Jesse Ruben – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

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

A friend and I were driving up to a show of mine in Burlington, VT. This was my first time playing in Burlington, so I was pretty excited. What I didn’t know was that the day before, the band I was opening for had canceled the show due to a family emergency. No one, not the band, the agent, or the venue, thought to tell me until I showed up for load in.

For some reason, the venue and I decided that even though the show was technically canceled since I was already there, we’d open the doors and see if we could get walk ups. Of course, no one showed up. Literally. I played a set for my friend, the bartender, and the security guy. For the record, I think I crushed it.

The venue, feeling bad about their mistake, decided to make it up to me by getting my friend and I really, really hammered. We drank like idiots for many hours, during which we found out that the place we were staying was no longer available to us, as there had been a power outage, or a flood, or some other terrible thing that happened to the house. We were really striking out.

So what do you do when you’re 21 and drunk in Burlington with nowhere to go? You fall sleep in your car. In a parking garage. And then when it opens at 5am, the security knocks on the window to wake you up to tell you to leave.

My show the next day was in Ithaca. We were late because we spent two hours following signs for a Dunkin Donuts, but because we were so out of it, we kept getting lost. After a few hours of driving, we were pulled over by the cops, who were convinced that we were drug dealers (in fairness, we looked terrible, and had just moved out of our college apartment, so the car was a mess). The cops brought over a drug-sniffing dog and made us remove each item from the car individually so it could be inspected. After what felt like many hours, they let us go.

The show in Ithaca that night was pretty awesome, though.

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