Abraskadabra – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the ska band, Abraskadabra, talks about some of their crazy moments from touring. You can check out the feature, after the break.

The Toilet’s Tale

In 2014 we were doing our first full month US Tour and in the middle of it we had a show to play in Austin, Texas. As usual for a touring band, we made contact with some locals before we went to the US and they let us sleep on their floor for 2 days. At that time our trumpet player (JP) used to have some intestinal disturbances and could stay more than a week without going to the bathroom (in 28 days on tour he only went twice) and on the second day in Austin he decided it was time to do that, what a bad decision.

The house’s bathroom had a very delicate discharge system, and considering the fact that his belly was two size bigger than normal and he was about to give birth to his poop, the expected happened: the feces was about to leak from the toilet and it was one the most disgusting image I have had in my life. At the same time he went out in the garden, where all of us were talking to the guys that lived there and smoking some cigarettes, then stood sweating and whispered to me, “Hey, I need you to help me, please”. I didn’t know what was going on but I went and my first brilliant idea was trying to use the plunge but the thing only got worse, now there were feces on the floor and the water was starting to flow freely inside the bathroom. We then ran back to the garden, trying to keep calm and pretending everything was fine, and we called our trombone player, the most ingenious guy we know. At the moment we alerted him, he had already jumped in the first tree he saw and took a branch, again, trying to keep calm and pretending everything was fine. We came back to the bathroom, he started to stir that branch inside the toilet, water coming down from all over the place, then we tried to push the discharge and nothing, tried again and nothing. We couldn’t do anything, really, actually, the only thing we could do was to clean the bathroom floor, put some caustic soda we found in the basement, and pray for that shit to go down, literally.

It was time to go to the show, JP had the brilliant idea of leaving some money with a letter, apologizing and saying he was leaving some money to help with the plumbing service, and I bet you there was more than 2 pounds of shit floating in that bathroom. We then got home again, slept, and on the other day when our tour manager came back from the bathroom he said the toilet somehow was fixed, we couldn’t believe that. When we were about to leave, we said goodbye to everybody with that half-hearted smile and grabbed our bags, JP was then passing through the kitchen table to go to the van and found the money and the letter at the same spot he had left. It was time to go so he took the money back, threw away the letter and got in the van. JP, you’re a genius.

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