Cash Savage And The Last Drinks Recall The Time They Were Almost Arrested On Tour In France

Ahead of their hotly anticipated national tour for their recently released album 'So This Is Love', Cash Savage and The Last Drinks recall one of their craziest stories from an overseas tour, which involves a French canal, a fan and a whole load of cops. Originally telling the story on the latest episode of Seja Vogel's podcast, HearSej, the band have transcribed it below with no juicy details spared.  

So we played this show in France, and there are canals. I dunno if there are many canals, but there's definitely one canal, and it's beautiful. It looks like a painting of a French city.

We played at a venue called the Moon of Pirates, in French, it's La Lune des Pirates. It is this awesome venue that's quite narrow but has a huge rise on it, so the people at the top are standing way higher than the top of the stage. The venue must have been sold out, it was packed, and we had a really fun time playing the show. 

In the canal was this wooden man wearing a T-shirt, and we were like, "What's with the guy in the canal wearing the T-shirt?" They explained that the universities and different sporting clubs swim out there and put their t-shirt on the guy, and then there's a competition where they see how long their t-shirt's going to be out there. We asked if we could put our t-shirt out there, asking if anyone would anyone be offended. We didn’t want to piss any of the local customs, we didn’t want to piss anyone off. And they were like, "Of course, you can do it, but it's illegal to get in the canal." And we're like, "That's ridiculous." So two of our band members, Rashan and Kat, volunteered to put our band t-shirt on this canal man.

So the show all wrapped up, and next to the canal where the venue was, was this little street that can only be accessed if you need to be there. So you have these bollards that come up and down. Our driver goes and gets the van, and we're like, let's do this. It was amazing and clear; you could see fish swimming around and stuff during the daytime. They told us that there was often glass at the bottom of the canal, so we gaffer taped their thongs to their feet, and a couple of us made gaffer tape, priest outfits, like the little priest collar. And we were like, if the cops come, we'll just say everyone got God's blessing, then fuck off.

Ed and I were singing the worst version of Moon River that you've ever heard, which we like to sing together. Our version has its own lyrics, but they're all really bad. So we were singing Moon River, and Rashan and Kat get into the water, and they swim out and climb up onto this guy (It turns out he is a little bit bigger than he looks from a distance) and put one of our t-shirts onto him. While they're out there, the rest of us, who are not being discreet at all, see these lights and sirens going off, and we realise its the cops, and they've seen us. We were like, 'Fuck, it's the cops, it's the cops. Get back, get back." So they swim back, and we are all screaming, "Get in the car, get in the car, get in the car!"

We all get in the car, we're in this little, tiny lane and we're yelling at the driver, "Drive! Drive! Drive! Drive! You gotta go! You gotta go!" But he's just showed up, he doesn't know what's been happening. He's just got out and seen us climbing out of the water. And then we're like, "You gotta go! You gotta go! you gotta go!"

As we're driving off, these fans jump out of nowhere, and they stop us, and they're saying, "Oh my god, really good show tonight, that was a really good show tonight." And we're like, "Get outta the way, get outta the way the cops are coming!" And then the cops get there, and they're not happy with us. There's about five of them. And then the venue staff have to come out and help us and are like "They're just Australian idiots, they don't know what they're doing." 

We said "We're just gonna go, and we're never going to come back!" I mean, I'd love to come back, anyone from Amiens in France who's listening to us, we had such a good show. We'll absolutely come back but don't tell the cops we're there. 

Then, we were like, "We have to get outta here, now."

In the end, the cops were being very serious, but then one of them goes, "You know, sometimes there are sharks in there." When he said that, we were like, ahh, we are off the hook. We are fine. No one's being arrested tonight. We can all go to the next show tomorrow. We were playing Paris the next night. It was a really big show, and we could not afford for anyone to be arrested. So then the next day, we made our driver drive back into town, which was 20 minutes the other way to get a photo of the shirt on the guy. And it was still there. It was amazing. We were the worst criminals anyone's ever seen. 

I'll tell you what, when those cops came, we took our priest collars off, we were like, we do not need to stoke this fire. I'd love to, I'd love to talk to those fans who jumped in front of us, ha! Could you imagine that you see a band drive off, and you're like, "Hey, that was a really good show." And they're like, "Get that fuck outta the way the cops are coming." And then the cops stopped the band!

The venue guys were like, "When we said to go in the canal, we thought you would go at like 3:00 AM, NOT NOW!" It was 11pm and there were still people everywhere in the streets. 

Anyway, no one got arrested, no one got sick, and no one got any glass in their feet.

You can listen to more of Cash Savage and The Last Drinks' episode on HearSej, here. 

You can also buy tickets to the band's upcoming national tour here.