Doppler, A Roadies View

The bus can't drive 55

There is a hip hop tour featuring Eminem and 50 cent called the Anger Management Tour currently traveling the country. They were in Chicago several nights ago and traveling to Denver and unfortunately there was an accident. It seems that one of the band buses was going too fast and tried to pass a couple of trucks. The complete story is here. Fortunately there were no casualties.

This reminds me of an incident I had on tour in 2002. I was out as the lighting director for the Smokin Grooves tour; this was the one that Outkast headlined. We were going to Cleveland from somewhere in the Midwest, Milwaukee I think. We had a day off in Cleveland coming up. Now we were not in a big hurry. I had been asleep for about an hour, when I feel the bus stop.

Next thing I know our production assistant is telling everyone the bus is on fire. That’s right I said FIRE!! Usually that means the generator is on fire.

We hurry off the bus and discover that one of the back tires has come off and the wheel well is on fire. The good thing is the bus was not damaged anywhere except the tire area.

We had two production buses on this tour. There were around 8 people on each one. With one bus out of commission we had to put all of us onto one bus to get to Cleveland.

Yes an accident is scary but when you tour you fear the bus fire more.

posted by Doppler at 10:15 PM