My wife Jules has a yoga student here in Middlebury, VT, named Jan. Jan's husband is Leroy Preston, who is the co-founder and former drummer/guitarist and singer/songwriter for the western swing band Asleep at the Wheel. Jan and Leroy have become friends of ours, and they also shop at the Middlebury Co-op, where I work part-time. Yesterday when Leroy was in the store, he told me a crazy story about when his band was returning from a concert tour in Canada, and their tour bus was searched by Canadian border agents. The agents found traces of marijuana, which Leroy swears didn't belong to anyone in the band, and the agents demanded that everyone in the band sign a form saying they were "bad people" (Leroy's words) and agree never to return to Canada.
None of the band members signed the form.Fast forward to Nashville's Grand Ole Opry, which had booked the band for a concert a few days later. At the time, the Opry didn't allow saxophonists to perform on stage for some reason (maybe they overpowered stringed instruments and vocalists?), and Asleep at the Wheel happened to have...a saxophonist. When the Opry found out about this, they gave the band an ultimatum: perform without the saxophone, or forfeit the show.
The band chose to forfeit the show.
The next morning, the Nashville paper published a story about the incident that completely ignored the saxophone snafu and claimed instead that it had been the result of the band's, um, big pot bust in Canada.
Epilogue: Asleep at the Wheel, which had performed in virtually every other major concert hall in the U.S., never got to perform at the Grand Ole Opry...until their 50th anniversary tour in 2021. You can watch a video of that performance on YouTube.
Complete with saxophone.
Asleep at the Wheel's performance starts at 25:48 in this video. Leroy is the white-haired, bespectacled rhythm guitarist/singer.
https://fb.watch/jHNxj6R1u7/
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| Leroy Preston |
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