Scattered Hamlet – TOUR PRANKS

In this Tour Pranks segment, Adam Joad, of the hard rock band, Scattered Hamlet, shares some pranks that have happened on tour. You can check out the feature, after the break.

In our camp, you don’t last real long if you take yourself too seriously. Tour is hard and there’s a shit ton of downtime so you end up getting into strange things that would never fly in the civilian world. For us, myself especially, pranks are a part of it and we’ve had some epic ones that come to mind. Most of our van rules have been set as reactions to stunts that I’ve pulled. We have a standing rule called “no live or dead wild animals in the van.” For most bands, this may be an understood rule but for me, I need clarification on such matters.

Since we live in a world of politically correct jabronis now, it’s probably best I called myself an Appalachian American. This means that if there’s woods around or fresh water, I can catch something because I have skills like that…So one day we pulled into a truck stop and it was just Jake Delling (The Irish Thunder) and I hanging around outside while the other guys were still sleeping in the van. As illuminated by the metal gods, I caught an image of a bat hanging on the edge of a heating unit on the back of the restaurant and I knew what had to be done. I grabbed Jakes big cup he was drinking out of, dumped it and proceeded to catch the now pissed off bat inside the cup holding a magazine over the bottom. Jake still didn’t understand my motivation until I told him to come to the van with me. To make a long story short, Jake opened the van door, I released the bat inside, we shut the door and ran away. Pandemonium ensued and many pissed sleeping bandmates came running out the door.

After being scolded like a child with questions like “what if it bit me?” or “it could have had rabies” and other sissy talk, the rule was established, with me abstaining my vote, that we couldn’t have live wild animals in the van anymore. Since I’m a rule player, I haven’t broken the rule too bad but I find ways to bend it. For example, The Old Kentucky Bastard, Richard Erwin, was asleep at a place we were crashing the other night and I got up first because I pretty much always get up first. Outside this place I managed to catch a chicken that was running around, I wanted the rooster but he wasn’t having it. Since we weren’t in the van it was clearly a gray area and it could be argued the chicken was domesticated… So I carried the chicken into the house and threw it onto Rich’s bed where both he and the chicken started losing their shit. It was pretty epic and no chickens were harmed in the making of that prank so no Vegan kids need to yell me like they did at warped tour.

I think we can categorize these pranks as being of the wildlife and livestock variety. Of course, there was also a show where Richard Erwin decided to throw already dead bait fish by the handfuls into the audience. Everyone started scrambling around and grabbing for them because they thought we were throwing picks or joints and they got a sweet surprise when they came up with dead fish. That was a solid one…. Rich also accidentally drank a big swig of a pee he thought was just warm Gatorade. That was awesome too, he wasn’t happy about that. Pee bottles are an essential part of our indoor plumbing system in the van so they haven’t been outlawed. Anyway, that’s all I got for now. Digital Tour Bus rules, I’ve been following them on Twitter etc for awhile so we’re happy to get to tell our story. Check out the new video and single for Swamp Rebel Machine.

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