The K2B Show

Another in a series of great road stories about the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, penned by founding member and friend of TheK2BShow, John McEuen.  Thanks John, we are all richer due to these stories!

A lot of us missed Woodstock, including some who were there. It has been said that if all those who say they were there had been there, it would have been more like 5 million people. The premise of the 1974 Sedalia concert was to recapture that show’s legendary vibe… just like the big time, only… smaller. Well, it started that way, ‘smaller’..  The word was that although it was doubtful the hyped for 40,000 people would show up, it would be a great time, like we’d all heard Woodstock was for many. Only this time there was money in it for all. Then it grew.

First, finding out a week or so before that yes, there were 50,000 ticket buyers so far. … (Tickets were selling faster than expected, as it grew close). Then, finding out people were arriving, showing up mid-week already, and the 3-day show hadn’t started yet. By mid-week of the show over were 75,000 sold, half of them were there, and already there was nowhere to park in the town, so they parked everywhere. VW’s with hippie signage, pickups, buses, campers… anything that would classify as a rolling party showed up.
Then another 25-50,000 showed up the first show day in addition to the pre-sold; then McDonald’s closed because it ran out of food. This closing shook up even the hippies, like the navy running out of sailors would an admiral. The very basis of one’s existence -food- was compromised, and it made one subliminally  uneasy with the rest of the day. (McDonald’s ran out of food? Wow.. cool. Really?  hmmm.. how are we gonna eat? what does this mean.. well, cool.. we’ll find food.) But it was HOT. Remember, this was when people didn’t complain about McDonald’s, but felt lucky to find one. As they say, back in the day. Back when people said things like “I really got fried last night”, before they said, as they do now, “I can’t eat that, it’s fried”.

One official count on Saturday of 184,000 people was a shock to all. (some later said it was more like 240,000)

It became mandatory: chopper-to-stage if you wanted to get to work. Even the politically protesting musician hippies started to appreciate the Vietnam chopper vets in a way they’d never imagined, as street traffic made it impossible to drive to the stage. The only way to rock and roll was to fly in low and fast. Like a MASH run, bands picked up at the hotel were ferried to the backstage landing spot for R & R, then they’d take the band that just finished back to the hotel for a different R & R … and S.. and D. You can figure that out. The good news on the Saturday we played was that the Hell’s Angels had taken over backstage security…that was the good news, but they were doing a fine job. And it was HOT.

We were preceded by guitar great Leo Kottke, so when he finished we were to set up – while the Ozark Mt. Daredevils played on the other half of the stage. I arrived early to see Kottke, well before he went on, and decided to go out and be ‘with the people’ I had just flown over. I wanted to see what it was like in the middle of 184,000 people who, from the stage, looked like a field of basketballs with long hair. I swam through the crowd to the sound mix scaffolding, and surveyed the sea of hair, all crammed on to the fairgrounds racetrack as Kottke started playing.

(I was wondering why Leo had covered his guitars with towels, thinking that must help the sound on this huge stage.. or maybe he was sweating too much. I was to find out soon why.)

Wolfman Jack, America’s D.J. of the time, was introducing the next act. We had known Jack a while, done his TV. show (Midnight Special) many times, and I wanted to see what it was like to see him in front of a live audience. Well… from the sound mix position he was about 1” tall, and that basso saw blade voice of his sounded like it was coming from someone’s car speakers across the field.
The sound was set up for 50,000 or so people, but there were now 3 _ times that many.. but it was o.k. once the bands kicked in.

As the NG Dirt Band had 3 recent top-40 hits (Mr. Bojangles, House at Pooh Corner, Some of Shelley’s Blues) and the …Circle… album had recently been released, we were anxious to do our set. This was once place, Missouri, where we knew we could hold our own up against the others like REO, Skynyrd, the Tucker boys, and the Eagles.  I headed back to get my stuff set up and felt like I was preparing to get on the Titanic knowing what I know now. It was an ‘edgy’ feeling, knowing there were simply too many fish in the bowl and we were getting ready to throw out a few crumbs.

We started off with Shelley’s Blues, a banjo led song – and being the first banjo on this hot stage in the heart of the baking Ozarks helped get some new heat from this sweltering audience. Our set was hot all the way through, and this was truly one of our best shows of that year. Did I say it was hot.. and so was the weather?  This region was, after all, where most of the training for Vietnam was going on. It was reportedly 110˚ onstage – that was the air that was moving -  the reflected heat from all the metal light trusses, road cases, equipment, added to the plywood stage heat reflection made it feel like we were in a giant chicken rotisserie and about 125˚.

The third song, Cosmic Cowboy, I was to play my lap steel guitar. I vividly remember picking up the sun drenched metal slide bar and dropping it as fast as I could – it was about 140˚.. I poured water on it to cool it enough to hold on to it, and then made the mistake of putting my lap steel on my lap and touching the strings. NOW THAT was hotter! It had been absorbing the direct sun and, well… the song was going to start so I took a bottle of water and dumped it on it, and glad it still worked. I understood Kottke now.

The cosmic long-hairs’ anthem started and brought the biggest hoot we had ever heard (the lyric: ‘I just want to ride… and rope…. and hoooo…t”) right on cue. Closing with Battle of New Orleans, we had won the battle to stay alive, and left to a standing ovation from the 183,000 people.

It’s good for  ‘ego reality’ to keep in mind that they were standing all day long, though.. It wasn’t possible to sit down in that crowd. I think the cumulative weight the band lost in our hour was about 28 lbs., and we left a couple of choppers later. Had to catch REO first. They were great. Overall, reflecting back over the NGDB’s 40 years on the road, Sedalia was one of the top 10 for us. Maybe it had something to do with the previous time we played the same fairgrounds (1972) was we opened for the Jackson 5. This Sedalia show was, in spite of heated adjectives above, a lot cooler.