Chris Cron – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the pop artist, Chris Cron, talks about some of his crazy moments from touring. You can check out the feature, after the break.

There’s a rumble in Applebee’s Parking Lot tonight!

Ten years ago, my old band put out our first release for a major record label and we gleefully got in to the van to go on tour supporting a band who we thought still had a great draw. They had a massive hit with a pretty whiny song about teenage angst and listening to heavy metal that came out just as I was graduating high school. It had been a minute since anyone had heard anything new from this band but surely, we thought, they still had a decent draw. WRONG! Apparently, somewhere in the void between 2000 and 2006, this band had managed to piss off their label, get dropped and burn bridges with just about everyone and we were the lucky suckers who got to head out on the road with them.

We showed up to the first date, somewhere in the pacific northwest, only to have our dreams crushed and our morale destroyed by playing to a packed house of five people! Now don’t get me wrong, I will gladly sing my face off for five people, even one person, but to sell 5 million copies of your single worldwide and then draw FIVE PEOPLE!?!? In El Paso, there was one brave soul who came to the show. I remember the lead singer (let’s call him Dick) of this band playing their hit song, sitting across from her on folding chairs as the rest of us slammed our heads repeatedly against the wall. The rest of the tour, we pleaded with our booking agent to either end our lives or end the tour. He wouldn’t comply with either request and continually told us that we were making a good name for ourselves with promoters and that we had an obligation to finish the remaining dates.

In Houston, as if things couldn’t get any worse, they did. The promoter of the show gave our guarantee of $125 to our tour manager as we packed up. Dick comes up, like a playground bully asking for lunch money, ordered our tour manager to fork over the guarantee because his band didn’t get paid. Our TM’s refusal suddenly made us public enemy number one in the eyes of this guy, who stormed off calling us all “scumbags”.

The next day was Halloween and we were to have a day off in New Orleans. While on the road, our bass player, who had understandably had too much to drink the night before sits up and tells us all that he thinks he forgot his bass at the venue in Houston. After a few rounds of calls are made it is discovered that indeed he had and that the headliner had picked up the bass guitar and were now holding it for ransom. $125 for one Fender P-Bass. If they were smart, they would’ve just sold the bass and made at least three times that much.

Our drummer made an attempt to breach the Berlin wall by calling up the female backup singer, who was actually a very sweet girl, and asking how we could get the bass back. During the conversation, she’s interrupted by Dick who shouts into the phone, “no one in my band is going to talk to anyone in your band until we get our money!” Click. He hung up. A second, more direct attempt is made by our guitarist who called Dick directly. He was as rational and polite as he could be, but like any playground bully, Dick didn’t understand how to have adult conversations and proceeded to throw a tantrum and verbally flip our guitarist the bird. In a rage like I’ve never seen before or after, our guitarist calls back and lays into Dick much like Ralphie did to the bully in The Christmas Story, only through the phone. That was it, World War III had just begun.

We received a call from one of the other bands saying that they while Dick was storming around screaming, they had grabbed the bass and were going to meet us in an Applebee’s parking lot to get it to us. What great news! Disaster averted! We could easily pick up the bass and then lay low for a couple of days until the next show.

As we were pulling into the parking lot of Applebee’s, the same band called us frantically saying “Dick grabbed the bass back and is on his way to Applebee’s!”. It was too late. We pulled into a parking spot and see Dick and his band headed towards us in their converted Dodge Van. He slammed on the breaks, jumps out of the van screaming, and everyone gets ready to fight. The Applebee’s patrons all have their faces pressed up against the glass watching. Somehow we managed to grab the bass back and jump back in the van just as Dick goes into martial arts mode. Yes, he knew karate. I floored the gas and we sped out of the parking lot just in time to see the cops pull in behind us and surround Dick and his band.

We did end up finishing the tour, but Dick never spoke to us again. A few days after we got home, our booking agent informed us that Dick and his band had actually received their guarantee for that night in Houston, it was just mailed to them late.

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