I’m on the phone with the drummer from Calgary rock band Sittin’ Idol, who refers to himself simply as Stu. His story hails from 2005, when Sittin’ Idol had to drive from Thunder Bay to Winnipeg in a single day.
“The two guys that were taking turns driving had been up all night, so they were exhausted,” Stu begins. “We got about an hour and half out of Thunder Bay and thought we were going the right way. Then we saw there was the U.S. border crossing in front of us, so we’d obviously made a big error. But there was nowhere to turn around with our trailer and stuff. Our only option was to drive around, past the Canadian building, so we did a U-turn and then tried to essentially come back into the country, even though we never left.”
What a coincidence! I know a certain person with the initials A.V. who once tried the same thing on the bridge connecting Windsor to Detroit. It was very simple U-turn; however, it seems Americans are unfamiliar with this maneuver; the officials at U.S. Customs are very suspicious of U-turns, and do not take kindly to them whatsoever.
Sittin’ Idol made the same discovery. “They wouldn’t let us in!” Stu exclaims. “They didn’t believe our story, and when they realized we were a rock band they were like, ‘Oh, we’ll get these guys for drug possession or something.’ They held us up there for hours, and tried to bluff us: they took our driver’s licenses and scanned them all through the system, and when they gave them back to us they said they’d found cocaine on them, and they were going to search the van. They were asking us if we were storing drugs anywhere on our bodies.“
“You weren’t, right?” I ask.
“No, no,” Stu says. “The thing that was going to take the most time was they wanted us to unload all of our gear out of our trailer, and look in every drum case, every guitar case, and we were thinking, ‘We’re going to have to call and cancel this gig.’ Finally they said, ‘Well, we can bring the dogs out,’ and we were ecstatic about that, because we assumed if they brought the dogs out and they didn’t find anything we’d be able to get going a lot quicker.”
At this point, I can’t help wanting to call the band “Sittin’ Idle” instead, but Stu makes sure I get the spelling right—it seems he’s encountered this problem before.
He continues: “Once they saw we were really enthusiastic about the dogs then they said, ‘Well, you must not have anything,’ so after they made fun of us a little bit, they let us go.”
“Oh—what a good tip!” I exclaim. You read it first in SEE: attention, border-crossing musicians! If you find yourself held up at U.S. Customs, just ask for the dogs right off the bat! (Provided you aren’t actually carrying any drugs, of course.)
“Well,” Stu concludes, ”we thought this would be a good story that was, you know, print-friendly.” Not just print-friendly, but the stuff to make any parent proud: a clean record at the border, no drugs, concern about being tardy. Very upstanding. Just overlook the part about how the band had to speed like crazy to get to their gig on time.
Sittin’ Idol is part of the lineup at Boonstock this weekend on July 4.