Femme Vanille – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the singer-songwriter, Femme Vanille, talks about some of her crazy moments from touring. You can check out the feature, after the break.

This story has so many great elements. We’ve got an old squatted hospital, a bunch of completely disconnected hippies, our somewhat chaotic drummer, and it all ends in destruction.

We were on tour doing two shows in a particular city. We stayed over at an old catholic hospital that was squatted in the 70s and is now functioning as a social/arts center with a small cinema, gallery, café, and venue. All of this is run collaboratively by the residents. It was like time had stood still since the 70s in this building. There was a communal feel to the whole thing, lots of mellow hippies in hemp t-shirts mixed with the mild aftertaste of anarchy. We got a warm welcome with a fantastic three-course vegan meal, and they gave us a tour through the humongous hospital building, ending with the proud showing of an impressive amount of weed plants on the top of the roof. So far so good!

They had renovated the back of the venue into a guest room for the artists, with bunk beds and a bathroom. The guy in charge — let’s call him Bob just for readability (I don’t want to implicate anyone) — told us they had only just finished the renovation and we were the first band to sleep in the room. Bob was so proud, as he should be, it really was a nice place. Little did we know.

The first show went fine, we played at their venue and slept like babies in their bunk beds. The second show was at a different venue. We came back in the middle of the night, accidentally set off the alarm (oops), and when we finally got to the guest room reached into our pockets for the key… No key. Shit. Shit shit shit. We looked everywhere. In the car. In the hallway. In the streets. No key.

Finally, the moment came to confess. Maybe Bob had a spare key. And if not we had already decided to just sleep in the hallway and get back to our search for the key in the morning with daylight. While I was still trying to unlock the door with a bobby pin, our drummer went to look for Bob. He found him and his companions at the café bar. “Bob, I’m so sorry. I think I lost the key.” This was a major mistake. We should’ve never let him know then that we lost the key because Bob was super drunk and super emotional. He slowly turned his back on our drummer — processing. It must have been at least five seconds of silence before he turned back and started his rant of despair. Waving his arms around he shouted there was no spare key, musicians were scum, never to be trusted, ruining his life. Tears welled up in his eyes. I’m not even exaggerating. He stormed through the venue to the guest room, where I was still sitting on a chair in front on the door fumbling with my bobby pin. As he was yelling in a broken voice “Alright I’ll just have to break down the door myself” he lifted me up, chair and all, and threw me aside. None of our pleas to him shouting “Please don’t! That really isn’t necessary! We’ll just sleep in the hallway and find the key tomorrow!” came through to him. He took a small sprint to the door and jolted his shoulder into it. Full. Force.

I don’t remember the sound of the door coming down, but I do remember pieces of the door post and chunks of wall came down with it. It was awful. Splinters and hinges lying all over the place. We did sleep in the bunk beds that night. But certainly not like babies. The next day we found the key in the lining of the car seat. So sorry Bob. So sorry.

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