The Ramona Flowers – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the rock band, The Ramona Flowers, talk about some of their crazy moments from touring. You can check out the feature, after the break.

So our first time touring America was supporting our good friends, The Heavy.

Touring the East coast of America, what could possibly go wrong, apart from a few Visa issues and thinking we were going to get shot on our first night in Boston, quite a lot it seemed!

I can’t remember where we were, but we were traveling overnight to our next gig, the beer was flowing, rap battles were taking place and everyone was pretty pissed. We eventually all crash only to be woken by the smell of burning. I looked out of my bunk and the entire sleeping area was covered in smoke. After several drunken shouts of “FIRE!” everyone is up and shouting to Kevin, the bus driver to stop.

This is when we find Steve and our tour manager, John still up drinking, totally unaware the bus is on fire. We all evacuate the bus whilst Kevin investigates the cause. Now after about 10 minutes we notice that Steve and John are missing. After a quick search, we find them still on the bus, still drinking, shrouded in smoke refusing to move, with John shouting, ‘we will only move when we see flames’. We left them to it after that.

Once the cause was located, which was a burnt out air con unit and we were all satisfied we wouldn’t be incinerated in our bunks we continued the journey.

Now after a couple of hours, I was desperate for a piss. The toilet door was locked so I assumed one of the lads had beaten me to it. Still half asleep the door opened and out came our driver Kevin, we exchanged a few pleasantries and he went on his way. Now it wasn’t until I was halfway through having a piss I realized that whilst I was waiting for Kevin the bus was moving, holy fuck!! He actually jammed a stick on the accelerator so he could go to the toilet!!

Now if I had trouble sleeping before, I certainly did now. I think I stayed up the entire tour watching the driver, making sure he didn’t move from his seat to take a piss. It was the longest month on tour ever.

Wayne

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(Photo credit: Zack Whitford)