Phoneboy - BUS INVADERS Ep. 2093

What's up? We're Phone Boy. My name's James. My name's Wynn. We're out here at Lincoln Hall in Chicago on the Heartbreak Designer Tour. Our new record, Heartbreak Designer, is out now everywhere. And we're here with Digital Tour Bus. We're going to be showing you guys the van. Well, yeah, we just came from the West. It's a national tour, so we went all the way to California. You know, we actually cleaned this recently. We should have probably cleaned it before we did this, actually. I mean, I think it adds character, maybe. Just, like, the carnage of the road. It's honest. That's what it is. For sure. So this is the front. This is where we do the driving. Captain and co-pilot. You know, when we're driving, we usually, like, take turns and kind of trade off shifts. But, you know, it's vital to have the driver, obviously. And even almost more essential is the co-pilot. Right. Keeping us awake, keeping the van going in the right direction, the music pumping, all of that. We have some sweet accessories up here. We have, of course, Bessie, who is the tour cow. She's been across the country with us at least five times. Yeah, everyone knows Bessie. We usually have her up here kind of trapping all of our gas receipts. But she's migrated down to the dashboard recently. Let's see, what else do we got? Well, we got Red right here. Red's the—he's our album cover for Heartbreak Designer. So it was only appropriate to take him on this run. We keep him here—actually, generally we keep him in a case. We don't want him to be lost. We have an air tag in there and everything, so I don't even think about stealing him. That's actually something we've had to think about a lot on the road and playing these shows. We got a bunch of hot sauces. This is the Aardvark sauce. We got Perona. I think that's my favorite. Oh, this one's good, too. On our rider, every day we ask for a local hot sauce. For a long time, we had a hard case full of all of them. But after using a lot of them, they just kind of— They kept spilling. They're spilling everywhere, so we've just kind of placed them around the van strategically. Oh, down here we got— Oh, the ketchup drawer. Yeah, if it opens. Yeah. Got a bunch of ketchup. Some regular ketchup, spicy ketchup. Keep that down there. Absolutely. Necessary for the road. You know, one of those things. I got a Tamagotchi right here. We have these amazing gifts that our fans have made for us. It's these beautiful crocheted roses. We have a song called Roses, so every night people are throwing them on stage. You know, when things are a little bit more durable, we try to hold on to them. Similarly, fan gifts. We got the Bear Lego set, Children's Day teddy bear. That was given to us by— Two kids in Denver, right? Yeah, two kids in Denver. I think they just saw it on their journey to the show. This is big. We've been doing a lot of sunflower seeds this tour. Cracked pepper is actually one of my favorites. I'd say it's the best flavor. I didn't realize I was doing it all wrong. You're supposed to eat the seed inside. You were kind of just crushing it. I was just crushing it, taking the flavor. No, and then spitting all of it out. Okay, fair enough. Well, I'm glad we have corrected that. So, on long drives, for DJing, I guess it depends what music we're listening to. It depends on who's the co-pilot and who's driving. I like when we're going through the West and James is DJing. You want to tell? It's always good to throw on some sort of scenic music. Maybe some 50s through 70s country when you're out in the desert. Late night drives, Ricky loves to play his club EDM mix. So, it feels like we're in the movie Drive. He also likes to play audio books, like inspirational audio books. Ricky has a hard time with self-confidence. And it's like, what's going on? We all see you on stage every night, but the inspirational audios, they kind of help us all, I'd say. Yeah, it's cool. Self-esteem. So, now we got the back of the van. This is the fun part of the van. Let's check this out. We recently flipped this seat around. To do so, we had to take out the metal beam in the middle, because the distance between this and this and this and that, it's not the same. It is very secure. I want everyone at home to know. We think it's two-thirds as secure. Mom and Dad, we are being safe. But, yeah, I guess back here, let's see. We got the hoop, the Street Pro games. Gotta get your dunks in when you can out on the road. We got neck pillow. This is my personal neck pillow from Bucky's. Unbelievably cheap and high-quality stuff coming from them. How we usually do up here is, it's either, like today, a lot of the time it will be James, myself, and our friend, Osley. He's doing lighting for us on tour. This is it. This is the vibe. Kind of just kicking it, you know, feet up. Feeling good. It's very conducive to conversations. It's a conversation pit, is that what we're calling it? I think so, yeah, the lounge. You know, we're on a van tour, but we try to bring the luxuries of a bus with us. Here we are. Of course, we got a bunch of waters. We got those today. What else do we have over here? We got, I guess, a bunch of Passion Fruit LaCroix. Shout-out beers, just random beers that we picked up along the tour. Let's see. Wow, someone must have cleaned this a little bit. I think so. I think someone came through. Oh, there's a pick. I actually might need that for today. That's it. What's his name? I don't know what his name