The Delta Saints – CRAZY TOUR STORIES

In this Crazy Tour Stories segment, Ben Ringel of the rock band, The Delta Saints, talk about some of their crazy moments from touring. You can check out the feature, after the break.

We were on a European tour in 2013 and had a fly out gig in the city of Las Palmas (which is in the Canary Islands). It was an ungodly early flight, so we slept for about an hour after the previous night’s gig and hit the airport feeling rough. Three-hour flight. Step off the plane, and WHAM…paradise. It’s Europe’s Hawaii and we were stoked. The town was straight out of a Hemingway novel. The hotel was a beautiful stone building in need of just enough TLC to be old world charming and the venue was located right next door. The afternoon was spent drinking slightly chilled Rioja in the equatorial sun and life had rarely been better. The Spanish party at a different level. They eat dinner at 9:00pm, have drinks at midnight, and dance until sunrise. That’s just life. The show time follows in suit, and we hit the stage at around 1:30am. Two hours later, we pack our gear and head to the hotel for a quick shower (just before our 4:30am lobby call to drive back to the airport). Lobby call, cab outside bags in hand. As we’re loading the cab, a few of us couldn’t help but stare at the cab driver. He looks familiar. He looks drunk. He looks like the drunk guy who was holding onto the bar during our show. Yahtzee. Personal judgment was long gone at this point as was any reasonable sleep schedule. We loaded the cab, all piled in, and we then noticed two curious details. (1) There was a cooler overflowing with ice and beer in between the driver’s and front passengers seat. (2) There was a scantily clad young lady in the front seat who seemed to have previously been soliciting our cabby. Doors close. Car starts. Thank god it was 4:45 in the morning and everyone on the island was either asleep or still in the clubs because our guy was treating traffic rules as mere suggestions, all while doing work on that cooler of beer. We arrive at the airport (thank god), unload our gear, and bid Don Juan a fair goodbye. As we’re about to enter the sliding doors to the airport, we hear our former cab driver and his pay-by-the-hour companion engaged in some sort of lover’s quarrel, whilst in the middle of the airline departures lane. We kept our heads down and left him in the trenches (sorry, Don). Their voices carried over a surprising distance in the deserted early morning airport. All that to say, never have we been happier to see cramped airplane seats and the insides of our eyelids.

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