Jerry Fitzpatrick, self-described professional talent relocation specialist, a.k.a. tour bus driver, for Dave Matthews Band and many other artists, recently sat down for an interview with photographer Mark Laita for his Soft White Underbelly series.
The fascinating conversation starts with Jerry’s background, including his abusive childhood, which motivated him to run away and work with a traveling carnival at a young age. He then describes how he began driving trucks full of music gear for major tours before ultimately transitioning to transporting talent in a tour bus.
Jerry talks about his experiences driving everyone from Aerosmith, Van Halen, and the Grateful Dead to Milli Vanilli, Keith Urban, and Depeche Mode, and while he protects his clients’ privacy, he isn’t shy about sharing some of the wild things he’s seen. He describes the time his bus was shot up while he was driving Bobby Brown and New Edition, listening to a band argue as they played poker with cocaine instead of chips, and seeing lines of men waiting “to get their bobos honked” by generous groupies, but the most notable incident he mentions is the time in 2004 when Dave Matthews Band’s tour bus infamously dumped 800 pounds of poop off a bridge in Chicago and onto an unsuspecting group of tourists in a boat below.
“You know, there was an incident of that happening, and I was in Chicago when that happened. But it was not me; I had nothing to do with it at all, nothing,” Jerry explains. “I was accused of it, actually, because I [was] driving a bus, [but] I didn’t do that. … The person that did it eventually got found out, got caught, got brought before the court, and was sentenced to some punishment.”
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He goes on to describe the events for those unfamiliar with the incident while displaying the utmost professionalism:
The incident occurred where my tour bus was on its way to the venue, on its way to pick up someone, and as it crossed a grated bridge, he flipped a switch that allowed his dump to dump. Unbeknownst to him, he didn’t look—I mean, he shouldn’t have done it anyway—there was an architectural tour going down the river. I guess it’s the Chicago River, and it happened to dump on the folks at that time. It was a nasty mess. This driver didn’t use his head. He caused a lot of problems, a lot of problems. And you know, it’s a matter of stopping at a regular place and hooking your hose up and flipping that switch on your dash and letting it go in the proper place. And he didn’t do that, but I had nothing to do with it even though a lot of folks pointed their fingers at me.
Watch the full interview with tour bus driver Jerry Fitzpatrick below, and for more stories from the road, check out his book, Tales from the Trails of a Rock ‘n’ Roll Bus Driver.
The post Dave Matthews Band Tour Bus Driver Discusses Life On The Road, Infamous “Dumping” Incident, More [Watch] appeared first on L4LM.
