Bear Hands – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, Dylan Rau of the alternative band, Bear Hands, talks about some of their crazy moments from touring. You can check out the feature, after the break.

Playing in Chicago has always resulted in fairly wild antics and intoxication for some reason. There is this hotel called City Suites that I think a lot of bands stay in (at least we always did) and this story takes place there. We were on tour opening for a British band and I can’t exactly recall if they were letting us crash in their rooms or if we had our own rooms. I didn’t stay up particularly late or get super fucked up or anything that night, but when I woke up the next morning there was definitely a fun scene playing out.

This photographer who was traveling with the headliner had brought back this woman to the hotel. Either she had fallen in the street or gotten a nose bleed, but either way, she had sprayed a bunch of blood all over one of the two beds in our guitar player Ted’s room. And she managed to take a couple things on the way out. After she left Ted’s shoes and the photographer’s jacket were gone. In Chicago in the dead of winter. The photographer missed his ride with his employers, the headlining band (which is generally frowned upon), and I remember we had this tiny black puffy jacket that belonged to one of our ex-girlfriends that the dude squeezed on when he got in our van to go to Milwaukee or Minneapolis or whatever because he was freezing! And he had mad blood all over his white t-shirt and just looked generally deranged.

Apparently, the woman was married to some famous screenwriter too, so that made it extra fun. Mostly I remember him sitting in one of the back benches of the van shaking and muttering to himself that he had to “get it together,” but quickly reneging on that promise upon arrival at the day’s venue. Good dude, tho!

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(Photo credit: Jon Chu)