Mr. Max – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the pop punk artist, Mr. Max, shares one of his stories from being on the road. You can check out the story, after the break.

Back in 2015, we were on a relatively short tour of California, from LA up the coast to San Francisco. We booked the tour pretty last minute, so we didn’t really have our lodging situation completely figured out for every city – this was the case when we arrived in San Luis Obispo.

We played a decent show at a place called Frog & Peach Pub, which was pretty crackin’ for a Monday night. When the show was over and we had packed up our gear, it dawned on us that we didn’t really have solid plans for a place to stay. Our drummer had heard from a friend of a friend that there was a studio/commune sort of deal in the area that would allow touring musicians to stay the night. We were pretty dubious, but it was our only option at 1AM in a city where we didn’t know anybody.

So, we routed the address we were given and drove through the dimly lit streets of SLO. On the way, we couldn’t help but freak each other out by imagining some dark scenarios that could play out. “What if this is a crack house?” “What if these people just lure musicians here to rob, rape, and murder them?”

By the time were pulled up to the address- inhabited by a dark house, somewhat obscured by trees-my heart was racing. We parked and approached the building. Our collective anxiety was palpable as my drummer knocked on the front door. “Here we go…” I thought to myself.

The door swung open and we were greeted by a shirtless dude about our age, with long hair and a big smile on his face. He looked like he had time-traveled from The Summer of Love. Neurotic as I am, my mind immediately began telling me “This is gonna be some Manson Family shit….” However, after the dark hallway opened into a brightly lit, professional recording studio, I began to calm down.

There was an older man who owned the studio and another younger guy who worked there as well. The vibe was very warm, granola, Kumbaya, etc. and before we knew it, we were all literally playing in a drum circle. It was all fun and hugs (perhaps a few too many hugs from the shirtless hippie-dude) from there. We slept on the floor of the studio through a murder-less, rape-less night, woke up in the morning, and continued our tour.

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