Naked girl on the toilet conspiracy

Every concert tour has their practical jokes, you get kind of stir crazy pent up in that submarine on wheels. This one remains an unsolved mystery despite my best efforts to uncover the truth. All I know is, it wasn’t me!
We just spent a week playing at Harrods in Lake Tahoe. It was great except that I couldn’t go skiing due to my popped middle finger incident.
We rented a huge condo for the week, got to unpack a bit and eat home cooked food, as we took turns cooking. I remember the two grocery carts full, shopping trip to the grocery store with the Foghat band and crew as being quite a spectacle to locals!!
During that week Erik Cartwright, the guitar player, flew his Kansas City Girlfriend out for the week. I dont remember her name and he probably doesn’t either! I won’t even get started on the nightly head board banging marathon that went on! It had us all running for earplugs!
Anyway, with Lake Tahoe in the rear view mirror, we set out for our next gig. For some reason there was a ruckus to do with the tour bus bathroom. Everybody was using it for some reason and coming out laughing and whispering to each other. Finally somebody said Gina, go use the bathroom! Ok??! So I go in the bathroom and taped to the toilet seat is a naked photo of Erik’s girlfriend, I assume he had take at some fancy pubic outdoor fountain. Superimposed over the photo were the “crushing” fingers from “Kids In The Hall” show, crushing her boobs. Wow. LOL
So I return to the lounge and now everyone is giggling and waiting for Erik to go use the bathroom.
Erik’s reaction wasn’t so amused. He was furious in fact, because apparently the photos were hidden in his luggage where the prankster had to have gone to retrieve them.
Now it was on, Roger Earl the drummer made an ultimatum. Who ever did this was fired for going into Erik’s luggage. Each of us were questioned, but who ever did it remains a mystery. I spoke with Phil Nudelman and Rich Rainer some 20 years later and they both denied doing or knowing who did!! We all have our suspicions.
“I’m crushing your boobs… crush, crush, crush!!!!”

Beat up in Birmingham… Winter 1989

Ever have one of those nights when everything you do, turns to shit?
If I never go back to Birmingham, AL as long as I live, it will be too soon!! It was my Bermuda Triangle!
First of all, the gig was weird. Foghat was normally the headliner, played last and loaded out thru an empty club. Well this club was open all night long, so we went on at a usual time, but had to load in with other bands setting up to play before and after us.
The stage was f@cked from the start and had a giant tripod on each side, holding up the lighting rig.
This was normally where I set up guitar world, which consisted of a lot of shit, including a big work box road case and 7 guitars.
Well on this night, I had to cram everything in between the angled legs of this stupid lighting truss. It was a mess and I had to step over the legs to get anywhere, but mostly smashed into them 20x till my shins were bleeding thru my now ripped jeans. Wah. I know. It gets better.
So we play the show, which was uneventful, until it came time to load out through a packed house. This is where it gets interesting. First order of business was to get the set of highly coveted Marshall heads off the stage and onto the bus. I was the only person allowed to do this, as they were old school and hard to replace. So, off I go with one in each hand, when some guy is speaking “Italian” with both arms flailing, as I am trying to sneak around behind him, he nails me in the mouth with a lit cigarette! OMG! Burned both of my lips and put it out on my teeth! If you haven’t seen me smile. I don’t need any help in the lip department! The guy was of course, drunk off his ass and tried to profusely apologize and insisted on buying me a shot, which I slammed and got back to work.
Ok, next order of business, 7 guitars, back to the bus. Again, one in each hand. Mind you, there was a huge long line outside the club of people waiting to get in. The bus was parked right in front of the line. I had to come thru that mess with everything I was trying to get out of the club and every drunken fool wanted to help!
So as I weave my way thru the crowd I am clear of them, but not clear of the long narrow cement thing you pull up to when parking your car, I stumble, trip, drop both guitars….gently!, do a summersault and smack my head on the open underbin door of the bus, cutting my head open. Yay. Now a crowd of drunken idiots stumble over to get my autograph. Crap. I pick up the guitars, take a bow, get a round of applause and move on with loading out.
Finally I am done. Erik sees me with my two fat burnt lips, bloody forehead, ripped jeans and talks me into going back into the belly of the beast, for a drink.
Erik, the rock star, leads the way and I follow a few steps behind, into the packed crowd when all of the sudden a fight breaks out in the space between Erik and I. As a punch comes flying at me, I duck, toss the rest of the guy over me, run and high tailed it back to the bus. Erik catches a glimpse of the debacle and showed up a few minutes later with a bottle and some shot glasses. Someone, somewhere has photos. It would have made a great mug shot, but I succeeded in avoiding any further injury or altercation that night.

