Fun story for ya. Odium once agreed to play a fundraiser up near Okoboji, IA. I think the name of the person that was putting it on was Jewlie Secord? We had swapped a couple of shows with her boyfriend’s band so we figured why not? We always relied on merch sales for our gas money so playing fee free was never a big deal to us. I couldn’t even tell you the charity it was for.

We arrived in timely fashion and began to walk into the venue to check the layout and crowd. When we reached the “artist entrance” we were not so much greeted by a group of other bands basically blocking our way. I stuck out my hand and introduced myself only to find that their arms remained crossed and no words came from their mouths. Very odd. We pushed our way through and went to look for Jewlie but she was nowhere to be found. Us and our road crew unloaded and started setting up to play. As began the band switch over I noticed that the majority of the crowd walked outside. I thought nothing of it as in between sets is always a good time to grab a smoke.

We began our set to a handful of kids that seemed to enjoy it. We ended our set and as we were tearing down we noticed that our merch boxes had been ransacked and there only a few items left. We had just stocked before this trip as we were heading to Minneapolis for a few shows the following day. Very disheartening.

We loaded up our gear and decided to leave after not being able to locate Jewlie or get cooperation from the other bands regarding our stolen merch. Come to find out Jewlie had lied about the charity. The charity was her. She told the other bands that she would not be able to pay them due to Odium’s “exorbitant performance fee”. The other bands were extremely pissed and not only sabotaged our sound during the performance but also helped themselves to our livelihood while we were on stage. Her lies cost us a couple of grand in income.

We did receive a few apologies from the other bands but it was a bit too late and I made sure none of them ever played Des Moines again. We never played a show without a contract from that point forward.