Ainsley Costello - CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the pop rock artist, Ainsley Costello, shares one of her stories from being on the road. You can check out the story below:

Touring is just about my favorite thing in the world. I’ve been doing it since I was basically a child. A lot of people assume that just because I’m young (I’m 20) and haven’t been on the road for 40 years that I haven’t had my fair share of wild moments on stage—but that is not the truth.

Picture this: a summer camp in upstate New York. It’s every kid’s dream. Rock climbing, zip lining, jumping on trampolines, swimming, paintball—you name it—are all on the list of daily activities. My band and I pull up to the camp at approximately 10 a.m., even though our scheduled performance is at 3, around the end of the day before the parents come for pickup. We drop our trailer near this mini amphitheater that they’ve built into the camp, and the counselors stop by to run over the schedule and give us the lay of the land. It’s roughly at this point when Jen, the main coordinator of the camp, tells me they’ve been playing my music every day for the past few weeks leading up to my performance, and that the kids are all so excited.

But because I’ve played a million shows—and a million more for disinterested college kids—I’m wondering if Jen telling me that everyone is so excited is more of a common courtesy. I’m fully expecting to play this show where none of the kids are invested in me or my music. As I push that thought away, I’m whisked onto a golf cart. I’ve just been informed that while my band sets up the gear and gets ready for soundcheck, I’ll be getting a premium tour of the camp and partaking in some honorary camper activities with the kids!

As Jen and I are flying down the dirt roads of this camp at lightning speeds, I wonder if I’m hallucinating hearing seven-year-old girls scream my full name at full volume as I whiz by in a whirl of pink tinseled hair. It’s confirmed I’m not hallucinating when we stop at the tie-dye station and what I can only describe as a surge of kids rush up to me, treating me like I’m Beyoncé, swarming me like paparazzi.

It’s a mob. It’s madness. I think to myself, “This is what One Direction must’ve felt like when they came to America for the first time.”

Slowly, I’m starting to understand that these kids are OBSESSED with my song called “Cherry on Top.” Jen underplayed it when she said they were listening to my music every day. I find out that each day before it was time to go, they rounded up all the kids at the camp—ages 5–18—and had a “Cherry on Top” singalong. This is great news for me because COT is a staple in my set, and it’s the last song I play before the show is over—as the cherry on top.

Finally, it’s showtime. After hours of being chased all over the camp on the golf cart, signing kids’ bags, shoes, and bracelets, and building anticipation...

Because the camp wanted a mix of covers and originals, I open the show with Dua Lipa’s “Levitating,” and this is the first time the entire camp has beheld me all at once. I walk out of this little costume shack attached to the amphitheater to a thunderous roar. Posters with my face and lyrics on them are being raised to the heavens, and friendship bracelets are flying all over the place. Kids are waving and hyperventilating when I simply make eye contact with them. I’m not even joking. As someone who always downplays the exciting and significant things that happen in life, I cannot overstate how lovely it was to play a show for the first time where I truly felt seen, and wanted, and appreciated.

Forty-five of the most wonderful minutes of my life go by, and we’ve reached the last song—but not before all 600 kids got way ahead of me, chanting and cheering “CHERRY ON TOP! CHERRY ON TOP!” at every opportunity. The shameless flirt and tease I am, I strung them along for a few moments before I said, “What do you guys say we put the cherry on top of today?” and was promptly met with a collective scream that passed the human threshold for audible tolerance.

Now, this show happened in an era of my career I like to call B.W.—Before Wireless. I’m sure you understand where this is going. This was the show that made me realize it was time to pull the trigger on getting both a wireless guitar and in-ear pack for myself. At this time, I was still playing acoustic guitar live on COT, where I was tethered not only to a quarter-inch guitar cable but also a vocal XLR, and then my in-ears had an extender that led to a Behringer box back by the drum kit.

These kids were not playing about their love of COT. They sang every word to every line and section of this song, and that was the first time that had ever happened for me—that a crowd knew the words to my songs. Since it was such a surreal moment and I wanted to savor every bit of it, when I reached the down chorus part of the song that happens just after the bridge and before the last chorus, I thought it would be a good idea to walk out from behind the mic stand to have an organic moment with the kids, where I could hear them singing, and they could hear me singing by myself off-mic. Just before the final chorus hits, and I turn around to get back behind the mic, my guitar hits my mic stand.

In a herculean effort, I reach out to try and grab the stand before it completely capsizes, when my shoes get tangled in both the quarter-inch and vocal XLR cables. It’s important to note that I was also wearing bright pink, retina-burning, Steve Madden pumps that made me approximately 5’8”. (I’m 5’2”, so imagine the mammoth size of these things.)

I had to make a snap decision. I clearly remember thinking to myself, “I could recover this, but it’s going to look even worse than if I just accept defeat and go down.” I also remembered how much of a champ Meghan Trainor was when she fell during “NO” on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon—it had been ingrained in my mind since sixth grade. So, with a “Sugar, We’re Going Down” mentality, I fell to my doom in front of 600 screaming kids as the final chorus of COT came to a head.

It was awesome.

I don’t even say that sarcastically. Everyone is going to have their first on-stage fall or mishap at some point, so it’s better to just embrace it and have fun with it. It added to the glory of how wonderful the day was.

So that’s the story of my first on-stage fall. It truly was the cherry on top of the day.

Keep up with Ainsley Costello on Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, Facebook, YouTube, and her website.