Almost On The Road with Toto

After the Pat Travers date, it seemed like all I had to do was pick up the phone and call any club in Connecticut, and we would instantly get a booking there..and often, clubs would adjust their calendars to get us in quickly  because wherever we did play, we drew huge crowds, and club owners made a lot of money. We were good for their business...and they were good for ours. The only problem was that a lot of the venues available to us were just too small to accomodate our gear....and the crowds we were drawing. There were a few that were big enough though, and those were the ones we concentrated on. One gig that we didn't sell out, was a date at Toad's Place, the premier music club in New Haven. We were there for the first time, and it was a Wednesday night on short notice, without a lot of advance promotion. We drew a respectable crowd for the middle of the week...especially with only a couple of days of limited advertising, but what we found out later on  was that we were competing with a concert at a nearby college featuring a great new band "Toto", which had a huge hit on the air at that time.."Hold The Line"...their debut record. As we started our second set, all the guys from Toto walked into the club, and listened intently to our entire set. When we finished...Jeff Porcaro who was originally from Hartford, and Steve Luthaker, Toto's guitarist came up to talk.  They were very impressed with the band. We exchanged numbers, because they wanted us to be the opening act for their upcoming national tour, which was promoting their first album on Columbia Records. I couldn't believe the luck...what were the odds of a band like that being in the same club we were playing in New Haven on a Wednesday night? I remember having mental images of huge arenas as I went to sleep that night. Two days later, I got a call from Jeff, telling me that although he had done everything he could to make it happen, Columbia Records, and Toto's management had vetoed the idea of using us. They felt that we were too unknown nationally...and wouldn't be able to help fill the arenas by selling tickets outside of Conn. Toto was still trying to establish themselves as a band too, because they were doing the same thing we were...bucking the "conventional" thinking. They were all studio players...who people in the business didn't think could "pull it off" in live performance.That ended up being a groundless fear...but I couldn't say anything except..."thanks for trying"...and felt very disappointed as I hung up the phone.