Bob Bell's 1981 Hot Little Mama Tour Part 14 - Heading Home

(Photo of Bob looking young and fresh back in 1981: Adrian Boot)

As we drove away from the Moonshadow, down Johnson Road, headed back to the hotel for a quick shower and to pack our bags, and climb, groaning and yawning back into the Suburban for a six hundred and fifty mile jump to DC, I realised that, wow, we really were heading for home. DC tonight, and then Toad’s Place in New Haven, CT the next and then back to Rhode Island. 

So it had been a great trip - we were nearly sold out of the original five thousand pressing of Hot Little Mama, and all the T-shirts we’d brought with us were now gone. I’d been selling both at the shows, from the soundboard, or at the club exit at the show’s end, and because of the amount of territory we had covered, with all the attendant press, all the distributors had re-ordered at least once. We were learning how easy it was to ship records to the distributors, and how difficult it could be for some of them to ship a cheque back in payment. Most of them were pretty cool about paying - obviously if they were sold out of the record they would want more, so that there was an incentive to pay us, but one or two were a bit recalcitrant. House Distributors in Kansas City were very slow, and in one of the interviews one of the guys gave preceding a KC show a few weeks later, this came up, and got into print. House said they were very pissed off that we said that, and a couple of their salesmen came to the gig and moaned and complained, and we had to say we were equally pissed off that we had to say it - and, more to the point, where is the money? It was all smoothed over eventually, and little old Blue Flame Records soldiered on, and by year’s end we were able to re-order another five thousand, and this time they had the hipper Ace Records cover, the one with the Hot Mama being cooled with a fan.  

Pic and I had started off rooming together, but because he was constantly on the phone booking dates, and I also needed a phone that for all intents and purposes was surgically attached to my ear, we split up … only one phone per room, and of course this was way before the ubiquitous cell phone. There was always a wild amount of business to conduct - Greg trying to fill the calendar, and me trying to publicise the calendar, calling journalists trying to set up interviews, or a record review, or to get a photo placed in the paper the day of the show, it was all a mad hassle, and naturally one never, or rarely got the journalist the first time around, and so messages were left, and it was so hard to be able to give a return phone number, other than ask for a message to be left on my home answering machine, which involved more time checking in, expensive long distance calls, and then there were the dates coming up, the ones Greg had just booked, they had to be supplied with press kits, LPs, posters which I carried with us in the trailer, and would have to stuff in an envelope and then beg the guy at the front desk to mail for us, not having time to find a post office, and then the radio stations, oh, the radio stations, on a few occasions we had the time after hitting a town to run to a local station and press a copy of the LP into a Program Director’s hand, or that of the local blues jock, a happenstance that sometimes led to great misunderstandings.

Me, arriving at a radio station: “Hi, I’ve got a great new record by Roomful of Blues, a hot band playing Rhythm and Blues” - and be introduced to the guy programming R & B, who’d look at the record and the photos on the back of the sleeve, of the white musicians, and who’d say, without listening to it, “That’s blues, not R & B,” and I’d get shown to another office, and go through the same spiel and finally achieve a meeting of the minds, a promise of some plays and then rush back to the hotel to get ready for the gig, it was all insanely intense, a crazy juggling of time, approaching and vanishing deadlines, the hands of the clock sweeping faster and faster, and just god forbid there was a mechanical problem with the truck, as would happen out there on the road sometimes, and then all this business would be conducted from a greasy waiting room phone at a dealership at best, or a forlorn payphone out in the howling wind at worst.

We’d only had one real mechanical hassle this trip, and that had been back in Nevada when we’d had a problem with the starter. The solenoid had a short, and when the key was turned just made that sad clicking sound. It was hot and the band got out of the truck, and gathered around as I squirmed under the Suburban with a screwdriver and shorted the solenoid’s plus and minus terminals to engage the starter, which worked. As I did it, it sparked as the engine roared into life and simultaneously one of the sparks - in reality a small piece of molten metal - hit the metal gas line going to the fuel pump and a thin but long tongue of flame shot forth, the running engine pumping more and more fuel towards the puncture. “Hey, we are on fire, get me a rag,” I hollered, only to see nine pairs of feet running away from the truck, in all directions, very fast. I pulled off my t-shirt and wrapped it round the punctured line, depriving it of oxygen, extinguishing the blaze, and crawled, cursing, from under the vehicle. We had it towed to a nearby garage, and within a couple of hours all was repaired and we were on our way again, me at the wheel, with nine erstwhile deserters on board. Assholes.

America being America, and the touring life being what it is, our livelihoods revolved around our revolving wheels, and when they didn’t turn, we didn’t earn. The potential of a breakdown forever loomed large in our minds, and vast Proustian tomes could be written, and possibly will be, dealing with the vicissitudes and hassles of the road, blown engines, failed transmissions, exploding tires, hours hanging by the side of the road awaiting tow trucks, or lounging around oily garages, on the phone to U-Haul, arranging rentals, and over all that hung dollar signs, ever increasing expenses, and the further worry of not making that evening’s gig, and thus losing dough while spending it.

Everyone in that dusty old Chevy had those thoughts from time to time, and it was always with a sense of relief that we’d pull into that evening’s hotel or venue.  The gig in DC was at the Cellar Door, a club owned and booked by Cathy Moore, of Cellar Door Concerts, a lady who regularly got Roomful gigs in the DC area. The band had had a strong following in the area for years and the fact that it was DC meant that nationally known faces were in attendance from time to time. Bob Woodward, who with Carl Bernstein had broken the Watergate story a few years before, would sometimes catch the band when we were in town, and one of the band’s members claimed to have smoked pot with George H. W. Bush’s daughters at a DC gig in the past, this scandalous episode occurring when Bush was running the CIA, much to everyone’s glee. The town had many great clubs, the 9.30 Club, The Bayou, Desperados, The Cellar Door, the Wax Museum and The Blues Alley, and we played all of them over the years.

The Cellar Door was one more gig for an extremely tired band, and yet Roomful proved once again that the more tired the band was, the better everyone played. It was as if after all the exhaustion of the travel, the lack of any meaningful and restful sleep, all of these detractions actually added up to a plus, to a performance that smoked. And why not? This was what the band really lived for, and on stage the fatigue momentarily vanished, adrenalin kicked in, and the weeks of constantly playing sharpened and polished the performances: the horns swung as the rhythm section rolled and grooved, and Pic held onto the vocal mic, sax slung from his neck, leant back with closed eyes, and sang his heart out, and Ronnie Earl, master of guitar player’s faces, sweated and grimaced through one more slow blues, his chin pointed high, face contorted, the red eye on his amp, a Fender Super Reverb, glowing behind him, the only constant in a dizzying display of dynamics, propelled by Rossi’s insistent shuffle, a powerhouse backbeat coming from those vintage Slingerland Radio Kings, and old John himself red-eyed from the sweat, press-rolling the turn around, teeth clenched, his arms a blur, and he’s gone, gone with the sound, those long hours in the truck belonging to a different lifetime.