TWO – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the indie rock duo, TWO, shares one of their stories from being on the road. You can check out the story, after the break.

Before there was TWO, Aja and I had a band called Nico Vega. We spent years in a van touring the country. There is one particular border check outside El Paso, Texas that we would cross about 4 or 5 times a year. Every band in the world knows this spot.

And every single time we would come through this border check, we would be pulled over, forced to exit our vehicle and border agents would send drug-sniffing dogs to look through the van. And almost every time they would find some sort of marijuana paraphernalia or at least some remnants.

Yes, you would think we would have learned, but we were young, dumb, and insisted on constantly testing the limits of US customs. And every time we would try a different method of outsmarting the agents and dogs. Sometimes we got lucky, but most of the time, they would just find whatever little amount was hidden in the van and send us on our way. One time they took what they found, but also all our money.

After going through this charade over a dozen times, I remember thinking, man they always search our van, but they never actually search us when they tell us to get out of the van. So I told our guitar player, who was our bands, primary weed enthusiast, that this time he should just keep everything in his pockets when they tell us to exit the vehicle… so he did.

However, as it turns out, it was dumping snow, so they told us to wait inside the station while the searched our van. Unfortunately, before you can enter the station, they had to do a full-body search. We were busted. So they brought us into the station and handcuffed us to the wall.

But Aja refused the handcuffs! She hadn’t smoked or drank anything in a few years, she was 100% innocent and wasn’t gonna be made guilty by association. Unfortunately, they had a way of dealing with this kind of thing. So they hauled her off and locked her in a jail cell. They held her for over an hour while the rest of us sat and reflected, pretty sure that the band would be over after this incident. Finally, they brought her out of the cell and locked her to the wall next to us. They held us for about 10 hours. We were extremely quiet most of that time, and we were not quiet people.

They eventually let us go with a stiff fine and a court appearance about three months later.

And we had to drive through the night to make our show the next day, but we did make it!

As a band, we did recover from this incident, but we never tested our luck at that border check again. And every time I’ve flown internationally since, I am made to wait in the extra-long line at US customs separate from the rest of my group!

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