Gleneagle – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the alternative country band, Gleneagle, talk about one of their crazy moments from touring. You can check out the feature, after the break.

When someone asks us what our craziest tour story is, one event immediately comes to mind–a quick brush with death we had in Vancouver, British Columbia that resulted in a completely totaled trailer, some damaged gear, and several frantic phone calls home.

The day started like any other on tour–half the band waking up in our van, and the other half waking up on the floor of our good friend’s basement suite, slightly hungover and very tired from our show the night before. It was a day off, so we had time to get breakfast and then hopefully get some laundry done before hitting the road again. Vancouver is one of our favorite places to play, and a great city to have a day off in, mainly because of a little, dive­y gem of a restaurant called “Bon’s Off Broadway,” that serves cheap pitchers of beer, and all day breakfast for only $2.95. It’s a touring band’s dream come true, really.

On this fateful day, though, we decided to park a block away from Bon’s, on Nanaimo street, which runs adjacent to the restaurant. It was a busy, 4 lane street, but easy access parking is usually hard to find for a 12 passenger van with a trailer, so we pulled off the road, and parked, and got ready to fill ourselves with greasy hash browns and eggs. After parking, the trailer and back door van were double checked, as always, to ensure that they were locked, but as some of us inspected the van and trailer, and the rest stood in the grass next to the van, an oncoming car flew across the wrong lane of traffic, off the road, and smashed into our trailer. This tore the trailer open and pushed it up onto the sidewalk, inches away from some of us. The car then wrapped itself around a lamp post. Broken glass, pieces of tire, and scraps of metal covered the street, and people quickly began pulling off the road to make sure everyone was unhurt. Our first instinct was to make sure that the driver of the car and his passenger were okay­ they were shaken, but thankfully there were no injuries. The next thought was to check on the gear in the trailer. Some things were damaged, but thankfully nothing overly important was wrecked beyond repair.

In that moment, it looked as if tour was over early, but after a few phone calls home, we had as much gear from the trailer packed into the van, and the rest packed into my dad’s truck, who left immediately after we called him and drove for six hours to come help us out. We drove back to Kamloops, our home city, about 4 hours from Vancouver, regrouped and cleaned up, dropped off any gear that absolutely wasn’t essential, repacked the van with a lighter load and got back on the road. We were even able to make it to our show the next day, too.

Moral of the story­ always ensure your gear, don’t park your trailer on busy streets if that can be avoided, parents are the best, and if you’re going through Vancouver, stop at Bon’s for some cheap all­day breakfast food. Just don’t park on Nanaimo Street.

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