Drive-By Truckers

whew…that was some night…we heard that the Tom Petty show at Blossom was cancelled so we wondered about our friends the Drive-By Truckers who are opening the Petty dates and invited them to come on up to the Beachland to hang for our Old 97s show….when management told us they were actually looking for a place to play, we offered up our tavern as a post-Old 97s event and next thing you knew we had two vans driving to Akron to get the gear and were selling tickets like hotcakes….sold it out in the time it took to get to Akron and back!

Here’s what Patterson said in his post last night to announce the show: Y’ALL: The last time we played the Tavern Room at The Beachland Ballroom, Cooley tried to punch me out, smashed a guitar and threw the remains of it at Brad then proceeded to tear down the stage. (Feb. 2002).
They had to rebuild the stage the next morning. We had an awkward breakfast at Cracker Barrel. Tonight we return to The Tavern Room to ROCK IT HARD. Our show with Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers was postponed due to Mike Campbell’s illness (GET WELL SOON!!!) We have been bummed and sad and needed to ROCK. Our good friends at The Beachland invited us to come see our friends The Old 97’s play and we asked if we could maybe give that small stage one more try.

It’s the truth. That show in 2002 has been Beachland legend for some time. Cooley actually did a Pete Townshend on us and smashed his guitar into the stage leaving a pretty good size hole and almost took out a patron when the guitar bounced off the back wall near the bathrooms. We patched the hole in the stage but it was a hasty patch and so there was a lump for probably a year where the lead singers had to stand….so everyone heard the story….that show though for the Southern Rock Opera disc, with only about 15 of us in the tavern, was the Truckers revved on adrenaline, being determined road dogs. It was an amazing show and Cooley just melted down after giving it his all.

Last night, the Truckers once again gave it their all. With sweat dripping from his nose, Cooley ripped it up and Patterson belted out song after song to a grateful 150 fans instead of some 20,000 that would have seen them at Blossom. Supposedly the Petty show is being rescheduled for Aug 31. We’re going to try to go. Thank you Truckers for another legendary Beachland event!