Punk band Against Me! cancelled its October 23 concert at The Venue in Salt Lake City, UT, when their tour bus hit a patch of ice on Interstate 80 and skidded out of control earlier that morning. Thankfully, no one suffered any injuries, but the band’s gear was thrown from the trailer and scattered all over the highway.
The accident occurred around 6:30 a.m. on October 23. On tour with Ted Leo and the Pharmacists and Future of the Left, Against Me! was en route to their gig that night in Salt Lake City.
Against Me! frontman Tom Gabel posted details of the incident in his blog, which in part, read: “Everyone was asleep when it happened. I didn’t want to wake up. Moments before I was sleeping so deeply. I was annoyed. I woke to the sound of my friends screaming, various expletives, inarticulate gasps, the sensation of spinning, and the sound of crashing inside and outside the bus. My eyes opened to blackness. I immediately pressed my hands and feet into the roof of my bunk as hard as I could, bracing for what I did not know.”
Gabel explained that when the bus finally came to a stop, it was almost on its side. The group’s driver, Jeremy, first called out names to make sure everyone was safe before leaving the bus to move scattered equipment from the overturned trailer off the road.
“Everyone got out to help,” Gabel wrote, quipping, “I always sleep with my pants on just in case something like this happens so that the last thing I have to worry about in the event of an emergency is where my pants are.”
According to Gabel’s statement, the trailer had broken free from its hitch during the skid and slammed into the front passenger side of the bus as it spun. Most of the band’s equipment and merchandise were spilled cross the road before he trailer came to a rest in a ditch in the highway median.
Gabel said of the experience, “I am glad to be alive. First and foremost I am glad that we are unharmed, safe, alive.”
Against Me! is on the road in the US through November 21 and then heads to Europe for shows December 1-11.
