Rosedale – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the aggressive pop artist, Rosedale, talks about one of his crazy moments from touring. You can check out the feature, after the break.

During Warped Tour 2013, our van’s big muffler was barely hanging on. I had just got a new trailer (thanks to a long-awaited insurance claim from a drunken Pittsburgh driver) and there wasn’t much we could do in such short time about the big suspension dip on the back of the van. So every time we’d pull out of a steep parking lot the muffler would scrape against the road and bend closer towards the rear tire. We had no time to fix it so I got a skateboard and used it to pry the muffler away from the tire. By the time we reached Charlotte, NC the muffler was rubbing the tire and shredding it. We drove the last twenty minutes smelling the burning rubber and it’s surprising we made it to the venue. The entire undercarriage was covered in melted rubber.

After a long hot summer day in Charlotte, it was time to change that treadless tire and bend the muffler back the best we could. I loosened the bolts, jacked up the van, and tried to use the treadless tire as a wedge for the ultimate skateboard pry. I was squatted down leaning into the skateboard with all my strength when all of a sudden BOOM! The jack flipped and the van came right down on my leg, twisting my ankle sideways. It all happened so fast I didn’t even realize why my ankle was in so much pain. I couldn’t tell if everything went blurry from the shock of the pain, if I had blacked out, or if it was just the sweat in my eyes.

I proceeded to bend the muffler away from the tire (with the van off the jack) and put on the new tire (with the van on the jack). My ankle was getting very big, very fast. The van was as good as it was gonna get so we headed to Cookout for some eats. About halfway there, we noticed sparks flying behind our van. We pulled over and saw that the muffler had shaken loose and was hanging on by a thread of metal. It was too hot to grab, so we tied it to the undercarriage and proceeded to Cookout to eat and let the muffler cool down. Sebastian (drummer from Indianapolis) eventually wiggled the muffler off and tossed it in the dumpster.

We were both sweaty, covered in dust/melted rubber, and ready for the long rainy haul to Cincinnati. My ankle looked like a planet. Cincinnati was our last day of Warped so we wanted to end it with a good amount of sales (regardless of my giant ankle), so we set up a little stage outside of the gate and played to the kids leaving the festival. I had a shoe on my right foot for my pedals, and a sandal on my left foot because it was too big to even put a sock on, let alone a shoe. We played about 2 songs before the cops came over and shut us down. They were not being nice about it either. They yanked the power to the generator and started literally forcing us to pack up. Kids were walking up to me trying to get their CDs signed and the cops were aggressively pushing me towards my gear and yelling, “Start packing, now!!” I think there’re a few kids who still have my messed up half signature on their copies of Real. And my left ankle still makes a grinding noise and sometimes cracks when I move it a certain way.

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