is. Bane gave it to us in Atlanta or something like that. Yeah, I think in Atlanta. Eight-pack. I think these are the packs. Oh, so six-pack. Six-pack Mac, that's his name. That's the guy. As far as the hats go, aside from being a big Deftones fan and everything, we met up with our guy in Atlanta, Old School Hats. Old School Hats. He blessed us with all these beautiful accessories. Oh, this is a good one. This is a great one, actually. They took everything from me. Liam got that one. Let's see. That's not. I don't know where mine went. Let's see. Do you know what mine was? It was something about your mom liking me. I don't know. Then we also have, let's see, we got Niko, our photographer. He is a very stylish gentleman. He's always rocking this cowboy hat. We got Walter, who's slinging merch for us. He rocks a fedora like no other. Yeah, it's true. It's not something I can pull off. This is not the look, but on him, trust me. You look like Jason Mraz. I have a Jason Mraz vibe with this. Walter doesn't. Yeah, he looks cool. Let's see. We got our LED strips. We always got these up. It's like James said. We got the luxury, but it's in a van. We always have these up because a big part of being in Foneboy and going to Foneboy shows is it's a party, and our van has to reflect that. This is Walter's row, our merch guy. He's also our photographer. Yeah, he's always passing out back here. We have a massage tool of sorts. I think you kind of dig it in, and you can really get those hard-to-reach spots. Pick these up. These are crucial to being on tour. More neck pillows. This is where our photographer and videographer, Nico, sits, hence an enormous amount of cameras just hanging out. Also, the Nerf gun. You can never be too careful when you're out on the road. You kind of have to sometimes pull this out and let people know what's up. Back here, this is usually where Ricky and Jordan sit. I don't know where they are right now. They might be in the venue. I'm not sure. This is Ricky and Jordan's, I guess, but this is really Jordan's row. She's always sat back here. She used to work on the road too on her laptop, so she had a little desk. But now her and Ricky just kind of chill back here. We're not really allowed to go back here unless they're driving. And we wouldn't want to. It's not our place. No, we're not allowed. We got Ricky's skateboard. We just picked this up in Boise. We got a hacky sack. A hacky sack has been huge for us. We're trying to get back into our roots, and that's a huge part of my life. We were just hacky sacking in the van on the way here. That's the good thing about the 9-foot clearance. You can kind of stand up and get some sack in. Yeah, exactly. Just like that. Ricky's been reading more. This is a book called It by Stephen King. I think it's about a scary clown. I thought he was trying to read to calm himself. Yeah, I mean, he's an enigma. Sometimes he reads this, and he listens to motivational tapes. I don't know how he does it at the same time. I can't keep all that in my head. He kind of has that sort of air to him. This is big. This is important. People are getting sick, so you get to spray down the disinfectant for sure. Yeah, you kind of need that. Thank you. It's also what Ricky uses for his cologne. Clean citrus scent. Oh, it got in my mouth. This is Nico's. Is the cowboy hat right there? Yeah, the cowboy hat's here. I wish Nico was here so you could see his style. He's our videographer. It's a fit. He looks more like he's in a band than we do. Yeah, we look like we're the crew, I guess. Maybe. We're just the friends. Got another cow... Oh, can you pass me this hat? This one? This is a hat that a fan, whose name is also Wynn, made for us. Oh, what? We have a song called Ferrari, and this is kind of like a race car themed hat. Yeah, Wynn is sick and has made us a lot of different sort of cowboy hats for our times on the road, each representing a different album or a song. Shout out Wynn. Let's see, we got I'm the Boss, which is another Old School Hats original. Shout out Old School Hats. We got a blanket and a pillow. Blanket, pillow, stuffed animals. Nothing crazy. These are some Polaroids taken by a fan in the Roxy. That's a good photo of Ricky. That's a really good photo, actually. Good job. This was taken by Nico. Oh, these were taken by Nico and he printed them out. It's pretty cool, though. Shout out Nico. He's the boy. As we said, we're at Lincoln Hall in Chicago. Just kind of throw this up. People walking by remember where they are so we can remember where we are. It's helpful. You don't want to say the wrong name on stage. You'll get booed. It's happened to me before. I've said the wrong name. In Ann Arbor, I said, Thank you, Columbus, and everybody booed me. We do our best to kind of stay up to date where we are every day. We got the sign right here. This is definitely a storage area back here. Hopefully nothing falls out. We got your drill. This is my drill. You never know when you're going to need to make something happen on tour. My dad actually gave me this. He loves tools and he was very excited to hear that I needed tools. He sent me this. I have a whole kit. It might be in the trailer. We'll get there. We got a couple more skateboards. I think we got Walters down here. We got Osleys. Football. Frisbee. This is Ricky's jacket. This is kind of fun. We got some bling right here. This is a big Haribo gummy bear that you can kind of see was turned into a Flavor Flav style pendant. Some