Love this! They're all great (or horrible!). Don, oh do I know what you went through on that one!!
The problem often is that the person doing the hiring doesn't really know what they want (and consequently what they are getting). Here's the mini-version of some of my favourite disasters...every one of them TRUE!

Arriving at an out of town (WAY out of town) gig, only to have the bar owner ask me why I was getting a guitar out when the agent told him I was a honky tonk piano player!

Fort Coulonge Quebec. (very rural, folks) While setting up, the stripper asked me if I was with the band? When I told her that I WAS the band, she groaned (en Francais) "You mean I gotta dance to a f****n' folk singer?". After exhausting my repertoire of Jimmy Reed, John Lee Hooker, and Chuck Berry every night, I had to listen to her servicing the local lumberjacks in the room next to mine until 6am!

The Norseman Tavern in Toronto: After I had played one song, the waitress came up to the stage and asked "How long are you booked here?" I said "two weeks". She replied: "You mean I gotta listen to this crap every night?" An hour later, a fight broke out in front of me and wended it's way to the stage. The two combatants rolled around punching each other while I quickly packed up and got the hell out of there! I'm sure my waitress was pleased. By the way, these were legit high paying - agent booked gigs. Most of my fellow solo performers would have killed to get them.
In 1989 when I went to a shrink and told him that I'd had dreams about killing members of the audience, I think he thought I was overstating the case. Not a chance!

The Shoreline Hotel in Thunder Bay Ont. During the first set a homesick Irishman asked for "Danny Boy", and stuffed a twenty in the soundhole of my D-28. (while I was playing of course) Twenty minutes later he came back to the stage, with no memory that I'd done his song before. "Danny Boy", please he said (and stuffed another twenty in). Refusing locals is dangerous, so I sang it again. On my break, he found me in the washroom standing at the urinal. "Would you sing "Danny Boy"? I explained to him that I'd be busy for the next twenty seconds or so (and that I'd already sung it twice) but he proceeded to try and fill my free hand with another twenty. At the end of the night I'd sung it four more times. (the crowd loved it EVERY TIME!) Did I take the money? Damn right!

Lots of the hotel and bar gigs were fine and I met tons of great people, but I'd say about 15% were absolutely bizarre. (like the nudist camp gig, the gig where a customer died during "Green Green Grass Of Home", the gig that convinced me not to smoke dope while I was onstage, and the gig where I got hit with a purse!
It's a long story and I won't go into it here, but the reason I love Sandy and Caroline Paton (and think of them as my surrogate parents) is that they were the folks who got me out of that bizarre world for good.

Rick ('course Sandy got me INTO the bizarre and wonderful world of Mudcat)