Sumo Cyco – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

This crazy story from the road was written by Sever (aka Skye Sweetnam), from the punk/metal band, Sumo Cyco. You can check out their story, after the break.

Sumo Cyco has been seriously touring for the last 3 years, which isn’t very long, but, three of four members have been in bands together on and off for over 12 years. Which is almost half of my life. I love my boys and we have been through thick and thin. There are so many great road stories, but I will tell you one of my very first.

I started touring at age fourteen. My very first tour was through the northeast states traveling in a camper RV with a tour called Camplified. We would travel to various summer camps and surprise the kids with a massive fold out stage and some blaring guitars. We ventured to some very resort-like camps where we would be joined by American Idol winners touching down via helicopter to very humble camps where there was no running water or hotels nearby. One stop in particular we stayed overnight at an RV trailer park. If the black bears wandering around weren’t enough to detour you from venturing in the dark to an outhouse, the creepy doll heads hanging from neighboring trailer was.

With a day off and nothing to do, we discovered we could rent a tire intertube and laze about on the river nearby. We were told there was a train that could take you upstream once you made your way down the river with the current. We had fun bobbing through the gentle rapids down the river for a couple hours until we came to the clearing where the train stop was. Unfortunately, we missed the last ride back. With wet clothes, missing flip flops and huge innertubes on our shoulders, we would have been quite a sight to the traffic passing us by as we followed the road home. I brought a ten dollar bill in a plastic bag (it ended up being soaked anyway) and we tried to get change at a nearby store to use a payphone and call back to the rest of our crew. No dice. The road started to veer off from the direction of the river so we had no choice to but to venture through the forest. It was getting dark. A total horror movie in the making. We finally made it back, eaten alive by bugs and exhausted. But now I am sharing this story so hopefully it was worth it!

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