Slightly Stoopid, Moon Taxi, The London Souls and More Share Best & Worst Gig Stories

“When we played Bonnaroo in 2012, that was the biggest audience we’d ever played by a lot. There was a lot of pressure to come out and deliver, and I felt like we delivered. That was the biggest moment boost we’d ever gotten. “

Chris: “One that sticks out to me that I thought was cool  because it was surprising was in Valencia, Spain, where we just were this summer. It was our first time playing there and it was like 200 people in this small club. We were headlining. It was just a bunch of Spanish people who were big fans of ours and we had no idea existed. They were singing along to our songs and most of them couldn’t speak English and packed this place out and were just superfans and Loved it. I was not expecting it all and it really made me happy to see that.”
Tash: “Yea, that was a great one. I’m going to go with that one.”
Chris: “I could rattle so many. Like playing in Belgium, we played the same stage as Paul McCartney at this festival in front of 10-15,000 people. His whole crew saw our set and was talking to us after. I kind of lost it. It was pretty cool.”

“Oh wow. You know what. This really random gig in Lake Murray, South Carolina. It was just epic. I was playing on a boat and it started raining like cats and dogs. You would think the gig would be over because I was in open air, but like 20-30 people put this tarp over me as it was raining like crazy and I continued playing for 20-30 mins. All these people on the boat and sandbar were dancing like crazy. In the water they were dancing and in the boats around us. Rain everywhere. It made everyone dance more. Those twenty people around me were dancing while holding the tarp over my head. It was just like a ridiculous, epic experience. It might have been 10 years ago but I still remember that moment being so awesome.”

“I really enjoyed the stuff out West. We’ve had some significant festivals. We did one in Bend, Oregon. That’s probably the most beautiful place I’ve been to in this country that I really enjoyed playing. Just a wonderful vibe on a Sunday afternoon. The view from the stage. We played the Les Schwab Amphitheatre. And it was like a few thousand people and it was great.”

“But then some of the smaller gigs where the songs mean so much to them. There was a woman who recently lost her son to addiction and she was saying one of the songs that I wrote on a rainy afternoon on Folly Beach, The Giver, …she’s explaining what that means to her and if I can play it. So you play it and right there she’s crying. That was in Tennessee. As an artist, sure, you want to be big and sell lots of tickets, but at the end of the day if you can have your song mean something like that and help someone, that is really meaningful.”

“There weren’t any performance wise. Worst thing that ever happened to me was we were playing Forecastle and my bass just quit working. We kind of have a rule, no matter what happens, we always finish the song. So, that was brutal. But, we had an entire tour dedicated to all of our worst shows. They were attended by 0-5 people on average for about 50 shows. And every one of those was basically the same tunes we’re playing now.  We’re playing to 1-2 people a night for an entire summer. You just kind of have to tuck your head down and just keep playing hard…and you question why you’re doing this.”

“I can’t really call anyone out like that, but I will say one of the worst shows we’ve done was one we were really looking forward to. We were opening for a really huge band, and it was a very nice theater. State of the art everything. We were really excited to play. The production staff there particularly couldn’t even hardly get through soundcheck. They had to hold doors just so we could stumble through a half ass sound check and come show time all the monitors are super jacked up and the mixes are terrible. You’re struggling to get through a set that you’ve been looking forward to a lot.“

(laughing) “I’d say Birmingham. I went in there the first time and it was like four people. It was so horrible. Four people and I think two of them were working. It was the littlest show I’ve ever done. So, we stayed out of the market for two years and I didn’t want to go back to Birmingham for a very long time. So we go back there two years later and I said, ‘There’s no way it can be as bad as it was the first time.’ (laughing). We went back. There was two people. (laughing). The worst show I ever played was Birmingham for two people. I think I played 30 minutes and then I hung out with those two people and gave them free merch. Birmingham has my worst and second worst show.”