Triumph Over Tragedy, Take One

For those of you familiar with the goincase blog’s music coverage, you’ll no doubt recognize the name Brother Reade, Los Angeles by way of North Carolina’s hardest working rapper/dj duo. While on tour this summer DJ Bobby Evans ran over his Incase backpack with the tour van. Prior to this the pack had looked rather nice, we’d just given it to him in Portland during MFNW. But more importantly, the pack had Evan’s MacBook Pro in it. You know— the computer with all the songs, beats, contacts, and contracts for their tour. Woof. Incredibly, Brother Reade’s Jams F. Kennedy claims this story has a happy ending. Read on:

On our recent tour with Girl Talk, we were lucky enough to have a short run of exhilarating shows that were all packed with wild and receptive crowds. We went through the Northwest, where each different city is beautiful and lush, and has its own distinct flavor. We felt on top of the world, able to treat ourselves to regional food and drink that we only hear about in legends down in Los Angeles, and we were extremely pumped for the crisp weather and copious amounts of roadside thrift shops teeming with secondhand wool. Our days were filled with excellent meals and good weather, and our nights were full of febrile dance parties. Everything was perfect. Except that time we ran over DJ Bobby Evans’ laptop with the tour vehicle.

A little back story: Bobby Evans is the DJ/Producer for Brother Reade. I should also mention that for one reason or another, he’d had the same record bag for far too long. So you can imagine, that when Incase contacted us and wanted to furnish us with some pieces of theirs he was elated and couldn’t wait to use their products to organize his road gear and dispense with the (let’s be honest, somewhat tattered) bags he had been using to date. We picked up the Incase shipment at our show at MusicFest Northwest (MFNW) and were truly psyched to get it (very infrequently do the right pairings happen in the world of artist gifting/sponsorship, but those guys over there seem to be on to something).

Now, after MFNW our next show was at the Showbox SoDo in Seattle, where Mr. Evans finally got around to switching out his gear into the new bags. We somewhat ceremoniously trashed the old bags, packed up the rest of our things, and pulled out of the parking lot. And we heard a dragging sound. Everyone’s first thought in the car was that we were dragging the old bags. The old bags had been left outside, not thrown in the dumpster, and were being dragged by the car. We all believed this. So we pulled further out of the parking lot, when it hit us. Oh snap. We’re driving with one of the NEW bags under the tire of the car. The one with the laptop in it. The laptop with all the songs for our set, that we can’t play without. In the middle, not the end of the tour. Uh oh.

So we did the obvious thing, stopping the car, retrieving the laptop, assessing the damage, and something like a small miracle happened. I can’t stretch the truth to say that the laptop or the bag weren’t at all damaged, but I can say that they weren’t damaged beyond repair, and we were able to link the laptop to another computer and retrieve all of the songs we needed to off of it. AND after minor repairs the computer is fine, still in working order, due in no small part to the design of the bookbag, which we can now firmly endorse and attest to, in a true and completely sincere way, devoid of any of the usual cheesiness/self interest that normally lurks behind such sentiments. Now if you come see Brother Reade play a show, it’s likely you’re watching Bobby Evans DJ off of a laptop that HAS BEEN RUN OVER BY A CAR AND STILL WORKS. You might also see him carrying it around in a bookbag with roadrash and the tags still on it. We got lucky, don’t try this at home.

Love,

Jimmy Jams of Brother Reade