Apples in Stereo Encountered a Psycho Venue Owner

Eric Allen of Apples in Stereo: “The owner was a young guy, and any request (“Do you have any water?,” etc.) was considered a chore. Our contract included a meal, which he dangled like flakes over a fish tank. We were broke-ass musicians who needed that dinner. He finally fed us a crockpot of mediocre gumbo, served in tiny styrofoam bowls. We had to keep asking for more, because you would have needed at least six bowls to make a meal. We felt like Oliver Twist begging for porridge. He seemed exasperated that we wanted more than the thimbleful he had given us.

“He also had his mom’s homemade chocolate chip cookies for dessert. He said they were special and tasted the best, but he wouldn’t serve them until we played. He wanted to watch me eat them and gush about how great his mom’s cookies were. It gave me the creeps. I figured he was just mental, or the cookie was full of poison or something worse. Like the gumbo, it was average, and I’m not sure why we had to grovel for food.
“By the time we left, I was convinced that his mother was a skeleton in a rocking chair upstairs and that he had made the gumbo and cookies.”

Editor’s Note: The Denver Bootleg is a series chronicling the stories of local bands by longtime Denver cartoonist Karl Christian Krumpholz. Visit Krumpholz’s website to see more of his work.