Big Eric & the Budget Crunch started life in 1980. We ran the highways between south Jersey and southern Maine. We used to call it the post rd tour. Directions to just about all the gigs were "take exit so and so off 95 go to the post rd and take a left or a right".
We played on the average 5-6 nights a week for almost 15 years. No roadies no bus just a van and a whole lot of perspiration. We cut our teeth in some rough joints. We played all the major and minor joints in New York, Boston, Hartford, The Jersey shore joints, Nantucket, Cape Cod and Providence. But we really specialized in the smaller off the beaten path spots. I know a lot of back roads and more than a few backsides. We worked at countless dumps not worth remembering. But we learned how to hold a crowd and make them drink and dance.
I learned my craft from backing up countless Doo Wop and Oldies acts. They might have been a little tired at that time but some of those cats's still kicked some amazing ass.
Doc Green was a favorite of mine. He was an original Drifter from 1956 -1965. I was the guitarist for the Drifters on a German tour in 1979. We did about 45 cities in 30 days. Doc rocked the house at every gig. He told me stories about gigs they did in South America where they took canoes to the gig! Lee Andrews and the Hearts was another great act I worked for. Jackie Wilson who sang "Lonely Teardrops" discovered him when he was 14 years old. Lee was on the road with Jackie for a long time. Lee had some big hits back in the day too. I heard some amazing stories from these cats. These guys and many others taught me a lot about the music business.
I did some interesting things back in the day. I worked for years with Scott Price one of the best harmonica players i ever heard.We played street corners,night clubs and concerts all over Europe. That's where I got my feel to play the blues. We could get a crowd up in 15 minutes and on a good day pull in 75-100 bucks per pull. We would try for at least 3 pulls a day. That was good bread at the time. I learned how to hustle a place to sleep and shower and a pretty girl to cook dinner. I think I only paid for a hotel 3-4 times while I was traveling.
I finally decided to start my own group. This was about 1980 and Big Eric & the Budget Crunch were born at that time. We started out rocking the house and continue to this day.
I think playing gigs is the hardest thing I have ever done. I am not complaining. I love it and would not do any thing else. You have to be very dedicated and sincere to hang in for the long haul. There is nothing glamorous about a 300-mile drive to a dumpy joint with no ac and rednecks yelling for the latest country hits. Of course all gigs are not like that but those nights just kind of stick out. I have many fond memories of the thousands of live performances I have given. I have met many fine people who were very nice to me and met some musical giants most of whom nobody has ever heard of. And a few maybe some of you have. This has been an interesting journey so far and I hope it goes a whole lot longer.

These stories are true. And all the way live.

