Madi Diaz – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

This crazy story from the road was written by the indie pop artist, Madi Diaz. You can check out her story, after the break.

I think something about the way Los Angeles weather is made me forget how serious northeastern weather patterns are. I’m a child of the northeast, so don’t get me wrong, I have crazy respect for white winters and those little bags of sand that you stuff in your shoes and gloves to stay even warmer, I just hadn’t looked winter dead in the face for a good while. Anyway, we were leaving Boston on our way to Chicago, which is a solid two-day drive for sure but we had three days to do it and had the route picked out so were not worried.

It was about 9:30pm that first day when the snow started coming down and we were just crossing through Buffalo, NY territory. The snow was pretty, light and fluffy dancing across the windshield in the headlights. An hour later, I had probably slowed down to about 45 mph because anything faster seemed insane. Around this time I started saying loudly to the band, “man it’s reaaaally coming down HUH?” to see if it was just my imagination but it seemed to be getting worse and worse.

Suddenly, I was going 10 mph and had to pull off the highway. My front of house and friend Colin Quisenberry took over and we kept crawling along while semi-trucks were flying past us and then flipping over a mile ahead. Finally, we pulled off at a rest stop to listen to the radio and see what the situation was. We were STUCK at the rest area for two hours because two huge tractor-trailer jack-knifed a mile up the road so the highway was closed down.

At around 2:30am the highway opened back up but highway patrol was advising people to stay put because they were shutting down ALL of the highways. I found a hotel about 20 miles down the road and made the call to take a chance and get to some beds. An hour plus later WE MADE IT! We ended up stranded at a Howard Johnson for two days eating peanut butter and cereal from the hotel that tasted like it had been there since the Civil War and watching the news and old Seinfeld episodes while 5 feet of snow came down in the northeast. We were incredibly lucky though because eight people died in their cars on the highway we had just been driving on.

On the DAY of our Chicago show in the Howard Johnson, with a 10 hour drive to the venue, I freaked out and said, “LETS GET THE EFF OUT OF HERE, WE CAN STILL MAKE THE SHOW.” We hauled ass for 10 hours on some of the shittiest roads I’ve ever seen until we crossed the state line. We made it to the venue literally 10 minutes before set time. I walked out of the van on to the stage with my guitar and amp and still played my 45 minute set.

God damn right I did.

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