Midnight Mob – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

This crazy story from the road was written by the rock band, Midnight Mob. You can check out their story, after the break.

So two years ago we replaced our original van. We bought a slick black 15 Passenger and dubbed it Glenn Vanzig. One of our first long trips with it was out to Chicago from NYC. What’s great about investing in a 15 passenger extended is that you can throw a hitch on and tow a trailer or take out 2 benches store all the equipment in the van, way better on gas, time and parking but blows on space.

We figured for this trip we’ll take the trailer. The van we bought didn’t have a hitch so we went to U-Haul and got one installed, stopped by the mall for a jack and while driving through the parking lot a stranger needed a jump. We lent a helping hand and we got $20 for being awesome score! We make our way back to the trailer and one of the wheels looks very questionable. We try to replace it with a spare but its rusted on, so we head to a local mechanic he uses his industrial strength tools and gets it off and puts the spare on. We ask how much and dude says $20 cash. Holy crap karma rules!

We pack up and leave at night (best way to leave the city), 5 band and 2 crew. Everyone’s comfortable and we’re cruising way ahead of schedule and going to get to the first venue in Muncie, IN really early with time to get all our bags into a strangers house that was cool enough to have us over plus load into the venue at our own pace. Crew member Anthony has to take a dump and we pull over in OH. Whenever we stop somewhere we always get some attention from the locals. Local one comes through and says you need to fix your trailer asap. He said if you don’t, it will flip. Less than 5 minutes later local 2 comes through and says the same. He said there’s actually a trailer depot the next exit that could help. Crew member Anthony was promoted to St. Anthony.

We get to the trailer depot and they don’t do maintenance but said to go to the hardware place across the street. To get a visual, this town area “main st” is a trailer place, mechanic, hardware shop, drive through liquor store and a taxidermist. All these places are across and next to each other. The hardware place looked at our issue and said go to the mechanic across the street. The mechanic said he’s busy but to the hardware store for a certain part. The hardware place said go to the mechanic. The mechanic was cool enough to put everything aside to inspect it. Hours pass and the mechanic says he could fix it for a couple hundred by tomorrow. We told him that we have a show in a few hours. He said he would buy the trailer off of us and to go to the U-Haul place across the street. Now we’re thinking wtf I didn’t see a U-Haul place. The only two places we haven’t been in this town is the drive through liquor store and the taxidermist. So we go back across the street and walk around the hardware place and we find U-Haul trailers out back, but who rents them? So now it’s like a game of clue.

We go into the hardware place and they tell us to go next store for the trailers. The taxidermist!? We go in and it’s filled with cigarette smoke bears, deer, birds and all sorts of woodland creatures. Surprisingly very soft. No one was at the front desk, but then we heard a voice, “c’mon back”. We go into a back room and there’s a guy there smoking and organizing U-Haul stuff next to dead animals ready to be made presentable again (pet cemetery!). Plenty of heads were also on the wall. The amazing thing was that he could hook us up with a trailer for dirt cheap. We won! We go back to the mechanic and let him know. As soon as we let him know we get a call from the taxidermist that he double booked the trailer and we’re out of luck. We sold the trailer, dumped two back benches and a dolly. Then we loaded all the gear in the van plus ourselves and hauled it to the show. We get to the venue right before we were scheduled to go on, had a great show and made some new fans. We later rewarded ourselves in Chicago with a band nap in a movie theater (cool & spacious), deep dish and then later on a band bought us more deep dish. Totally worth it! Treat your trailer like a car and keep up with regular maintenance. If someone needs to take a dump it could be a blessing in disguise.

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