Me and Vito and the FBI
One day in December of '85 Vito Liuzzi [currently playing with Johnnie Winter] my good friend for about 25 years, a fine drummer and record producer.
Vito says " Eric wanna go on the road and make some quick x-mas money ?" I said "how much and when do we leave".
Vito says "the gig pays $7500 gross for 2 weeks and we gotta cover expenses."
Also the theme of the gig is "Santa goes Country".
So I tell Vito my country repertoire is at about 3 songs. This is not good so I call another road buddy bass player Dave Bakker who now is the big time contractor for all the oldie gigs. I occasionally did some sub work for Dave, and during some of those marathon drives from NYC to Buffalo with no rooms, Dave is always telling me how much he digs the country music scene.
So I asked Dave "can you sing some country songs and help me front on this trip?"
He says no problem I know a million of them, when do we leave and how much?
So we negotiate a price.
I gotta try to remember and do that next time.
So our first gig is in Erie, PA. Show time is 6 PM on Saturday, No problem except we all have different gigs on Friday night. We decide to meet at Vitos Moms house after the gigs and blow out at 4 am drive all night and play the gig. Erie is not a big deal to drive to go to Pittsburgh and turn right and stop when you hit Lake Erie.
The only problem is Friday night a blizzard blows in and dumps 18 inches of snow and ice. The temperature goes down to zero and never goes above for the entire trip. I guess you can see where this mother is headed.
So we finally load up my van with all the gear and my pa system which is good for any small gig up to about 150 people. I've got a small peavay mixer which puts out about 150 watts with 2 speaker cabs with 15 inch speakers and a horn. Good for keeping some weight over the vans rear wheels and jack shit else. They really sound like shit but that was all I had at the time. We pack Vito's drums and Dave's bass rig in and off we go. There is so much friggin snow and ice coming down we can't believe we're on the road and heading to Pittsburgh where the storm is coming from.
So we finally make it over the GW bridge and get on route 80 about 6:30 am. No problem except route 80 looks like the north west trail.
We stopped counting jackknifed tractor trailers at 75. We hit Pittsburgh at 4 pm and still have to make it Erie.
We pull into Erie about 5:45 and start looking for the high school where the gig is supposed to be.
I have never seen snow this deep in my life. It is piled up to the tops of the street lamps and still falling.
We find the venue in a panic and pull in at about 6 pm. The place is dead not a soul around with 3 snow covered cars in the parking lot.
This is not good we all say the same thing over and over oh shit no fucking gig!
We have very little to go on as we have no itinerary or contact just an address and show time. Vito has told me he got half the money up front from the agent and swears we'll get paid the rest when we get back to NY.
We go over to the front door of this high school and start knocking and really do not know what else to do.
Sure enuff some mook opens the door and says you must be the band we were waiting for you!
We all look at each other and think to our selves oh shit here we go.
The mook starts to explain about the promoter being unavailable and something about him disappearing with about $ 80,000 cash day before yesterday. He is not looking very good.
It seems the gig is the party for the end of the town fundraiosr for local orphans and widows.
Oh god! Man oh man. So there is nobody here but us , the mook 3 nuns and about 6 little black orphans. It is pathetic. We have haven't slept since Thursday night., We risked our life to make Erie in a blizzard. The promoter runs off with the money.He stiffs the town at christmas time. We figure the town fathers are fixing to hang us as they were promised an appearance by some pro football players and a big musical revue "Santa Goes Country" with dancing girls and god knows what else. The mook looks at us and then the orphans and the nuns and says well we don't have to really play if we don't want to. The auditorium holds 2000 people, between us the nuns, the mook and the orphans there are maybe 15 people present.
I guess I watched that friggin Andy Rooney and Judy Garland movie one to many times and you know show bizness is my life. So what they get is 3 broken down, tired ass road rats, light on country tune singing, cowboy hat wearin honest to god close to lunatics. Bug eyed from no sleep and 20 cups of high octane java from route 80 truckstops saying god damn there sure as hell will be a show.
So we decide to unload the van and setup in all of 30 minutes and get ready to play some music for these poor little kids. As were setting up I ask Dave what tunes he wants to sing and find out he only can sing 3 country songs! Yo Dave what happened to the million songs you said you know? Oh I know a lot but can only sing 3 he tells me. 1 of them is the same one that I know! So that makes 2 friggin country songs he can sing and no christmas carrols, I'm Jewish he says!
Holy shit! Now what.
Vito is sitting behind the drums smiling at me with this dumb fucking cowboy hat covering his brand new rug he just got from the Sy Sperling Hair Club for Men. Dave has his cowboy outfit on and just really looks silly. He even has a fringed shirt. I must admit I do not add any thing to this package as I am wearing a cowboy hat and denim shirt with a purple bandanna tied around my neck and a new pair of Justin snakeskin cowboy boots
[ think Stevie Ray Vaughn}more about the boots later. I think we look refugees from a Village People tribute band audition.
So Santa goes Country hits the stage running We play our big country numbers and they stink out loud. We suck! This is awful. You have not lived until you flop for 8 year olds!
There is polite applause and that uncomfortable feeling you get when you know people would rather be anywhere else like getting a root canal at the dentist than being a part of this appalling spectacle.
I have flop sweat shooting from my armpits and other parts of my body and I am searching my pockets for a rolaids and my brain is running a hundred miles an hour. I can see these glazed over little eyeballs barely looking at us.
This is actually when everything becomes very clear to me. I don't know why but it must be like combat conditions under fire. I can see really clearly. I instantly know what to do and the exact song to call next. So we bury the Country and Western music and hit 2nd gear by playing "I feel Good" by James Brown.
Thank God the kids wake up and jump up and start dancing. This brings a smile to the nuns faces and they start to clap along. A miracle small but mighty. We hit 3rd gear with La Bamba. The house is rocking! Next we decide to bring the orphans up on stage and sing a christmas carroll, I look at Dave and say well what x-mas songs do you know and he says I kinda know Jingle Bells, well he knew the freakin chorus anyway. So I put the microphone down to the orphans level and figure they'll help us thru the damn song.
These kids run up on stage and are are really hyped about this. They can't believe that they are going to get on stage and sing. Remember these are little orphans. We start playing and these kids are killing I mean 3 of them can really sing! This one kid has the mike and is working it like he was born to do this. Vito is almost falling of the drums. We wind up the tune and get a standing ovation from the nuns the mook and a couple of stragglers who fell in while we were playing. I figure this is a good time to get out of Dodge, but the kids are screaming they want to sing another tune. So we fire up La Bamba one more time and of course they don't know it and the scene is very anticlimactic.
So exit stage left, the show is over, were packing up. Thank god we don't have to pick up any cash. The orphans all come up to us and said they had the best time. They loved singing and could we come over to the orphanage on Tuesday and do it again. We said we'd love to but had to play in Charlotte West Virginia on that night. They seemed to be very happy and I kid you not my eyes were a little bit weepy over this whole affair. These were sweet little kids with not very much.
So we figure we would talk to the mook and find out what the deal was. He told us that for the past 2 months a professional fundraising team had been in town working on getting some money together for this orphanage in town. What they do is put together these books and sell advertising space to all the merchants in town. Then they get the boy scouts, cub scouts and different civic organizations to hold bake sales, car washes, yard sales and sell tickets to this big event at the close of the fund raiser, whatever it takes to bleed the town dry. These cats like to pick towns out of the way with small police departments.
If this sounds like a bad movie well this is where the shit comes from. Christmas is a good time of the year to run these scams. Everybody is trying to think about doing the right thing and well what's a couple of hundred dollars for the orphans in town.
So these guys who I never met and never will run this racquet out of a boiler room operation in Florida somewhere. They hire a booking agent in Boston who calls some musicians in NY [us] to go out on the road and fufill these contracts for 10 shows. We get paid half upfront and are guaranteed the rest upon completion of the job. We have no idea what were getting into.
So the mook who was the number 2 man in the operation. He was the local that was hired by the front man from Florida. He was promised a piece of the action and coordinated all the locals, He rented the office got the phone lines hooked up, got the boy scouts well you get the picture. The front man then completes the fund raising humps the girls at the beauty shop wires the money to some bank in Florida and blows town in a hurry. It turns out that the Florida guys gets to keep 90% of the take and the Head guy then decides to take the rest for his own action. It's a pretty ugly thing. The mook is left holding a pretty big bag at the end of the line and is thinking about moving to Detroit.

So what about the FBI? I'm coming to that. We still got a couple of gigs to go through before we run into them.
Next Stop Deliverence West Virginia.