Love Ghost – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the emo rap band, Love Ghost, shares one of their stories from being on the road. You can check out the story, after the break.

High Schooler Seniors go to prom, well most high schooler seniors do. On my Prom night, I was 3500 miles away, wandering the streets of Ecuador at Midnight. Here’s how it happened.

We were a band that had gained some traction but had little to no international following. Inspired by our work on Skid Row (before the pandemic we had organized food and clothing drives which we handed out to our homeless neighbors monthly), a man named Geoff Holiday hooked us up with a slot at an Ecuadorian festival called “FestivalFFF”. We had no idea what to expect, we were just so grateful for the opportunity.

Getting to the festival was met with some turbulence, literally. We flew from LA to Mexico City, then we flew from Mexico City to Quito. Our first flight was normal, but when we boarded the second flight, there was a 1-hour hold-up, before we could take off… the reason being, the pilot was missing! As the flight attendants called the airport frantically, my anxiety grew and grew. After waiting, a man arrived, who had two arm casts, two leg casts, a neck brace, and a black eye, he waddled in and his injured posture resembled that of a gingerbread man. He then announced to the plane in Spanish (which I speak enough to understand) “Don’t worry everyone, I am the pilot and I am here.” I thought “WHAT?? This guy is the pilot?? He looks like he literally got into a plane crash 2 hours ago”… The flight was… bumpy, to say the least, but we survived and got to Ecuador in one piece!! However, our drummer Samson had got some serious food poisoning and ended up locked in his room, violently ill for the better part of three days.

On the day of the festival, Festivalfff sent a driver to pick us and up and take us to the event. Our drummer was well enough at this point to play (though he carried a bucket with him just in case). Once we got to the festival, we saw a small, but incredibly nice stage in a parking lot. We were more than ecstatic to play on that stage and started unloading our gear. We did not get far when a festival aide came up and said “What are you unloading here?” You guys are playing at the main stage.” Confused, we put our equipment back in the van, which then drove us over a hill to reveal a Coachella-sized stage on an empty field. We were amazed. Soundcheck went great, and we couldn’t wait to play the actual show.

After waiting in the festival tent for a few hours with other bands and journalists, it started to rain, it started to rain hard. It looked like the beginning of a storm. I honestly thought they were going to have to cancel the remainder of the festival. As we took the stage for our set, it was pouring rain, and understandably, there were less than 100 people in the humongous field. We started playing our first song, and miraculously, the rain stopped and the clouds parted (I’m not making this up.) Then, like a tsunami, thousands of people came running over the hill to watch us play. It’s by far the biggest crowd we ever played to, I actually was tearful on stage. The set went great, and once it was time for us to stop, the crowd went bananas. We were packing up, and in unison, thousands of Ecuadorians chanted “Love Ghost! Love Ghost” Then Geoff jumped on the stage and said, “Who wants to hear one more song?” Even though our time slot was done we were allowed to do an encore because the festival thought a riot was going to break out if we stopped. It was an amazing experience.

After the show was done, we were bombarded by 100’s of fans and press, we talked to all of them, we were showered with love and we ended up dancing with locals, then we went to an after-party, and partied till the late hours of the night/morning. We then stumbled back to our hotel room to get 3 hours of sleep before our plane ride home. When we woke up, we were on the front page of the newspaper, and people were stopping to take pictures with us at the airport. All in all, this definitely beat going to prom.

Keep up with them on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.