That's assault, right?

I don't have a great memory. I tend to not really register things that I don't think I'll need to remember, and I block out things I don't want to remember. It's part of the reason I learned to write everything down. And it also must be how, when I wrote my last blog, I forgot the worst heckle we ever experienced.

It was in Dallas. We were headlining a long list of bands scheduled to play a bar in Deep Ellum. There was some kind of zombie walk going on in that part of town. For the uninitiated, that's where people dress up like zombies and then do some kind of 5k or 10k. I'm not sure if it was for charity or what, but who cares? People are dressed like zombies!

I don't see the appeal.

The bar was new, so they had scheduled an all-day lineup of bands to generate interest. At that time, we'd never played Deep Ellum, or even Dallas, so we didn't have any fans there, but we figured there'd be a built-in crowd.

We got there several hours early. We loaded in our gear and found some couches toward the back, where Joe promptly fell asleep, and I parked myself with my cell phone and earplugs to kill time (it was loud, okay?). Johnny chatted up the bar staff and watched the other bands. Nothing out of the ordinary.

Until...

The band two slots before us took the stage. Two girls (messy). A backlined drum from another band. A bass. And more attitude than anyone has a right to. This had better be good.

I won't do them the dignity of telling their name, but this is what I will tell you: it was not good. In fact, it was bad to the point of being fetid. In deference to just how truly putrid it was, let's call this "band" The Stinks. The Stinks *tried* to start Seven Army Nation. They tried.

(Seven Nation Army - the right way.)

The club let them butcher their way through it. Then they started something else. I couldn't tell you what it was, but it involved some sort of off-key screeching that was so bad Joe actually woke from his sleep with an expression of confused agony.

He wasn't alone. The club couldn't take it and the manager pulled the plug on them halfway through their song. He cut their sound and put on DJ music and told them to get off the stage. The Stinks didn't like that.

They shouted, refused to get off stage, threw the borrowed drum down on to the cement floor and just generally acted like entitled amateur punks. It wasn't pretty.

So, you're probably thinking, "I thought this was a story about you guys getting heckled." I'm getting there.

The Stinks were apparently friends with the band who came on after them (whose drum they threw to the floor), so they eventually ceded the stage to them and let them play. But when that band cleared out, and some band from Austin they didn't know began to set up, well, all bets were off.

This might be an actual photo taken with one of our phones that night.

Somehow, in their enraged, addled minds, The Stinks blamed us for them getting thrown off the stage. The fact that we had no authority to do that, or even any relationship with the management (who DID throw them out) to try and convince the manager to do that, seemed to escape them. It was completely mental, but that's what they got in their heads, so they decided that the best revenge would be to ruin our set. So, that's what they did.

They had been tossed out of the club by the time our set came up, but they kept running past the door guy long enough to run up to the stage and scream at us while we tried to set up. Johnny finally lost his temper and pulled his fist back like he was going to hit one of the girls. He wasn't - we were on an elevated stage and she was on the floor, so the gesture didn't even make sense - he was just trying to scare her off, but a guy who turned out to be her brother came running up and then tried to fight with him. So the club threw them all out once again.

By the time we started our set, the club was completely empty. We were literally playing to the bartenders. We started playing, thinking some people would come in, and when no one did, we finally realized that the psycho bitches were standing outside the club doors, screaming at anyone who walked by. People were crossing the street to avoid them.

We soldiered on, so I guess they decided they needed to step things up if they were going to break us. So one of them ran in, lifted her shirt and shook her ample (and very loose) boobs at us.

Yes. She did. I'm not sure what she was going for with that, but it definitely felt like an assault, not a gift. It was all I could do at that point to keep going, but we refused to be beaten.

Eventually, a friend of Joe's braved the abuse and came in, and we played to him - and him alone - for the rest of our set. He was a beacon of kindness in a sea of misery.

We finally finished and got the hell out of there as fast as possible. It was undeniably one of the worst nights of our career.

But we got a story. So, there's that.