Sacketts Night Club, Radford Va, The Shotgun Band

Back in the mid 1980's I played electric bass in a band called the Shotgun Band. We were based out of North Wilkesboro NC. The members of the band were Bruce Evans, Mike Beeson, Keith Hamlin and my self Keith Hall. One of the many interesting places that we performed at was called Sacketts in Radford Virginia. Its motto was the New River Valley's #1 Hotspot and truly it was. Radford was a college town and Sacketts was the place where many would go to hear some of the area's top bands perform. There was bands like Streetfeet, January Rose, Cimmaron, Blackwater, Southern Cross and of course Shotgun. I have performed a lot in my day and I have never saw so much beer consumed in one place in my life. When the night was over I never saw so many long neck Budweiser's lined around the dance floor one right after the other and in the restrooms there were about 50 or more in each stall on the tanks of the toilets. We would leave from North Carolina and travel our two hour drive to Radford Va and from the first time that we went there they fed the band member's real well. There was a restaurant attached to the night club called the Stationhouse Restaurant serving Mexican Food and

some of the best shrimp and prime rib that I have ever tasted. I had to stop eating the shrimp however because after peeling all of those shrimp and playing the bass the smell got kind of fishy on those strings. We opened one weekend with the national recording artist Ozark Mountain Daredevils. They brought their instruments and sound man and used our sound system. What I can remember was that while Ozark was playing some drunk was trying to give their sound man a beer and he ended up spilling it into our sound board and the sound kept going on and off the rest of the night. The sound system worked good on Saturday night after it had dried up and never gave any more problems. One weekend we left North Carolina for Radford in the Shotgun mobile which was a Charles Chip panel truck converted to carrying our sound system and all of the band and that particular weekend we hit a terrible snowstorm going up Interstate 81. The Shotgun mobile at first didn't have a good heater so with Bruce's ingenuity he used a kerosene heater inside that moving vehicle and I don't know why it didn't catch on fire or turn over but it didn't. You have to know Bruce not only was a lead singer and guitarist he was also a good mechanic. Later he solved the heater problem and hooked up a heater that was used under a school bus seat and we then had plenty of heat. We had a pretty good crowd that night with all of the snow but we were forced to get a room in Christiansburg Va and stayed there to perform again on Saturday night. In between the band's sets they had a DJ and one of the most liked songs at that particular club was Mony Mony, Billy Idol's version. Shotgun decided to learn Mony Mony and perform it at all the other clubs that we performed at. It was a good choice to get the crowd hopping. It seemed that every other band in the Carolina's began to perform Mony Mony and to think it was Shotgun who brought it back to the Carolina's from Sacketts. We got our foot in the door at performing at Sacketts because the owner's fired a band for a New Year's performance and they ask us to come at the last minute and that was our start in Virginia. They didn't mind giving you a fair pay at Sacketts because they had the place full every time the doors were opened. I am writing this hoping some of you can remember Sacketts in Radford Virginia even though it was 27 years ago to me it seems just a few years ago.