It’s been more than 20 years since Scottish twins Craig and Charlie Reid made their debut on the pop airwaves with their notorious hit, “(I’m Gonna Be) 500 Miles.” Craig provides ample evidence the duo’s been at it for quite some time: their touring has placed them in Lockerbie, Scotland, during the ferry disaster of 1994, in America for 9/11, and in the former USSR during the Battle of Stalingrad. Okay, he’s joking about Stalingrad.

“It’s definitely never, ever a day job,” says Reid. “We got stuck here in North America after 9/11. We played in Annapolis, Maryland the night before. We got in the bus and we’re heading to Atlanta, and got up the next morning to hear the first plane had gone into the World Trade Center. The bus driver was a little vague.... We thought he got it wrong.

“We were one month in on a three-month tour with the Barenaked Ladies, and it was the best tour we’d ever had, but then for two months to keep going.... I think most everybody pulled almost every date they could. Hardly anybody was touring.”

The tour apparently did continue, but the venues were by necessity switched to smaller places. “It was the very, very committed fans only that would come out to the gigs after [9/11],” Reid says. “I felt only a few songs were poignant enough after that; the ballads seem to capture the mood a lot better than the uptempo numbers, and we do an awful lot of uptempo numbers!”

I imagine the tour lost a tremendous amount of money, but, Reid explains, “We couldn’t get home, ’cause we had to get to the other side of the Atlantic. For the first 14, 21 days it was hard to get a flight anywhere.” 

So the duo ended up in Florida, a week after a fairly strong hurricane had hit, playing in an Irish pub. “We had a gay guy on a bicycle trying to maneuver a bag lady away from the window, and a guy doing breakdancing on the floor with lit cigarettes. It was the most surreal thing that’s ever happened to us on a tour. But I’m glad I was here and witnessed what had happened. It was a very, very strange time.”

On a lighter note, Reid offers some self-deprecating evidence to show what experienced touring performers he and his brother have become. This story takes place just after a soundcheck in Portland, Oregon, on the same tour.

“This one lady came up to us, and said”—and here Reid puts on a heavy American accent—“‘You know what? You guys remind me a lot of a couple of Scottish guys back in the ’80s. What were they called? I dunno, they had glasses just like you, but they were a lot thinner and seemed a lot younger.”

Reid sighs. “It’s bad enough when you’re mistaken for someone else, but when you’re mistaken for yourself... I guess that’s evidence of how long we’ve been on the road.”

Despite their non-reversal of the aging process, The Proclaimers have yet to miss a single date, according to Reid, so rest assured you’ll see them in fine form at the Century Casino Showroom on May 7. And, Reid concludes, “Though we’ve been around for a lot of tragedy, most of it’s been happy.”

I take that to mean there’s still a good number of uptempo tunes in their set. And that the past 20 years hasn’t been all bad.