crosswords. Just stuff to keep us entertained when we're in the car and out of the car. This is the back. Not much to look at but it's crucial to our success. We care about speed and aerodynamic-ness. Someone parked right behind us. That's nice. Someone who works at the venue. I guess. We got a spoiler. It's been really helping with avoiding fishtailing. Drag generally. It just kind of keeps us locked down to the road. When you're making these tough turns it's really important to have something like that. It's also sexy. Sex sells. That's what we always say. And safety. We got this trailer from our friends in the band The Happy Fits. We bought it a few years ago. We've taken it all over the country. It's treated us well. We've replaced the tires on it. We've replaced the axles on it. It's our baby. At a certain point, if you replace everything on the trailer, is it the same trailer? We own the trailer and we do rent the van from Shout Out Green Vans. We love them. We get the same one every time. We always ask them can we have Carmelita back? And here she is. I don't know if we're allowed to turn the seats around so we're going to make sure we turn the seat back refasten the leg. Especially when we drive. Where did Jordan and Ricky go? I don't know. They might be getting food. I guess you could just show them the inside of the trailer. When we've got everything in the venue we need a place to hang out that's not the green room. Sometimes you want to hang out in a space that's actually your own. We like to chill in here. Oh ----. What's good? What are you guys watching? We're watching the baseball scene in Twilight. Getting ready for the show. It's our little relaxing moment. I guess we'll head inside. We're going to join them in here. We've got our movie theater. Twilight. Guys. What's up? Getting ready for the show. Just locking in. This is our little meditative space. We need to get away from the crowd. Get away from all the commotion. We've got the ambient light over here. It's really a great spot to do whatever you want. There are no rules in here. This is our photographer, Niko. He was gracious enough to lend us his amazing tripod. Very sturdy. Carbon fiber. You know the whole deal. We have a mini projector attached on top. Connected to a phone through an HDMI cable. And a little JBL speaker. Classic. Reliable. Loud. Tell us about the screen, guys. This is our HD screen. We got from I think... What's that one store in the airport? Best Buy. No. Hudson News. I don't know. Brookstone. It's really meant for IMAX. We're able to squeeze it into a smaller format. It's user friendly. Custom made to fit the dimensions of our van and projector. We also have the set list for the show. We keep that up next to the baseball scene from Twilight every time. You lock in on one, you lock in on the other. It's like snap, snap, snap. Feeling good. Ready for the show. Always grinding. I feel great. I'm so ready. Do you want to tell them what we did yesterday with the projector? After shows? Yesterday we took the whole projector setup and we put it outside. I don't know what you played on it. We were playing movies outside while we were loading out onto a garage. It was pretty sweet. We were hacky sacking. It was super cool. We're getting really good at it. At the end of the night obviously we've got to pack up the amazing setup and put all of our gear back in. This thing is loaded from head to toe. It really depends on who didn't drink but whoever didn't drink is the Tetris guy of the night. Sliding in the cases here and the audio equipment. The Tetris person is almost always our tour manager in front of house, John. Ricky just forgets because he's always drinking. He's always the guy telling us what order we're putting things in. He owns some giant cases that we have to stack and figure out their placement. He's the guy that we take our cues from. Everyone tries to pitch in but he's the lead on the pack. I've seen him in crazy split stances getting from one place to the other. Someone forgot a bag? No problem. Just lifting with his back and neck trying to get something on top. It's Spiderman level. My heavy suitcases especially. Thank you John for always lifting my heavy suitcase and putting it in the trailer. The story about this seat is quite funny. Winn is quite the remodeler of our van. He's really been so quintessential in the process of making the van so comfortable for nine people. I think Ricky or James said pioneer. Pioneer is a really great word. He kind of redesigned the interior and his mind thought that it was a great idea to remove this seat from our wonderful van. Put it in here for the trailer theater and it really just opened up the floor plan of the van so that way everyone was just more connected. A lot more in tune with each other. Conversations flow a lot better. Some people might call it a conversation pit like the 70s. We really want to bring that back. So we feel very comfortable and just very on the same page with each other when we're traveling. And we get the added benefit of having this wonderful seat for our theater. And yes, at the end of the night we pack around it. It stays in the trailer. The seat stays in the trailer. Thank you for checking out the van on Digital Tour Bus. Again, we are Phoneboy. What are our socials? Phoneboymusic on Instagram, Twitter. Basically everywhere. To the next tour that's coming out you can buy tickets on phoneboy.band. And you can stream our new album Heartbreak Designer everywhere.