Interpol isn't the only touring act to be adversely effected by the massive dumping of snow in upstate New York. The Pitch checked in with other bands and artists to see how they are making the most of their time amid the blizzard.
The band admits that while their tour bus has been frozen to the interstate in Western New York for 96 hours, it has not dawned on them to touch their instruments once, hum or turn on the goddamn radio. Lead singer Damian Kulash is however sketching out an idea to liberate over 1,000 Buffalo senior citizens from area nursing homes and arm them each with snowblowers and have them do a synchronized clearing of snow that would create the world’s largest snowflake pattern. “ It'll be a magnificent wintertime crop circle,” Kulash explains of the short film that is slated to be underwritten by Toro, provided the band can come up with a song.
The Foo Fighters have quickly found a way to capitalize on recently being stuck in a snowdrift. They will produce a 14-episode series with The Weather Channel that will see them driving into the heart of North American weather patterns and writing some kick-ass rock and roll songs with famous meteorologists like Al Roker and Sam Champion, as well as local, unsung meteorologists. “There’s all kinds of weather,” says drummer Taylor Hawkins. “There’s blizzards, sure, but a lot of it is just us telling the stories of meteorologists from Amarillo, Spokane, Bangor, or wherever killer weather happens. These people have been on the front lines of weather that people who don’t live in their immediate vicinity have probably never seen. Rain. Snow. Sleet. Sunshine. Etc.” Each song will have at least one lyric from a local forecast. The first single is called, “Now back to you, Larry and Rita.”
Touring in a 1973 Cadillac Eldorado with rear-wheel drive, when Jack White found himself caught in the worst blizzard in Western New York in over 318 years, he quite simply lost his shit. White is still screaming at his loss of control and scraping his windshield with rare 78s.
With her wi-fi fading, and bus iced over on a Buffalo exit ramp, Palmer is calling on fans from from the city (as well as "cooler ones from Toronto") to make a small donation via her new crowdfunding app, FanWallet™. Doing so will give them the right to join the “Palmer Patrol,” a bawdy, rag-tag vaudevillian search party that will use objects like tubas and antique obstetric forceps as snow-clearing devices to hunt for her bus. Once located, they’ll shovel her out, and turn the excess snow into a sculpture of something shocking and profound, and maybe named Amanda.
Stranded for a fourth of a fortnight, the group has bravely abandoned their tour bus and is performing a series of intimate concerts in the backseats of nearby stranded vehicles (29 and counting so far), as many of their owners succumb to frostbite. “The biggest crowd we’ve played to was three,” says guitarist/singer Romy Madley Croft. “So for us that’s ideal.”
“To sit in your minivan shivering as the gas runs out and a wall of snow completely pancakes it, well, I thought I was gutted. Then these strange British people started breathing on my window, then climbed in and played like one note every 9 minutes,” says Debra Bleskacik. “So I guess I wasn’t quite gutted until that happened.”
The Black Keys have written a song called “Snow Globe” that sounds just like “Fever” and is mainly just Dan Auerbach honking out “globe” over and over and taking guitar solos, while drummer Patrick Carney busies himself pecking at a Samsung Horror, looking to get in fights with other bands and artists who are stranded in the storm as well. "Sorry, I'm not out here to make friends," Carney tweeted late Wednesday night. "And Meghan Trainor is unequivocally THE WORST PART OF THIS BLIZZARD."