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Thread: Tragedy before a gig

  1. Tragedy before a gig

    This is a particularly sad story for me, and the first time I had ever seen anything like it.

    This summer, a group I'm in called the Water Street Brass Band (modeled after Youngblood instrumentation) was on a trip to Hastings, MN to perform at the elementary schools. We're all students at Eau Claire, WI so we're by no means professionals, but we pride ourselves in a high energy performance that includes lots of interactment with the audience. It was a four day trip and the first day we performed at a school in Menomonie and then travelled to River Falls to spend the night at a band member's house.

    We rehearsed outside that night, and then were called inside for food so we all threw our instruments in our cases and went inside. Just as we were getting done with that, my friend's dad had to leave to pick up a sibling and he backed his minivan out of the garage, and right over top of the bell end of my trombone case that happened to be sticking a little bit farther into the driveway than everyone else's.

    We immediately rushed it to a repair techician in River Falls and he told me that he should be able to get it fixed and that we would be able to pick it up the next day. Thankfully we didn't have any gigs that day since the school we had originally planned on for that time had to cancel. I play an Olds "Special" trombone made in the 1940s and it is built like a tank. He told me that if anything other than a car running it over would have done nothing since he had hammered on it with a mallet and it would barely move. He also had to patch a small hole, realign the slide, and replace the sauter that holds the bell to the rest of the instrument.

    The case was completely destroyed and irrepairable. it was a thin wooden case and just disintigrated underneath the minivan. I just replaced it last week.

    Thankfully, I was able to use the trombone for the rest of our 7 performances on our trip although I had to borrow slide cream a few times from the schools we were at since mine was destroyed and my fellow trombone player in the group and I had been sharing it.

    The pictures are of the trombone right after it was run over. The picture of me playing it is after the repairs and although its a bit blurry, its the best one I have of it since the accident. I am the trombonist on the left of that picture.

    The moral of the story: Don't put your instrument somewhere it might get run over by a minivan unless you want to potentially ruin the instrument and pay a lot for repairs.

    Attached Thumbnails Attached Thumbnails damaged trombone.jpg   damaged trombone 2.jpg   unknown.jpg  

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