On another particular gig, my band was hired out to play a college event. Our pianist who often complained of his arthritic condition (to which I wasn’t totally convinced) requested that I’d call the venue to see if there was an in-house piano to save him the effort of schlepping in his own gear.
I’ve always been a freak for pitch, so I didn’t have much faith in whatever acoustic piano existed in any particular place unless it had been recently tuned…but I made the call anyway and lo and behold there was indeed an upright for us to use. With that I called my keyboardist to let him know, and he was completely elated.
When we got there we found the piano on the floor. I tried playing it for a moment finding it very much in tune. Now all we had to do was get it up on the stage.
The four of us assembled around this rather new Yamaha upright, took a deep breath and lifted it off the floor…but there were about four feet left to lift before it hit stage level. Red faced and out of breath, we finally got the front rollers onto the stage but…
As I blurted out “This isn’t going to work,” our pianist lost his grip. Have you ever seen Laurel and Hardy’s “The Piano Mover”? The crash of hundreds of pounds of wood and deafening roar of 88 keys playing simultaneously frightened not only us, but also the guests who had started coming into the ballroom.
We were dead in the water. That night, we performed as a trio with our drummer, my brother on bass, and myself on sax. Moral of the story: always bring a backup.