Mitch King – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the blues artist, Mitch King, talks about some of his crazy moments from touring. You can check out the feature, after the break.

It depends on where we are or what sort of venue we’re at…A few things definitely stay the same though. One mainstay has been to watch Bruce Springsteen slayin it in Los Angeles. The footage is from 1985, so at the peak of his powers. It just hypes us up and gives us a pretty decent target to aim for in terms of commitment to our performance and to the audience – he runs around like a lunatic and is still just fully in control, it’s insane.

Another is drinking – We know most bands probably say that, but it really does give you courage and energy! When we hang out at home (if we’re not working on something or working our rubbish jobs) we usually go for a drink and talk crap and end up arguing and then hugging, so it feels right to have a drink when we’re just about to take the stage – it brings us together.

We will usually have an acoustic guitar with us backstage at shows too. this is so we can start singing together and warming up together before we go on. It’s not cheesy campfire stuff, more just any song that one of us can play (or get through!) on the guitar and that we think we know at least one or two words of. It just helps us to bond a bit again before we go on stage. When we were on the Bears Den tour it was great because the guys from the band would come into our dressing room before we went on sometimes and join in – that’s something we think is pretty important too. You have to try and bond with the other acts because you’re all in it together. If one of you has a great show it’s more likely that the rest of the guys and audience will too! Other than that, we all have our own little warm-ups that we go through, whether that’s doing some vocal warm-ups, hitting things with drumsticks, or going out for cigarettes!Well…a very long story put short.

A mate and I nearly died a couple of months ago on tour.

We were sleeping in a town in Central Qld with a population of 129 people. It was around 10pm on Sunday. We parked and settled for the night in the van when 5 mins later we were shocked by a man’s voice yelling “get the F?#K OUT” and hitting the vehicle like a psycho with his fists.

Immediately I jumped into the front seat and tried to drive away. He jumped in his car, which had 4 massive blokes inside and then pinned me in a spot. After some crazy maneuvering, I managed to escape and was doing 160km/hr out of town. With no sign of humanity, very bad phone reception and a load of seriously angry men chasing us down the highway; we were both freaking out with the next town 180kms away.

My mate got through to 000 but there was no response from the police at this time, so we were F##?ED.

They weren’t backing down and were trying to run us off the road at 160km/hr. These dudes weren’t playing, they were crazy and angry and I reckon they were on drugs.

After 20 mins of full adrenaline and avoiding collisions, to say the least, I decided that doing laps up and down the main street of town with the horn blazing would be our best escape plan. There were no lights on in the main street so I was trying to wake everyone up. After 5 mins a few house lights turned on and the carload of idiots fled the scene.

I turned off my headlights and was driving stealth at 110 km/hr back out of town. At this stage, my mate eventually got through to a police officer. We met up with him 10 mins later and told him our story. He basically said, “Oh I know these local boys and they are dickheads. Conclusion “I’ll go have a chat with them”.

So this is a very detailed, and believe me, not exaggerated, story, kept brief. Yep! Not fun, but at least I have something to write about.

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