Matt Langley, keyboardist from Fair to Midland, begins this week’s road story with an explanation.

“If you’ve watched any of our videos,” he says, “you may know when our singer [Darroh Sudderth] becomes inspired, he likes to climb things. He dangles from the light riggings and things like that.” (Sudderth’s tendency to crawl horizontally on the light tresses, which supposedly hold their own weight plus 300 pounds, is, according to Langley, “perfectly safe.”) “The band was onstage, and [Sudderth] goes into this, and the house stage manager came over, and was yelling at our GM to bring him down. But, well, at that point, how the hell do you do that? We just finished the show instead.”

Langley continues: “After the show, the headliner was loading out, and the stairway was temporarily clogged with gear, so some of us couldn’t get up to the dressing room. There was one of us in particular who had a need to use the restroom right at that time, so what this band member—who will remain unnamed—does is find a couple of empty plastic cups, goes into the corner, and uses those. And while he was midway through this process, the house manager, who was already angry with us, happens to come up the stairs, and sees a young man...”

“Peeing in a cup,” I offer.

“Well, no. She didn’t see the cups.”

“Oh!” 

Langley chuckles. “Yeah. I believe the words that came out of her mouth were ‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ and she shook her head and continued up the stairs. Pretty soon a security guy comes running down and is asking everyone, ‘Okay, where is it? Somebody peed on the wall. I have to clean it up, and I’m going to find the guy who did it.’ But we assured him, ‘The walls are unmarked. We wouldn’t do that, we’re not complete animals!’”

“Just partially,” I suggest, referring back to Sudderth’s fondness for the monkey bars.

“Well,” Langley says philosophicallys, “aren’t we all?” 

The story continues. “So we explain all this to the security guard, but he’s not buying it. He says, ‘We’ve got video cameras here, we’re going to find out who did it, so might as well just ‘fess it up now’—even though I explained to him that the band member in question was relieving himself into a vessel which he then took outside and threw away. But then the security guard says, ‘Well, what’s the difference?’ And our drummer, who was trying to get up the stairs, says, ‘I could show you the difference if you’d like. There’s quite a big difference.’

“Anyway, the stage manager called ahead to the next town and told the promoter we should probably be stricken from the bill because of our horrible behaviour; we’re savages, we relieve ourselves wherever we want, dangle from fragile structures, and risk our lives.... But the promoter in the next town said, ‘I want to see this band! Tell them to come on!’”

“That probably didn’t make the stage manager any less angry,” I say.

Langley laughs. “Ah, no... It has grown into quite a story with the venues. They now have this talk with us up in the greenroom: ‘Okay, boys, we’ve heard a lot of things.... We all talk, you know. Only pee in the bathroom, please, and don’t climb anything; the light structures are meant to hold the lights, nothing more,’ and it’s something bigger every time. It’s now at this inconceivable point where they’re saying our lead singer was peeing on everyone in the front row while dangling from the roof.”

Fair to Midland plays the Shaw Conference Centre with Serj Tankian on March 16.