The Photons were playing at the Saloon 10 in Deadwood, SD. It was the time of year that the locals began planning for the Sturgis MC rally. We had been approached with several gig opportunities, some were sketchy but a few were viable but it would've involved multiple venues and finding our own lodging which is next to impossible during Sturgis as it's booked up years in advance around that one week.
A nicely dressed couple came in several times to see us during our 2 week stay. She really stuck out because she was Hollywood pretty. There were plenty of cute girls around but she was the prettiest without even trying. Si and Lorna had recently purchased the campground on the edge of Sturgis, SD right off I-90. They were looking for a band to play in their beer garden.
We could camp out or stay at their house in town so that took care of the lodging problem and we didn't have to try to move around town in the rally traffic. That first year, the beer garden was a pole barn with a stage at one end and the bar at the other. The campground had six showers, a men's room with three stalls and two urinals and a ladies room with six stalls or thereabouts. They had a small trailer making breakfast, lunch and dinner from dawn to dusk or until they ran out of food.
My bass player elected to stay in town in the owners air-conditioned house in a bed with television but I wasn't going to miss out on the biggest party in town so... We had it scheduled out that we played at the Saloon 10 the two weeks prior to the Sturgis rally which gave me ample opportunity to pick the prime camping spot under the very few shade trees available.
I set up quite the compound with a 100' tarp covering 3 tents, a large picnic table in the middle with the band van set up as a food storage/kitchen prep area with a hot plate and toaster oven easily accessible. I had electricity to all the tents to run fans as it got hot in the daytime and sometimes the heat lasted into the night. Yeah, we got really lucky the first couple years with the weather.
The issue arose after the gig and the beer garden closed, a lot of the folks would follow the band back to our compound where we would continue to party all night. We were adjacent to the expensive RV sites and one night they actually called the Sturgis Police Department to come out there and break up our party because we were disturbing the rich guys that had their RV and their bikes delivered and set up for them.
They arrived at the Rapid City airport and took a limo to the campground, dressed up in their biker attire. They liked to sleep at night so they could get up early in the morning and pretend to be bikers. After a few days, their asses got sore so they had the limo take them back to the airport. After the rally was over, the fellas who set it all up returned to take it all back to somewhere...
The following year, Si the owner, made me set up the compound under a smaller shade tree away from the big money, RV sites. That year, my future fiancé, Kimberly, and my crazy friend Pam drove out for the party. They were pretty girls that attracted a lot of attention from the other guests. My bass player's wife, another pretty blonde, also made the trip out.
Si had added more bathrooms, more showers, made the bar bigger and closed the beer garden in, with big, double doors on all 4 sides of the building. The bar was constructed of beer barrels with unfinished plywood across the top. He only sold beer and wine at the bar but he had a convenience store upfront that also sold beer and wine along with assorted sundries.
People just assumed that I was somehow in charge of Kimberly and Pam and would ask my permission to take the girls out for a ride around the Black Hills. For the girls it was kind of like having their big brother there to look after them. They kind of got a kick out of it.
I was sitting in the shitter stall one morning when I overheard two guys talking about the guy in the band with the two hot blondes and how he must have a huge dick or something to rate. Then they lamented the fact that they didn't know how to play guitar and sing and that was the other secret to my success with the women according to them. Well they got part of it right anyway. I could play guitar and sing.
Our third year there, Si, once again, moved us even further away from the high dollar RV sites because of our raucus, partying ways and set us up right next to the beer garden so that when they closed, all the noisy people stayed in the designated noise area.
Personally I didn't see what anybody was complaining about. As soon as it got light out, the Harleys were firing up and they were a lot louder than a couple handfuls of drunks partying all night. I had no problems sleeping through the cacophony of motorcycles coming and going all day, relentlessly revving their engines because Harleys don't like to idle...
I was setting at the picnic table reading a Guitar World magazine that had a picture of Jimmy Page from Led Zepplin on the cover. Another big, white van pulling a trailer pulled in next to us. As they were unloading and setting up their site I noticed one of the guys looked identical to Jimmy Page! Of course I knew it wasn't him because Jimmy Page would be a lot older but this guy was a dead on ringer. I pointed him out to my drummer and the rythym guitar player. I walked over introduced myself and showed the magazine to those fellas.
Turned out to be a band called Zoso, a Led Zeppelin tribute band doing one nighters at different venues. The lead singer was very protective of his voice and talked very quietly. I was just the opposite. I kept my voice in shape by incessant yapping and copious amounts of Bourbon.
We were a bad influence on those guys with our day drinking and weed smoking. The lead singer was the only one that didn't get led astray. After four days of hanging out with us they were probably happy to give their livers a break.
We would run into them again at Fern Park Station in Orlando several years later. We drank all the complementary beer and ate the big sandwich in the green room. They weren't eating or drinking so.... As it turned out, it wasn't for them, it was for the headlining act (I think it was Jimmy's Chicken Shack)... Oh well, that wasn't the first bar manager we pissed off or the last... Anyhow.....
While other establishments said they were full, Si the owner, could always manage to squeeze one more in. We were playing our show when an old school bus painted up like a tie-dyed shirt with Grateful Dead dancing bears pulled in next to our camping spot adjacent to the beer garden. Si figured he would keep all the freaks in one place.
The owners wife, Lorna and her mother were there every night. As I said, Lorna was Hollywood beautiful and she got it from her mother, who was still a knockout at 80 years of age, she drove my drummer crazy with desire. She would wear crocheted chaps and matching bikini top. He tried but she wasn't attracted to immaturity. She had a great personality and loved to dance. She would say, "Let me show you my new tattoo of a cute, little mouse I got on my leg" as she slowly slid her skirt up. When she got to where it was obvious there was no tattoo, she would flash her privates and say, "Oops! My pussy must've ate it!"
The people from the tie-dyed bus came in and dosed the entire audience and the band with LSD. I mean, they must've passed out 150 hits, easily. I got two. The only person who wasn't tripping was the owner. His wife Lorna and his mother-in-law started dancing on the bar. It's amazing the bar didn't collapse from the weight of all of the people that joined them, most of them large, midwestern types. The next year Si had a heavy duty bar happening to support the weight of the dancers.
At one point it all became too confusing to continue and the band along with the entire crowd broke down into hysterical laughter for what felt like 30 minutes, my sides were hurting, my face was sore from grinning and we sold every beer and all of the wine that was on the property including his convenience store that night. Si had to call for an emergency beer delivery from his distributor.
The next morning he was vibrating with excitement because he had never made so much money in one night, it was the best year so far. He said, "You guys sounded really... different last night! I never heard music quite like that before but everybody was having so much fun." He was naïve to the whole psychedelic experience of the previous evening.
We played out there a few more years before the corporate sponsorships promoting family values ruined the whole Sturgis vibe and turned it into nothing but a Disney version of biker life. If you want to go to Sturgis now, you'll have more fun riding if you go a week early or a week after. There's a new party town in Wyoming where all the craziness happens now but that'll probably change too. The last year we were there my friend Pam got threatened with a fine for showing her boobs... The fuck kind of biker party doesn't allow the exhibition of bare boobs?
☮️❤️😊🎶👣🖖
Hanging out at the compound... Sturgis '97
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