Road crew war story on tour with Foghat in Sweet Home Chicago!

Every show on tour has its ups and downs. This one resulted in stitches!
This story is not for the squeamish, so you might want to move along if you are!
This date I had to fly into Chicago from Orlando and take a cab from the airport. The gig was at some pub style bar in mid January 1990. On the cab ride in, I noticed the driver’s name badge and asked him if he was Russian. He got pretty defensive and I’m thinking oh crap, I better shut up before I end up in some warehouse tied to a chair!
We finally arrived at the venue, THE LONG WAY, and the bus was ready to load in and waiting on me. I made a quick phone call to some friends in Chicago, who would be meeting me later at the show, then got all bundled up and climbed into the “trunk” under the bus to shove out all the gear, we needed to set up inside. Some local guys from the club were assigned to help me.
I’m not 5 minutes into dragging it all out, when the local guy lost his grip on the bass cabinet and the whole thing landed on my hand. I saw it coming and tried to pull back, but it caught the tips of my fingers.
F*ckity, F$ck, F@ck! I knew it was bad, because it felt warm and wet all of the sudden inside my glove. I did not want to even look!! First, I had to get out of the hole I was in, swear at the guy who dropped it on me, cry a little, swear some more, jump around outside, then head inside from the blizzard, to see how bad it was. As soon as I got inside, I grabbed Rich, the tour manager and asked him to come into the bathroom with me, I just smashed my hand. We got in there and I reluctantly pulled off my glove…
I smashed my finger so hard, it popped and fat was coming out the end like a squashed grape! There wasn’t too much blood, because it was split open and the fat was holding the blood in. It looked like cottage cheese with pepper on it, coming out the end of my finger. It was pretty gross, but kind of amusing at the same time. Neither of us had seen anything like it!
So off to the ER for X-rays and stitches. It wasn’t broken, but someone had to shove the fat back in and stitch it up! This is where I learned that a mouth full of dental work had made me immune to Novocain. They shot an entire vile of it into my finger and it only made my already swollen finger, now full of fluid. Well, obviously that wasn’t going to work, what else you got? The doc admitted he was fresh out of medical school and started digging around for some zylocain (spelling?) which thankfully worked.
Rich sat there and watched him stitch up the whole thing. Yuk, I just sat there trying not to look. He wrapped a giant bandage on it and told me to keep it elevated. Oh, did I forget to mention?… it was my right middle finger! Yep, FU Chicago!!!
We arrived back at the club shortly before show time, the stage was all set up and ready to go, including my guitar world. Yay! My friends had arrived and were quite amused by my Statue of Liberty FTW pose. No night off for me, it was back to business, worked the show and had enough shots lined up for me to kill the pain!
They told me to go get my stitches taken out in about a week. 10 days later Erik Cartwright dug them out with a knife in Lake Tahoe. I still have the scar and forever altered finger print to prove it!

Before I was a Seamstress to the stars, I took a Slow Ride…

For those of you who didn’t know this fun fact about me, I’ve been in the music business since the late 80’s. Long before I was a Seamstress, I toured as a guitar tech for Foghat.
It all started, when I was invited by Molly Hatchet to attend one of their shows, in which Foghat was opening for them. I met everybody, then when they were back in town a few months later was invited to their show at Finkey’s in Daytona in November of 1989.
Upon arrival, I was dressed the way we all dressed back in the day. Hair teased to the moon, short skirt, high heals, hanging out with the usual suspects.
As it turns out, their guitar tech had hurt himself and Erik Cartwright was in need of assistance to execute his multiple guitar changes. Erik knew I played guitar and I agreed to do the swaps for him. Sounded simple enough.
As the show progressed Erik kept making the swap further and further out onto the stage.
Mid show he broke a string. Mid show I changed it. When it came time for that guitar again, instead of handing him the spare, I handed him the one I fixed. He looked at me, looked at the guitar and I assured him it was fine. Off he went.
As the band was wrapping up the show, the singer Phil asked the crowd “how they liked their new guitar tech”, as they dragged me out from behind guitar world. The crowd approved.
After the show, I was offered the job. Erik later asked me how I changed the string and got it in tune with all the noise of the show.
I just smiled and said “job security”.