From a broken down van to haunted hotels, take a look at DREAMERS' best tour moments

June 16, 2017

[All photos by: CJ Moy]

Like every touring musician knows, life on tour can become stressful and overwhelming, but it's important to approach the whole experience with an optimistic curiosity and a craving for adventure — and that's exactly what DREAMERS did.

Take a look at what Nick Wold, Marc Nelson and Jacob Lee Wick did in their spare time between shows.

[Taken at Bottlerock Festival, Napa, CA]

Embarking on such a memorable tour with Griswolds and Head and the Heart (to name a few), the DREAMERS team had the right idea each time they decided to capture a moment and take a snapshot. Check out these photos from the tour that are being exclusive shared with Alternative Press:

1. Desert trip

In March, our van broke down 100 feet from the Mexican border while driving in the middle of the Arizona desert. Help arrived and we crammed into the cabin of a tow truck for an awkward ride to Yuma. The next day, we ditched our broken van and rented two minivans to make it to the next show. On the way, we stopped in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and went for a hike to clear our minds and watched the sun go down.

2. Playing childhood video games

The alt radio station 103.9RXP in Colorado Springs invited us in for an interview and acoustic session. We had a few hours to kill before load-in for our show and spent all of it playing games on the station’s old Nintendo.

3. Nick Wold and Marc Nelson outside Hotel Nevada in Ely, Nevada

Tour routing had us driving across Nevada to get to Reno for our first night with the Head And The Heart. We’d spent the entire day driving and decided to stop for the night in Ely, Nevada. The main strip was mostly deserted aside from the bright neon and flashing lights that the historic Hotel Nevada greeted us with. The person at the reception warned that the hotel was haunted. At a pool hall next door, a few cops invited us to take a tour of a local brothel. Ely is a town out of David Lynch’s imagination.

4. Nick relaxing in dressing room in Santa Barbara, California, after a grueling drive

Traveling in a van, we drive ourselves. It was necessary that we drive overnight to make the next show. Between Reno and Santa Barbara there was a treacherous snow storm dumping on the Sierra Nevada mountain pass. We pulled over to put snow chains on our tires, only to realize these were too large for our new van’s tires. There was no chance of driving through the storm, so we headed back down the mountain and parked at Wal-Mart for the night. We made it to Santa Barbara the next day, welcomed by blue skies and warm weather.

5. Right before jumping on the Vegas High Roller to play a few acoustic songs

Before our show in Vegas, the local radio station invited us to play a few songs on a giant ferris wheel. They packed a bunch of fans into our car and we embarked on a 30-minute journey, getting a nice view of the city at sunset.

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6. Nelson playing his beloved Fender P Bass

Back in December 2015, our van was broken into by thieves in Columbus, Ohio. Amongst the stolen equipment was Nelson’s custom bass—one of his prized possessions. There wasn’t much hope of seeing it again. Nearly two years later, Columbus police called and said they found the bass. This was one of the first tours Nelson could bring his bass on since they were reunited.

7. Sitting backstage before our opening set for Weezer

In May, we played two supporting shows for Weezer. Before the first show, Rivers [Cuomo] stopped by our dressing room to say hi and talk about today’s alt music. It was humbling to be treated as an equal by a legendary rock star who we all grew up listening to.

8. Florida vacation, Jacob Lee Wick in the pool

We’ve been on the road almost nonstop since February this year and there’s not much time for rest. Even when there’s time off at home in LA, it’s used to write new music. In between our fly dates, we had a rare few days off to relax in Florida. We rented a house in a quiet neighborhood that came complete with a pool to float in and nice kitchen that we used to cook up feasts every night.

9. The crowds at Free Press Summer Fest and Bunbury

At the end of May and beginning of June, we played a string of festivals that took place in all corners of the country. After playing one set, we’d have to catch a red eye to the next city. As we were trying to leave FPSF in Houston, it started pouring and our rental van was trapped in between fencing and another vehicle. Staff were preoccupied dealing with the rain and couldn’t help us; so Nick broke open the fencing by hand, and we sped off to the airport all before the festival was evacuated.

10. Minutes before hitting the stage in Minneapolis

So much time is spent traveling to gigs by driving or flying. We rush to make load-in, then sit around doing nothing before the show starts. Sometimes one of us has a bad day or we’re stressed out or exhausted. Then it’s time to play a set and all those issues stop existing. We hug it out and take the stage and share our music with all the people who’ve come to also forget about their problems.

Give their new music video a watch now! On the video, Nick Wold says it takes place in an LA dreamscape—and is all about how we keep going back to things that just hurt so good.

“The 'Painkiller' video, Directed by the amazing Nic Collins, is set in some kind of freaky Los Angeles dreamscape. Bloodied and bruised, I try to find the one person who can kill my pain, even if she might be the very one who caused it. It's about how we sometimes keep going back to the things that hurt us, when they just happen to hurt so good.”