In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the pop rock artist, Robert DeLong, shares one of his stories from being on the road. You can check out the story below:
In the summer of 2018, I was doing a few days of promotion in New York City, when I got an offer to open for Maroon 5 at a festival in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Accepting the offer was a no-brainer (it was a summer budget-making pay-date), and that also meant I got to extend my New York City trip to a full week… So the morning before the show me, my crew of four, and my 17 cases of gear all headed to LaGuardia airport to catch our flight to Iowa. As is customary in New York City in the summer, there was a thunderstorm, and all flights were grounded, and try as we might, there was no viable option to get us to Iowa before the show. Frantically, my tour manager Paul Wells considered 1,000 alternatives, but the only seemingly possible way to get us remotely close was a flight from Philadelphia to Madison, Wisconsin, late that evening.
This presented an issue - we were in Queens, and needed to get to Philadelphia in about 2 hours to make the flight. My tour manager hired a Sprinter van and driver (for a hefty sum, mind you) to take me, my crew, and the gear to Philly, on a hope and a prayer that we might somehow make our flight in time. It turns out that bad weather also affects traffic - the theoretically 2-hour trip was taking us well over 3 hours, so when we made it inside of PHL airport, the flight was scheduled to take off in 15 minutes - not enough time to even get through security, much less check 17 bags, many of which were over 50 lbs. Through some miracle, the flight was delayed, so they hectically checked our luggage, and we sprinted to the gate, getting there with seconds to spare. Somehow, also, our baggage made it onboard - if it hadn’t, there would be no possibility of a show, regardless.
The flight to Madison was uneventful, but Madison was a good 4-hour drive from our intended destination, Cedar Rapids, Iowa. For the first relaxed moment of the day, Paul got a chance to use the spotty airplane wifi to look up rental cars in Madison - of which there were NONE available! Panic set in, realizing we had no way to make the final trip to the show site in time, even if we somehow magically found a driver who could fit us and the gear the next morning in Madison. Paul was trying desperately to get ahold of the promoter to find a way, but the airplane wifi went out.
We arrived in Madison, and upon landing Paul was able to connect with the promoter. The promoter apparently called around for an hour, and finally said that he had a driver for us, it would just take an hour or two to get to us. It was around 10pm at this time, and that’s when we found out the airport closes. We shuffled ourselves and our gear out to the curb, and knowing I had the time, I decided to go for a late-evening run around the airport. I returned around 11:30pm, thinking the vehicle would be there soon - I should have known, based on the day, this was absurd, wishful thinking.
Finally, around 1:15am, we see the lights of a large vehicle approaching, and we were so happy and exhausted… and as it rounded the corner we all cocked our head at the surreal vision before us. An old, dirty party bus pulled up, and asked if we were “Paul.” The interior of the bus featured beer-soaked sticky bench seats, flashing disco lights and music that apparently couldn’t be turned off (the driver had been awake for 20 hours I guess), and the cherry on top - a stripper pole right in the center. For the next four hours we tumbled across cornfields in the Midwest in a jalopy of a grimy party bus, to arrive at our hotel around 5:30am, when the driver asked Paul for his $2,000 fee, in cash. The promoter was supposed to cover it, but it was such an ungodly hour we could not contact him. Paul then had to go to a few different ATMs around town to procure the funds (ATMs usually have withdrawal limits), and then, finally, we were able to get 4 hours of sleep at the hotel before soundcheck.
The next day I played to a wheat field of about 10,000 Iowans (about 6 of whom had heard my music before). The average age of the concert-goer was about 50… and the show went great! The one-hour show felt like such an addendum to an insane journey, but I DID get to see Adam Levine escorted from his Escalade through a wheat field to stage by a cadre of burly security guards, so all’s well that ends well…
Keep up with Robert DeLong on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter.
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source https://www.digitaltourbus.com/features/robert-delong-crazy-tour-stories/
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