When a band agrees to play a show, there is a handshake agreement (or sometimes a formal contract for larger acts), that the band will show up and play and the promoter will pay them.
That's not how things went down this past Saturday at the Savannah Dollhouse in Savannah, GA for eight of the bands playing the show, including Eyehategod, Ringworm and Enabler.
The promoter, Floyd Lionel, who sometimes operates under the moniker Black Southern Death Cult left the show with all the proceeds before paying any of the bands. After an outcry of people calling bullshit on this shady promoter, he took to the Savannah Metal-Punx Facebook page to offer an explanation:
“First apologies all around for Saturday not making excuses but I suffer from Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) what you witnessed Saturday night was a person having a full blown mental breakdown due to a lot of undue stress from what was already a very long and stressful day, My departure was not based upon any attempt to avoid responsibilities or as some corners have said ‘run off with band money.’ But to prevent a situation that could have quite easily deteriorated into a far worse harmful situation for myself and others around me. Again apologies to all whom were directly adversely affected by my breakdown.”
It seems like a strange excuse to use for bailing on the show. He could've at least left the money with somebody else or made sure the bands got paid before he left. After this story broke on other sites, two other bands who played the event came forward and said they have been paid by Lionel.
As of this writing, Eyehategod, Ringworm and Enabler have still not been paid.
Let this be a warning: don't accept shows from this shady promoter.
Update: MetalSucks has since updated their original story noting that a rep for Ringworm, one of the bands on the show, noted that they were just paid via PayPal by the promoter on the day of this post's writing, shortly after we published this post. The rep also noted that the promoter “bolted [the show] without telling anyone, took down most of his social media pages, his phone was off, etc." leading us to believe that if this story hadn't gone public, nobody would've gotten paid.
[via MetalSucks]
