Kid Politics – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, Kelby Dover of the pop band, Kid Politics, talks about some of their crazy moments from touring. You can check out the feature, after the break.

It was our second show ever and we were stoked. Probably more so because it was in Nashville, TN (our hometown) and our first show in Raleigh, NC could not have went better. All of our friends were coming to see the hard work we’ve been putting in. I remember pulling up in the loading zone an hour or so before our set was supposed to start and feeling invincible. After we parked the car together, we walked what felt like a half mile to the venue, all the while talking about how great we were going to be that night. We were going to make everyone in the room remember our name – Kid Politics.

We are a pop trio with drums, bass, and I play keys half the time and sometimes just stand up front and sing and be the wild frontman that I’m becoming known as (and don’t hate haha). We honestly rely pretty heavily on our tracks to make sure our sound is full, and we were using floor wedges that night, so only Michael, the drummer, would be able to hear the click. We were totally good with this as we’ve rehearsed it a million times, but then the undeniable happened. After we had already set all our gear up and even sound checked Diego’s bass, we realized we left one cable at home. It was the cable that allowed Michael to have click run to his in-ears. We realized immediately that we had never run the set without the backing tracks and we had to pull the plug on the show. There was nothing we could do.

With our banner set up with the name ‘Kid Politics’ so big already on the stage, Michael and Diego tore it down in front of everyone while I embarrassingly approached the promotor to tell her we couldn’t play. I went from feeling invincible to the biggest loser in Nashville. Very thankfully she understood and did not make our failure a problem at all. We quickly tore down the entire stage and then remembered that our car was parked a half mile away. Instead of one of us going to get the car while the others waited with our gear and explain to our friends why they wasted their time coming out, we even more embarrassingly grabbed all of our gear with our bare hands and carried it down the streets of Nashville. We did this for two reasons: 1) to get out of the venue as quickly as possible, and 2) to never forget that we set up all our gear for a show just to tear it down in front of everyone because we forgot ONE cable.

We talked about me playing the set by myself on keys and borrowing a guitar and making it more acoustic-y, but we decided we wanted our first show in Nashville to be right. So we decided to wait until our next show, which was great. And, with the help of our manager, our next show in Nashville was a banger of sorts. Immediately after the show, we landed on the roster of super agency William Morris Endeavor (WME). We have really big hopes and we’ve earned most of that invincible feeling back, but wherever our journey goes, we will never forget carrying our gear through Music City with our heads held low.

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