Road Stories

Some of your favorite stars reveal the mishaps, near misses, spicy memories and hilarious stories from their lives on the road.

Road Stories Some of your favorite stars reveal the mishaps, near misses, spicy memories and hilarious stories from their lives on the road. Story by David Scarlett, Chris Neal and Bob Paxman After you’ve seen your favorite star in concert, it’s easy to assume they just magically appear at their next show the next night—400 miles away. But, as much as country stars might love that, the reality is the vast majority of them spend long hours burning up the road on buses getting from show to show. And they’ll usually tell you it’s the least favorite part of their job. But every now and then, something happens to break the monotony of life on the road and provide a priceless story at the same time. Here are a few of those stories. They’ll reveal a few things you didn’t now about your favorite stars and, just maybe, make you glad you’re not on the bus with them!

For more, check out the April 20 issue of Country Weekly.

Duane Allen—The Oak Ridge Boys

We were working with Mel Tillis in Independence, Kansas. He told us he needed to go on first because he had a long trip ahead. That was fine with us. So, back then, we these smoke machines that would just cover a building with blinding smoke. It was on Halloween, so we got out sheets off our beds, stripped all of our clothes off and went to the edge of the stage. When Mel started singing “Ghost Riders in the Sky,” we had our people fill the stage with smoke. Then we went out in front of Mel and his band, between them and the audience. We faced Mel and the Statesiders, opened our sheets and showed Mel and the band our bare naked frontals. He couldn’t talk for an hour!

William Lee Golden—The Oak Ridge Boys

In 1990, my friend, Travis Tritt, invited me to his performance with Barbara Mandrell. Travis had just had his hit, “Country Club” and he was opening up for Barbara at Bally’s in Los Vegas. My wife, Brenda and I as well as another couple snuck in and saw his great show. We tried to keep a low profile. During his set, I laughed and told my wife that I almost tucked the white table cloth into my pants thinking that my matching white shirt tail was out.

Half- way through Barbara’s performance, she surprised me by introducing me from the stage. Spots lights immediately shined on our table from everywhere. She asked me to stand. When I did, the table cloth went with me as well as everything on the table. I had indeed mistakenly tucked the table cloth into my pants. The entire fiasco was on exhibit. We have laughed about that night so many times. Since then, I wear my shirt tails out.

Chris Cagle

[Chris has fond memories of his first tour-bus ride back home to Nashville after playing a show in Shreveport, La.] Man, I was like a kid in a candy store. I flipped every switch on that thing, and turned every knob and found every cubbyhole. It was awesome. I told the guys, “Man, we had a great show.” They played their butts off, and I went and got two cases of beer and a deck of cards and we sat around and played spades and had a ball.

Shawna Russell

After a week of touring Texas with my band in our Safari motor home, we were headed back home to Oklahoma. At 3:30 in the morning, just outside of Gainesville, Texas [only a few miles from crossing the Red River] we began to hear strange ‘whining, screeching, whirring’ noises coming from the engine compartment, which was under the bed the drummer was sleeping on. After a few minutes, the noises progressed to ‘clunking, clattering and hissing.’ At about the time we began to lose power and come to an abrupt stop, a clap of thunder announced the beginning of a huge thunderstorm, with sideways blowing rain, hail, and big lighting.

When we opened the engine compartment, there was smoke, steam, antifreeze, diesel, and indistinguishable metal fragments everywhere. Just before the flames broke out, we all grabbed our guitars and fled into the downpour. We ducked under an abandoned gas station awning and called the police—who called a wrecker. Then, we made our way to an all-night diner and waited three hours for my husband to come and pick us up. I will never forget the image of us walking down the road with our guitars, in a rainstorm, while our motor home was on fire behind us! This event later inspired the opening scenes of my first video, “Should’ve Been Born With Wheels.”

Jonathan Singleton

We paid $500 for our van through some redneck wheeling and dealing. It’s not too bad now because we had it reconfigured to look like a limo on the inside. We have to get sleep sometime. Sooner or later the floorboard starts to look good. Our light guy, Sambo, is a bigger guy. He fell asleep down there one night. When he woke up he couldn’t figure out where he was. He was screaming in the floorboard. Stuck between the seats. He would have woken us all up then, if we weren’t already awake from his snoring.

Emily West

I was playing a huge festival with ‘Ms. Awesome’ herself, Reba. A horrible storm came in, and all the buses were just a-shakin’ like crazy. Pretty soon we found out that a tornado was coming in. I was so scared. Not from all the tornado talk and freezing rain, but from the horrific idea of me not getting the chance to meet Reba! Long story short, no one died, and even more importantly, I finally got to meet my favorite gal in show business. Reba gracefully took pictures and met with everyone in line, looking gorgeous and as ready as ever to sing the ba-jangles out of “Fancy.” Being the pro she is, she did just that. I got rehearsal for what heaven might be like that day. Well . . . almost, without the rocking buses and rained-on party hair.

Katie Armiger

We were out on the road near Buffalo, NY visiting radio. Since we were so close to Niagara Falls we figured why miss it! My radio rep and I had never seen the falls and really wanted to check it off our “things to experience” list. We didn’t have much time so we decided to view the falls from state side. So we type in the attraction to our trusty GPS and let her guide us that way. The next thing we know we look up and see what looked like a toll booth under a sign reading “CANADA”. With no way to turn around we had nowhere to go but forward. As we pulled up to the border the officer seemed to be having a “bad day”. After yelling at us to back up when we pulled too close to the car in front of us, he reluctantly let us through after examining our drivers licenses and making sure we weren’t part of a firearm smuggling ring between the two countries.

From there the trip was great! We were in a different country. We got to see the falls (which were amazing). With little time left to get to our next station visit, we hurried back to the car. We pulled up to the border to get back in to the states. I clearly remember all our jaws dropping when the officer asked for our driver licenses and birth certificates. We explained to him that we only had our licenses with us. He seemed totally baffled as to how we got into Canada. Apparently to get into the country you must have two valid forms of government issued ID. After about 15 minutes of interrogation, the officer realized we were more naïve tourists than plotting criminals and let us through. It was quite an experience! I was scheduled to perform on CBS’s The Early Show that week and all that was running through my mind was making the call to my manager to see if we they would let us satellite feed the performance from my new residence in Canada!

Steve Azar

When I was in college at Delta State back in Cleveland Mississippi (home of the Fighting Okra), I remember our guitar player had just bought a new wireless pack and we decided it would be cool if we started our show with him at the top of the auditorium stairs. The room is dark, eyes have adjusted and the show begins. And just as he takes his first step, hits his first power chord and the spot light hits him, he goes blind, misses a step, tumbles all the way down the stairs, but never misses a note. It was pretty funny once we discovered he wasn’t badly injured.

Luke Bryan—Wrote “Good Directions” for Billy Currington

One show in Council Bluffs, Iowa, at the Whiskey Roadhouse comes to mind. I was in there a few days after Billy Currington, and Billy had the Whiskey Roadhouse print up posters that read Bryan Luke in concert. Billy had these things posted everywhere when I got there. I asked Van Haze, one of my radio promotion guys with Capitol who was on the road with me at the time, what was that about? Little did I know he was in on the joke as well, and he said. “Man it is what it is. There is nothing I can do about it now!“All the while he was snickering at every turn in the venue when he saw a poster. The next thing I know the radio station shows up and is calling me Bryan Luke. I am really thrown for a loop at this point. I ask Van what is going on? The next thing I know Van is rolling on the floor laughing and I knew I had been had.

For more, check out the April 20 issue of Country Weekly.

• April 13, 2009
• story by David Scarlett, Chris Neal and Bob Paxman

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