips to places like Birmingham and Savannah, the importance of sturdy transportation can't be underestimated. Rock 'n' roll road dates involve long hours of travel in grueling circumstances, such as those faced by the three victims - who were returning home on a 323-mile trip in the wee hours from a show in Pensacola.
"It's always in the back of my mind, especially if we had a long way to go, " says Kelly Hogan, the Jody Grind's vocalist, who had stayed overnight after the group's performance at Sluggo's, a favorite venue for the band.
"Traveling all the time kind of shoots your odds through the roof. We tried to keep our van running good. [We were] just like truck drivers. They ride all the time and they pass all these accidents."
The Ellen James Society has survived road trips through blinding blizzards and anarchic New York traffic.
"It's scary, it could be anybody, " says Ms. McGuire. "After what happened with Jody Grind, it's like [our families say], 'We think about you all the time, ' and you realize the odds are greatly increased because you're out there all the time."
Risk factors abound
"What you have is poor people in small vehicles with massive amounts of tonnage, " says Jeff Calder, a guitarist with the rock band Swimming Pool Q's, who attended high school with Mr. Ruttenber. "You're always loaded down with equipment in the middle of nowhere. You're always traveling late at night. It's dark and people are very tired."
The deaths tragically illustrate the dangers of life in a rock 'n' roll band. But do-it-yourself travel on the cheap is an occupational necessity for the great percentage of performers, who will never achieve superstar status or the chartered jets and customized buses that come with it.
"A lot of times you only make $100, and you spent $40 getting there, " says guitarist Al Aylsworth of the rock band A Month of Sundays. In such cases, an overnight drive can help pay the rent. "That extra $60 may make the difference between whether you get evicted or not."
43 hours without sleep
Country singer Alan Jackson had a No. 1 hit last year with "Chasin' the Rainbow, " a tune whose lyrics describe the kind of dues musicians pay: "An atlas and a coffee cup, five pickers in an old Dodge truck, headin' down to Houston for a show on Saturday night/This overhead is killin' me, half the time I sing for free."
The Newnan native says he sings from experience. "I remember having a gig in Charleston, S.C., and by the time I got in the van and got there and set up and played five sets, I'd been up for 43 hours straight."
Such rigors are a constant for bands struggling to launch careers or make a living.
Mr. Clayton, the Jody Grind's 22-year-old drummer, was driving home to attend Easter services when a camper crossed a 40-foot median on Interstate 65 north of Montgomery and rammed the group's van head-on. Just a few hours earlier, he had been onstage in Pensacola with Messrs. Hayes and Ruttenber.
"I'm numb. I'm scared to go back on the road tomorrow. I'm terrified, " says Bruce Hampton, a veteran Atlanta musician whose eclectic Southern groove ensemble, the Aquarium Rescue Unit, spends 45 weeks a year on tour, driving as much as 14 hours between gigs. "I've had seven or eight friends over the years who've been killed in crashes while performing. It's a hazardous life."
Horror stories are common
"It's shocking that more tragic and terrible things like this don't happen, " Mr. Calder says. "We've had so many weird things happen. One time the spindle broke. We were like five in a van somewhere outside of Mobile, and the wheel basically goes haywire. Sent us across several lanes of traffic."
Guitarist Jim Johnson, a former member of the rock group The Chant, once watched his band's van incinerate on a grim Florida two-lane, the victim of a broken gas hose.
"We watched it burn to the ground, " he says.
Careful driving sometimes isn't enough to prevent trouble. Ms. McGuire recall s a near-disaster caused by a would-be thief who had loosened the lug nuts on a wheel. "We were driving back from Athens and the wheel just sheared off. Cooper [Seay] was driving. She handled it. I can't believe we didn't flip over."
Bill Ladd, guitarist for the North Carolina rock band Johnny Quest, knows that riding in a second-hand Dodge van loaded with amplifiers and instruments can be unsafe.
"But what the hell else are we to do?" he asks. "I remember reading when the [hot punk-funk outfit the Red Hot] Chili Peppers were crossing Potomac Bridge and hit a patch of ice and slid and it was a miracle they didn't go off the bridge.
"It's something everybody thinks about, but you don't let it dominate your thinking or you'd never get in that damn truck."
