Dispatches From The Road With dust And The Belair Lip Bombs
I came back from the USA a month ago.
My boss, the editor-in-chief of this dear magazine, Naz, let me stay at his house in New York City. Thanks, Naz. While there, I realised what I really wanted to do was get my friends together and go on a road trip across the country, seeing all the oddities the middle of the land of the free has to offer: the overweight Airbnb donkeys, the white rappers, and century-old rollercoasters. Well, luckily for our fellow Antipodean friends, dust and The Belair Lip Bombs, that’s exactly what they did on their joint USA tour, driving across the country and back. I caught up with both bands' drummers, Daniel Devlin and Kye Cherry, to get some stories from their five weeks on the road.
The Ruston Airbnb
Daniel Devlin: We were in a town in Louisiana called Ruston, staying in an Airbnb that was a farmhouse with donkeys. When we spoke to the Airbnb owner, she told us to feed the donkeys Twizzlers, the red licorice candy. We were all so confused, but they assured us it was fine. When we went to feed them, we noticed the donkeys were absurdly big, and Maisie was like, they might be pregnant. We Googled pregnant donkeys, and it looked bang on; the three of them looked pregnant. We messaged the owner, asking if they were pregnant and when they were going to have their babies, and she just was like, ‘They’re not pregnant, they’re just fat from all the Twizzlers all the guests feed them.’ We were like, fuck we should not be feeding them this shit [laughs]. It was crazy, their teeth were all black. It was so bad. I guess they do things differently in Louisiana.
Rapping video.
DD: We had just played at The Blue Room, which is the venue attached to Third Man Records in Nashville, so it was a bit of a hometown show for us because a lot of the team who worked on the record [Again] were there. After the show, we went out and hit the main drag. After the second bar we went to, we were all pretty drunk; we went out the front, and two guys were rapping. We went up to them, chatted, then they started filming, and in our drunken state, we all started dancing with them. It was funny until they started saying some pretty hectic lyrics. Justin was just like ‘Oh, that lyric isn’t good, man,’ and they just brushed it off. We didn’t really think much of it until we got tagged in this video by the rapper. We looked at it a few hours later, and it had three hundred shares; all our friends had found it, and it circulated. We had a bit of a viral moment in Nashville.
Kye Cherry: I was sick, so I went straight back to the hotel after the show. It was crazy to see it after missing out. The next day, we got in the van, and no one brought it up. I think I heard the word rapper once or twice, but no one was like ‘What the fuck happened last night.’ Then I went on Instagram and saw the dust account tagged in it, and was like, ‘Guys, what is this?’ It was a crazy way to find out what you’d missed.
San Diego Day.
DD: We toured with this band called Laveda, and we were coming to the end of the tour, but still hadn’t been able to spend a full day together doing a group activity, so we were brainstorming what we could do. Laveda knew about this iconic theme park in San Diego with a really old rollercoaster called Belmont Park. We planned to go there the day of our San Diego show, which was the second-to-last day of the tour. We were anticipating a three-hour drive to get there from Arizona, but it ended up taking six hours. We made it there in the end and rode this hundred-and-one-year-old rollercoaster. In hindsight, it was a pretty crazy thing to do at the end of a tour after eating such horrible food every day for over a month.
Treefort Festival, Boise.
KC: We played right before Built to Spill at Treefort Festival in Boise. It was the drunkest show I’ve ever played, so I have no idea what happened, but apparently the singer from Built to Spill [Doug Martsch] watched us play.
DD: What I heard was that the singer from Built to Spill was on the barrier watching you play. Apparently, he walked through the crowd during the dust set, and it was like Moses parting the seas; the whole crowd moved for him to get to the front. He watched a few songs and walked back out the same way, with the crowd parting.
Well, considering we’ve only got the drummers here, let’s get some good drummer stories.
KC: How’s it when your uncle’s drummer mate Tommy came to the gig?
DD: Oh yeah, I think I still have it; he gave me his band's business card after we played. His band is called The Vibe Band, and they all came to see us play. He came up to me and was like, ‘Introduce me to Kye, introduce me to Kye, he’s such a great player.’ Then we had a beer together, it was beautiful.
I don’t know how you guys play that many shows. My arms would fall off.
KC: It was pretty crazy. There were definitely points where I felt like I wasn’t able to do it, but it was always fine. Joe, the drummer in Laveda, is such a great drummer; he’s so fluid and creative, and it was so encouraging having him around. Joe, Dev, and I all got along really well, which helped a lot.
DD: Joe and Kye really helped me get through all the shows because every night they were playing before we played, I’d get so inspired watching them play. They were encouraging me to try different things on the drums, which kept things really fresh and also building stronger relationships with everyone in the band throughout the tour, makes it all worth it. Kye, Joe and I were joking about starting a drum podcast so we could keep hanging out together online.
KC: We’d always say we would do it in soundcheck, a couple drum hot takes, stitch them all together and go viral.
What were some of your hot takes?
KC: They weren’t that hot. Bottom heads are a psyop.
DD: We were trying to find a band we could all hate on, but we are all too cowardly to do that. The whole goal of the podcast is to make money, but also to get brand sponsorships in three different countries.
Oh, that’s good, never have to tour with anything.
DD: That’s the aim.
What’s the podcast going to be called?
DD: Quicksticks.
Are we doing it with an ‘x’ or ‘cks’?
DD: We didn’t think about that yet. It would be so good with the drumsticks just making an ‘X’. We’ve got a bit of a roster of drummers up our sleeve who we want to get on the podcast. I’m going to work on getting Dave Grohl. I’ll say, ‘If you want better PR after having a kid out of wedlock, you should come on the podcast.’