June 16, 1974 Denver Coliseum, Denver, CO

Recollection:

Frank Beard: I'll give you a really sappy story. I call this is my "crying" story. It happened around 1976, and we were just starting to make it. Tres Hombres was out and, Le (sic) Grange, the single, was out. We had done about three or four opening tours all across the United States, and we'd sold a million copies for the first time. We were on our first headline tour, and doing really well. We were playing "A" markets and "A" halls and selling them out, so we knew that we were about to really break. On a day off in Houston, Billy was trying to open a bottle of Evian and cut his middle knuckle on his left hand fairly deeply. He had about eight stitches. The next night, we had to play at a show in Denver, one of our first breakout cities. Some cities took to us quicker than others and Denver was one of those cities - it was like our third or fourth home; you know, Houston, Dallas, Oklahoma City and Denver.

We're in the dressing room, and all bummed out because of Billy's middle finger of his left hand. We thought we'd have to cancel but Billy said, "no, no, no let me figure this out." And he figured out that he could do a lot of slide if he moved the slide bar from his ring finger to his middle finger. The promoter went out and made an announcement about what had happened. He said that we were going to try to play but if we couldn't make it through the set, we would come back and play at another time for free. When the curtains opened, everyone was standing and every cigarette lighter was lit! I almost cried because the crowd was so cool. The show went over really well. The arena had a deal that if you didn't like the show,you could return your ticket stub in at the end of the night for a refund. I think they had less than 10 refunds for that show. That was a really touching moment for me.