It was August 2015, we were on our first tour of Europe, and it was our last show, so we were all absolutely destroyed.
We were playing this little town called Znojmo in the Moravian region of the Czech Republic, which is incredibly beautiful. We were playing in the courtyard of a cathedral from the 12th century and it was right in the centre of the old town. We had to get a security escort in there just to park the van, which was a Volkswagen.
We’d had a massive night the night before. Everything was a little out of control. There were these punters playing this game where they were spitting water in each other’s faces, and they spat water in one of the band member’s faces. So he took his drink and spat it in her face, but his drink was orange juice and vodka, which burned her eyes, and she went bananas at him – “Why did you do that to me?!”
The next day we woke up and were running late for this last show at Znojmo. Kat [Mear], our violinist, was up the front of the van vomiting into a large McDonald’s cup, pouring it out the passenger-side window as we were driving down the highway. Later, we got to a petrol station and the drummer, Rene [Mancuso], came up to me and said, “I’ve got to show you something” – a huge gouge out of the wall of the tyre on the front passenger side of the van.
It was so dangerous, it could have blown out at any moment. We looked underneath, there was no spare tyre and we had to get to this gig.
We’d told the car hire place in Germany that we weren’t going to the Czech Republic. For some reason, they specifically asked if we were going there, so of course we flat-out lied and went to the Czech Republic. So we couldn’t really call them from the Czech Republic, could we? It was already the second van we got off them, because the air conditioning in the first one broke down.
In hindsight, I don’t think we needed to lie, but fuck, we didn’t know what we were doing – we just thought, if anyone asks any questions, don’t give away any information at all!
Photograph: Supplied
So, we got to the gig, and everybody fell out of the van. Kat the violinist was lying there in a heap with her head in her hands. The festival booker thought there was no way we were going to be able to get it together. But the show was incredible! The town church bells rang halfway through, and it turned out the church bells were in C, and when they rang they actually were in key with the music. It was magical.
The next day we had to get the van back to Frankfurt, which was hours away, and the van wasn’t safe to drive. It was a Sunday, everything was closed, and half the band was flying out the next morning. A friend of one of the guys managed to get through to the only tyre place in town, and they didn’t have the right tyre, but the guy who made the call suggested that we take the tyre off his mum’s van, which was a Renault.
It turned out it was the wrong size – it was a completely different tyre – but it did fit the rim. So we swapped them over, paid this guy some money so he could get a new tyre for his mum, and drove our van to Frankfurt with it pulling to one side the whole time because the tyre was the wrong size. We returned the van without saying a word, got on a plane and flew out of the country. We never heard another thing about it.
Cash Savage and the Last Drinks play Melbourne Recital Centre on 11 March
