When I tell Sam Reld, keyboardist from the legendary Canadian pop/rock band Glass Tiger, that my column is devoted to colourful anecdotes from musicians about life on the road, he becomes overwhelmed with option anxiety. That’s understandable-—after all, his band has been touring for 25 years.

“There’s stories all the time,” he says. “There’s never a static moment, no matter what planning you have in the world and no matter how good your road manager is.”

After deliberating for a few moments, Reld decides on a recent tale.

“Last January,” he begins, “we toured out west with Honeymoon Suite, and they put the two bands together in one bus, which is always... interesting. One road family cooped up together in a tube is one thing, but when you merge two bands that have to coexist in a small bus....” I can hear Reld carefully editing himself here as the sentence trails off. 

He continues. “We had this old, rickety bus. There was an overload of people, and everybody had laptops, iPods, cellphones; everybody was plugging stuff in. We were going through the Rocky Mountains, and I forget which pass it was, but it was one of the ones that’s closed off and on due to avalanches.

“So it was the middle of the night, we’re barreling along, and because everybody had decided to plug everything in, it turns out we cooked the electrical stuff. Suddenly all of the lights went out on the bus—they didn’t dim or flicker; they went out. So now we’re on a mountainous road, with no streetlights, no headlights, and the driver’s navigating upcoming turns by shadows. It could have wiped out both bands immediately; on each side of us were sheer drops of thousands of feet.”

I wonder for a moment if Mother Nature would have had a preference as to which band survived, or maybe she’d have decided to play no favourites and obliterated them both.

Continues Feld, thankfully unaware of my thoughts: “Everybody was wide awake the rest of the night, you know. We almost died.... We never plugged anything in ever again after that!”

Then Feld switches gears, and tells me about the band’s history of pulling pranks.

“Years ago, we were touring in Sweden, and I was really infatuated with a girl that I had met on the tour.” A brief pause. “This was before I was married,” he quickly adds.

“I ended up hanging out with this girl, whose name was Eva, through the whole tour, and spent a ton of money, though we never did ever get together! The guys got such a laugh that I was spending a fortune, trying to, ah... Well, the thing is, when you’re dealing with language barriers, and stuff like that....” Feld trails off again.

“Anyway, because it kind of just fizzled out, and I was really, really infatuated with her. They made this card that looked like a Visa card, except it was an Eva card. One night I got to the dressing room and they were all wearing t-shirts with this Eva card, there were posters made and everything. Our sound guy, I know he was the mastermind behind that one. You got to have thick skin for that stuff, but you just wait for their turn to come round.” Feld pauses nostalgically and then says brightly, “A lot of effort goes into those practical jokes! And of course, this was long before Photoshop!”

Feld is winding down now. “I don’t think there’s a band anywhere in the world that doesn’t pull pranks on each other,” he concludes. “It’s part of your survival. Touring can be tedious, demanding, you’re away from home and family. The pranks range from mild to moderately extreme, but it can never go too far because you still have to do the rest of the tour with these guys.”

Maybe that’s why Glass Tiger is still together after all these years. They play the Empire Ballroom March 20.