Young Rising Sons – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the alternative band, Young Rising Sons, talk about some of their crazy moments from touring. You can check out the feature, after the break.

The American Youth Tour

In 2015 we went on a tour with our friend Halsey. We shared a bus, a lot of laughs, and too many bottles of alcohol to count. It was a special tour because it felt like family. We’d known Ashley for quite a while, and at the time shared management.

When drawing up the plans for the tour; the cities/venues we’d play, set lengths, lighting, etc, we felt confident the U.S. run would go off without a hitch. Nearly a week before our first night at the Troubadour in West Hollywood, we received an email from Sheppard, who would be tour managing both us & Halsey.

It was The AYT handbook.

Article 6. (in bold, mind you), read ‘Respect the Talent.’ It went on to state all alcohol, including that which is bought by anyone at the bar, is property of Young Rising Sons. It said you could not look Halsey or her band directly in the eye, in part, because direct eye contact would be taken as an act of aggression. And finally, any requests for ‘sick hangs’ were to be directed to management for approval.

We were so confused. We were friends with Ashley. Why would there be all of these insane rules for a tour where it’s just a bunch of friends?

The handbook was so formal and well written. We knew Ashley, but we’d never met Sheppard before. For all we knew he was an uptight lawyer, pushing 80, smoking cigars and living for strict rules. So when we got to that part of the handbook we panicked,

We frantically called our manager at the time and he basically said, you all are idiots – it’s a joke.

We started the tour looking like idiots, but it wound up being one of the best months of our lives. We already loved Ashley. We loved Sheppard just as much, but to this day we do not make direct eye contact with him… game respects game, ya know?
– Andy Tongren of Young Rising Sons

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