30 years ago this week, Big Dipper set off on a six-week tour of the USA in support of their recently released major-label debut, Slam. We had high hopes that the record and this tour would take us to the mythical ‘next level’, but the album flopped and the tour was beset by myriad logistical, mechanical, and personal problems, culminating with Steve leaving the band. As much as we can piece together from our collective memories of 3 decades ago, we’ll present a daily journal of the ill-fated tour here over the next month or so. It won’t be easy: some of the memories are painful, and a lot of these shows have faded from memory but maybe YOU were there and can help us fill in the gaps? If you saw one of these shows, please share what you recall with us. For the band members, it was a difficult tour but we’ll try to find the humor in all of it.
We had reason to be optimistic on the eve of the Summer of Slam tour in 1990; Our major label debut record had just been released with the full power and might of CBS/Epic (soon to be Sony) Records behind us, we had a video produced by the guy who had directed the popular Roxette promos, and the label had agreed to pay us tour support so that we could tour in an RV, making the rigors of the road much lighter with a luxurious, portable dressing room and rolling extra bedroom. We were being booked by Frank Riley, one of the premier agents in the indie rock world, and we were promised a full calendar of promo events at various radio stations, record stores, and distributors across the country. Our manager, Bob, had recently hired an actual music business professional, Brenda Dunlap, who left her job managing Pat Metheny to oversee our career (sorry, Brenda!).
On the minus side, we were touring in the summer, the complete opposite of how we usually planned things, and the colleges that we had relied upon for radio promotion and crowds were out of session. Epic had been excited about the record and wanted to get it out as soon as possible instead of waiting for the autumn when the schools were back in session. But, we figured, those students had to live somewhere, and hopefully, they’d come out and see us in their hometowns (spoiler alert! they didn’t).
Another bad omen: on the eve of the record release, our radio promotion guy and chief booster at Epic, Jack Isquith, took a leave of absence to deal with a family emergency. That made us a little nervous but, at the time, we believed in the record and hoped that the songs would sell themselves.
Tomorrow, the first show of the tour at Dobbs, in Philly. I’ll be honest, I don’t remember much of that show, altho I have many fond memories of playing there on previous tours, like this one
Calculating Route... 