Jersey Calling - CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, the punk band, Jersey Calling, shares one of their stories from being on the road. You can check out the story below:

Randy fell off a roof.

Not, like, a playful, goofing-around kind of fall.

He had a need-to-be-hospitalized, multiple-surgeries, and take-time-off-from-work kind of fall.

Our bassist, Randy, is a firefighter in Philadelphia, and had a terrible fall off a two-story roof while on duty back in early 2023. He landed on his feet, shattering several bones and sustaining multiple other injuries that needed to be treated. Honestly, we're lucky he isn't dead. While he recovered, the rest of the band supported him how we could — helping share fundraisers to get his family the help they needed, visiting him in the hospital, and just being there when he needed a friend. Over the next few days, word spread about Randy's injury on social media and local news channels.

That's when things got even crazier. A local news channel interviewed Randy about his fall, and he mentioned that he couldn't wait to get back to work, because he loves being a firefighter, and he couldn't wait to get back to playing in his punk band, Jersey Calling. As he said the band name, he looked directly at the camera. They even played a clip of our latest music video on air, which was definitely the first time our band had ever been on TV. Shortly after that, Randy was contacted by another local firefighter who used to work for Live Nation. Apparently, they wanted to talk to Randy, and asked if Jersey Calling would be interested in playing the Adjacent Festival in Atlantic City, NJ, on Memorial Day weekend of 2023, which included headliners Paramore and Blink-182.

Randy was interviewed on TV by the Live Nation representatives, and enthusiastically agreed to play the show (the rest of the band didn't need much convincing). We didn't think much about the logistics of him still being in a wheelchair, or the fact that we were completely out of our league when looking at the lineup, which also included some of our favorite bands from our childhoods, like Jimmy Eat World and Midtown. We took each step of the process as it came — bolstering our social media presence, practicing our butts off, and even performing at Brooklyn Bowl in Philly as a pre-show TV spot in which they interviewed Randy again. Meanwhile, he was still undergoing surgeries both before and after the festival took place. The whole thing was surreal, and everyone involved in the festival was incredibly generous and kind to us — the little guys no one had heard of. The band Zulu let us use their amps on stage (which sounded incredible), bands were cool about letting us fanboy around and ask for pictures with them, and we were asked to play both days of the festival (I think we were the only band that did that). At night, we went back to our respective hotel rooms (one of which smelled like a mix of mustard and cigarettes), and reveled in the insanity that was one of the most amazing weekends of our lives.

Keep up with Jersey Calling on their website, Linktree, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and Threads.