Spiritual Rez – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, Toft Willingham of the reggae rock band, Spiritual Rez, talks about one of their crazy moments from touring. You can check out the feature, after the break.

Every Virgin Islands Spiritual Rez tour has been a whirlwind of crazy stories. This particular steamy night in St. John stands out to me as one of the crazier:

We were performing at Larry’s, a pour-your-own bar that at the time was a haven for debauchery in Cruise Bay. (When you order a rum punch at a pour-your-own bar they put a glass, a bottle of rum and some mixers in front of you and say, “Have at it!”) Things got wild fast that night at Larry’s. We were already feeling no pain by the time we started playing. The show was in the yard on a rickety wooden stage that felt like it was going to collapse from all of our jumping around. It seemed like everyone on the island was there dancing, sweating and singing along. It was magical.

After the raging show, some local friends took us to a secluded sugar cane ruin and fed us some variety of psychedelic tea. The ruin was a stone structure with a cylindrical room in the center designed for refining sugar cane. It was tucked in the rainforest somewhere and overgrown with tropical foliage. Before we realized what was happening we were in a full-blown drum circle inside the cylindrical room. We were beating djembes, bongos and noisemakers and chanting in some kind of made-up language. The acoustics in the ruin combined with the tea made everything sound like a sound effect from Flash Gordon. We had achieved the next level for sure.

After hours of beating, chanting and mini adventures around the ruins, reality started to creep in. The sun was rising so we stumbled to the beach for a swim and a nap under the cocoa trees. When I laid on the cool sand at dawn with the sound of tiny Caribbean waves lapping in my ears, I thought I was in heaven. When I awoke shirtless at noon I realized I had made a serious boo-boo. I rolled over on the now scorching hot beach already feeling my skin starting to blister and break. I could barely open my eyes from the blinding equatorial sun to look over at our then trumpet player, Rob, laying beside me. He had made the same mistake and in a broken voice he summed up my feelings to perfection. “I’m sorry, skin,” he cried.

To this day, as a Floridian surfer who spends his life in the sun, that was the worst sunburn I’ve ever had; full blown sun poising and blisters up and down the entire right side of my body. The next week sucked. But, hey, as my mom always says, “If you’re gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough.”

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(Photo credit:  Eleni Willingham)