S*D With Jimmy's Chicken Shack in Connecticut

In mid-June, we got an email from the Webster Theatre (a mass email to local bands) and it said that the Jimmie's Chicken Shack show had opening spots on it. So we asked to be on and they added us. Two weeks later we got about 40 presale tickets in the mail to sell, along with a letter that said if we sell less than 20, we might not be able to play.
This bummed us out, as we didn't know the show had this stipulation on it when we signed up. The summer was increasingly crazy, and we couldn't really sell the tickets. Truthfully, we emailed a little over 300 people around the CT area on myspace about the show (starting with people on our friends' list) but we really haven't played in CT in a few years (and never anywhere close to the Webster). We got a smattering of responses, but no one likes to buy presale tickets to a show unless it's going to sell out.
Jimmie's Chicken Shack is a band who had a huge huge single in 1999 with their song "Do Right". The album sold over 100,000 copies. We thought the show would be big.
So we decided to go to CT early on the day of the show and try to meet people in the mall and sell tickets. We met one girl who loved Jimmie's Chicken Shack and she bought two. We had sold tickets like this four year previous (and we sold 50!) over the course of about three visits to CT. Today, no one was buying. Alot of people were interested, and we got alot of Friend Adds on myspace after, but by the time the show rolled around, we had sold only the 2 tickets. The Webster was really cool about it, and didn't mind.
We showed up at 5 (when we were supposed to) along with Jimmie's Chicken Shack. The next band showed up at 6 when the doors opened, and then one band showed up about 10 minutes before we played.
We found out on the day of the show that Jimmie's Chicken Shack was actually playing the Webster Underground (The Webster is a venue that holds - I'm guessing - about 1200 people, the Webster Underground is in the same building - and holds around 200 people). This is great for when a bigger band like Reel Big Fish comes to the Webster, and a smaller local ska band (like our pals in Tip The Van) can play the Webster Underground during the night, so ska kids who are bored while the main bands are doing set up can wander into the next room and check out some local stuff.
So we played to about 18 people, half being bands. Unfortunately, the night before, I had gotten about 45 minutes of sleep, and was pretty retardedly dead. So Sousa and I drove back early. Tom stayed and assured us that Jimmie's Chicken Shack played really well, but that no one else really showed up, and we didn't get any money. It cost us about $40 to drive there and back.
But you know what? Jimmie's Chicken Shack were super nice to us, and they are a great, talented band. "Do Right" is such a great single, and I still listen to it all the time.
They asked Tom and Christian to go to the strip club with them afterwards. Tom told them he was uninterested, but I don't think he told them that he was gay.
- Chuck Staton
SET LIST:
Smile
Nothing's Left
I'm Crazy
Tom's Not
Explode RI
VBW Song
Ataxia