Parade of Lights – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the alternative band, Parade of Lights, talk about some of their crazy moments from touring. You can check out the feature, after the break.

We set off on a tour that happened to be in the middle of one of the coldest winters in the US history—temperatures of minus 20°F and below in some cities on the run.

These were by far the coldest temperatures that any of us had ever experienced, thus earning the tour its well-deserved nickname as “The Polar Vortex Tour.” No one could have prepared us for it.

We knew we couldn’t possibly be “West Coast-ing” how cold it actually was when, in every city, someone at the venue would profusely apologize for the weather. After our eyebrows were frozen onto our faces one morning, we devised a system for dressing into our stage clothes to avoid potential frostbite! It seemed like every time we walked out of a store we had, yet again, found a way to purchase and pack on another layer of clothing.

The below zero temps definitely did NOT help when we’d try to start the van before the sun came up either. In Minnesota, we had to light our trailer lock on fire to melt the ice built up in it and around it.

While driving in Washington state one day, we had our first real black ice scare. We all felt the trailer start to fishtail, and as we held onto whatever we could, Anthony, who was driving at the time, managed to somehow keep us from flipping over. He pulled us over into a rest stop afterward to get the “freak-out” out of our systems, and to field calls from our tour mates. They had watched the entire thing unfold while driving a little ahead of us, thinking they were going to have to pull us all out of an upside-down van. To this day, I can still remember everyone’s “this is it” face.

When we made it to our last stop of the tour we all got to orchestrate an epic prank involving whipped cream and the singer of the band we were co-headlining with on the last song of the band’s encore. He was pretty surprised (and maybe not too happy); but covered in whip cream he had no choice but to tear off his shirt and finish the set with the audience going bananas. I think most of us were pretty proud of that one! It ended up being a pretty fantastic end to the iciest road we have EVER been on.

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