Stories From The Road: Butt Dialing The Police

Okay, this particular story is a bit more recent. As in, like, 2 weeks ago recent. The band was playing at a wedding rehearsal (about 2 hours from my home) and it was on the second floor of the building. To get to the second floor, we had to load all of our equipment inside the building and then catch the elevator to go to the second floor. Honestly, it’s a lot more work than it sounds but it’s a lot better than stairs.

Just a quick side note, when you play weddings or wedding rehearsals, it’s a lot of hurry up and wait. Like, you hurry up to load in, set up, and sound check, and then you wait for everybody to get there and eat so you can play. In most cases, nothing ever happens on time. You could be scheduled to play at 7pm and not end up playing until about 8:30pm. I have learned to always bring something to do and to bring a phone charger.

Well, anyway, it was a great show. Everybody seemed to have fun, the family fed us along with all of their guests (which means I visited the food tables more than once), it was great. We ended up playing a little longer than originally anticipated and then we started breaking down. Since we had brought everything up on the elevator, guess what. We had to take it all back down.

Some of the workers with the catering company helped us out by bringing a shopping cart and a couple of other various items to help us take things down. I ran over to the shopping cart and tried to figure out the puzzle to fitting the majority of my equipment in it so that I wouldn’t have to make as many trips (you know, like carrying all of the bags of groceries at once because you actually can’t make two trips). After a few minutes of trial and error, I fit most of my stuff into the cart, which included: both guitars, mic stand, my amp, my rug, and my tool box. All that was left was my clothes bag, amp stand, and guitar stand.

I took everything in the cart to my truck and then brought the cart back upstairs. This time I left the cart and I grabbed what was left and went BACK down to my truck. When you’re breaking down, you ALWAYS need to do a dummy check. Or, in our case, have multiple people do a dummy check. Because you don’t want to leave anything on the floor that you will need at your next show. Well, I was going back up to the second floor to do a dummy check. I looked; nothing there. Good. Okay.

Our saxophonist and drummer had just grabbed a couple of things and were heading down too so I hopped in the elevator with them. We were all just talking a little about the show and I was leaning against the wall. Then, I leaned to the right and my butt hit a button and all of a sudden there was a high-pitched siren sound. It sounded like a police siren kind of. Then it made a sound that was like the line was busy on a phone. I was freaking out! I was screaming, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, I didn’t mean to, I butt dialed!”

Well, about that time, the elevator came to the bottom floor and I got out of there because I wasn’t really sure what was going to happen. I may or may not have hidden but I covered it up by saying that I was getting some water from the water fountain. I mean, I was getting water. But it was conveniently located around the corner away from everybody else.

After I caught my breath and decided I wasn’t going to get arrested that night, I walked outside and basically just busted out laughing. Since everybody was looking at me like I was absolutely insane, I told them that I butt dialed the police and explained how it happened.

Once we all got our breath, our drummer came up to me and says, “yeah, I had to call the police off.”

“Umm… what? For Real?” I thought he was joking.

“Yeah, for real! The phone started ringing and I had to explain to them that it was a mistake.”

Honestly, I’m not entirely sure what I thought was going to happen after I had ran out of the elevator. But in any event, I’m glad the police did not come. Because how was I going to explain to them that I butt dialed them and wasted their time?? Like, sorry, fam, I didn’t mean to! Just… my butt… it hit the button…

Well, I guess even if you butt dial the police like I did, I don’t know what to tell you other than to just keep playing.

Brittany