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And the owner said, the Sons Of The Pioneers are moving up to the Shepherd Of The Hills,
so we have an opening here. Do you guys want to do a show? And we said, well, would you
back us on it? And he said I'll back you, I'll pay your salaries, we'll give you a marketing
budget, and then I'll keep all the ticket sales. So we worked out an agreement and we
opened in, I believe it was March 2004, and we did a week, and then it was payday. So
I called him up and said, hey, it's payday. And he said, well, I don't have any money.
And I was like, what? I don't have any money. Well you said you did. Well I don't. What
we found out was, he hadn't really made any payments on the theater to the bank since
he owned it, and they were foreclosing, and he used us as an excuse to not lose the theater.
To buy a little more time.
And I knew this wasn't going to work, so I said, either we close up after one week and
have egg on our faces, or we make this work, and so I said, let us lease this theater from
you and then we'll buy it. And I had no idea how we were going to buy it, but I said, so
he said, yeah, I have to sell it, I'd love to do that.
So for the next year we leased it. Dave and I worked for nothing, we paid our staff, we
paid all the bills, and we made it through that first year. And we were able to finagle
things enough to, then the next year take over the ownership of the theater and 2013
will be our tenth year doing the Hamner Barber show together here at this theater.