Dead Poet Society – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the hard rock band, Dead Poet Society, chats about one of their crazy stories from touring. You can check out the story and stream their newest single, “TOUCH”, after the break.

Probably the craziest tour story we have so far is when we were in southeast Mexico over on the Yucatan peninsula and we were pulled over by the cops. We had just finished an epic show with some of our best friends in Sputnik and were partying in the van on the way to the hotel. As the lights from the cops flashed behind us, all our Mexican friends looked at us and said: “We’re fucked”. Keep in mind we’ve been partying in the van every night between cities, and that stuff really isn’t a problem at all down there. Maybe a slap on the wrist, at the very worst. Not to mention, the guys had a habit of messing with us whenever they could. We all laughed, “Very funny you got us, let’s get out of here”. Rod (bass player of Sputnik), got serious for a moment and replied, “This city is different… this isn’t a joke”. He stared at Jack and said one thing, “chug”. If we were caught with that amount of open containers, we were for sure getting locked up – so we did just that.

The cops stopped behind us and began gathering information off of the plates. We had upwards of a dozen beers and very little time to get rid of them. Everyone was crouched down behind the seats while the cops talked to the driver (bless him for getting out to buy time). We were chugging for our lives and a few of our crew (cough, cough, JC) aren’t the greatest speed drinkers, so people were jumping in to finish half empty PBRs whenever someone would slow down for a breath. It was really quite a beautiful show of teamwork; all for one and one for all sort of thing.

At this point, we were stuffing the empty cans in anything we could find, fast food cups, chip bags, between the seats, garbage bags full of our sweaty stage clothes, anything. The urgency in the air was thicker than the stink of beer and sweaty musicians, and time felt like it was passing all too fast. We finished in the nick of time and as the last beer can found its way into a big mac wrapper, the cops got to the window and instructed everyone to get out of the van. They searched every nook and cranny of the van, except the trash that stashed the evidence of our alcoholic marathon.

If you’ve ever been pulled over in Mexico – it’s not fun. At first, three cops had searched the van, and within a few minutes, about a dozen others showed up (all with loaded assault rifles), and continued the search. They had us up against the wall while they went through our luggage, and it’s safe to say we were shaking in our f**cking pants. After an hour of thorough searching, Nick and JU’s exploding bladders couldn’t take anymore. After another twenty minutes of begging in semi-coherent broken Spanish, they finally convinced an officer to escort them behind some trees to relieve the gallons of fluid inside of them. The Sputnik boys started chatting with the cops and tensions started to ease a little bit (not too much though, we were still up against a wall with guns everywhere). A last dig through the guitar cases, a shrug from the main officer, and we were free. We piled back in the van and immediately broke into howls of nervous laughter. Shaken but relieved, we went back to the hotel and continued the party.

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