Jared (Sundowners)
SPB: What’s the worst thing that’s happened to you on a tour? Have you ever been stranded or forced to cancel?
Jared: Great question! and really annoying memories to look back on. Hahaha.
Sundowners were on an eight-to-ten hour drive to Salt Lake City maybe three weeks into the tour. We had already been missing our tour mates Shang-a-Lang [and] feeling a great depression after we separated earlier in the tour. We missed their faces, their jokes, and really missed hearing guaranteed rad tunes every night. Unfortunately, good bands are not mandatory every night of tour. Actually, no, that's a good thing they are not. So we are driving to Salt Lake City on our way to play a house show. We finally get there and we all have different levels of hangovers, some of them weirder than others. We hit the beautiful rolling hills on our longboard, each taking turns bombing it. We head to the house and we don't see any sign of activity what so ever which always brings a smile to the face. We knock. We knock again. Someone comes to the door and looks like he just smoked a monster joint and took too many pain pills. Another smiling moment. Hahaha. "We're here from Minnesota to play the show here," I say. The dude is like, "Oh yeah, shit man I totally forgot about that. Do you want to like set up and play for us and just like jam your set?" I then forgot to answer him and walked back to the van and grabbed a beer to relax and not blow up on the guy. I started talking to my bandmates and accidentally dropped the bottle and it broke. Ooops. So I grabbed another and set the rest on the top of a garbage can and while I was opening the new one the other four started rolling off so I reach for them and accidentally dropped my new one while staring at the remaining amount hit the concrete. God dammit. At this point we all just started laughing ‘cause it was that kind of shitty where that's all you can do. I went back to the kid and told him we were gonna start heading on our next lengthy drive. He then offered us his Gamecube and games to go pawn. I almost said yes and took it from him to just smash on the ground right by his feet but instead just said you better keep it. House shows are great but this story is far too common. Bottom line if you are booking a show for a touring band that relies on show money to keep going please just don't forgot about them.
