Meltt - BUS INVADERS Ep. 2258

So even if you break the window and pull this up, you can't open the door. There's a little noodle here, there's a little butt pillow here, there's a spine deck here. Yeah, where's the wood? Hey, I'm Chris from the band Melt, and we're currently on a tour for our album Pathways in America. I'm Jamie from Melt, and we're going to take you on a tour of the van that we drive in. Come on in. So yeah, this is the front seat. We usually pretty much split the driving pretty well evenly among band and crew members. I think usually when we're driving, generally the co-pilot will be in charge of the DJ and music. Yeah, but it's kind of a decision between the co-pilot and the pilot on what they want to play. We have new crew members on this tour, so I think we've been kind of just getting to know each other's tastes and kind of the staples of our musical interests. So just kind of going almost like a blast of the past for me, just to kind of... Share where we're coming from as a band with them, and then they're kind of showing us what they like. Yeah, some personal playlists, some radio mixture of maybe a bit of both, I'd say. Yeah, there's a radio station app that Abby, our sound person, has that's kind of cool to hear new stuff, too. Yeah, we have a couple custom chargers built in here so that both passenger and driver can charge simultaneously with dual adapters for USB-C and the old charging type, which I forget what it's called. Lightning. Yeah, lightning. We've got a cooler here for snacks. We don't have much in here today. That's always ready to go. This is actually a custom-made console in the middle because there's no real cup holders in this van. So this can also be extra storage and you can have all the drinks you need at the front. That's pretty much the front. Oh, there's this kind of... Just phone mount up here that I rug in which is just like a Noga arm with a phone mount so that's kind of a good way to go with that. Highly effective. We have these external lock like additional locks we got brought in from the UK. We did a tour in the UK and our rental van had these and we thought it was a really good idea so it kind of a little extra level of security which is a nice touch so you can actually just latch this and it will just harden the door. So even if you break the window and pull this up you can't open the door and that goes with every door around the whole van which is kind of good I guess. So here's the middle section the passenger section we got two rows of three seats each which usually means we have a middle seat free whether the backpacks there or jackets or leave it open for extra room for sleeping we got extra cup holders in the back there we have custom mounted hooks for both jackets and extra baggage Baggage. Lying around, we each have our own custom, or I guess you could say chosen, back support. So there's a little noodle here, there's a little butt pillow here, there's a spine deck here, individual pillows there, neck pillows. We have some additional storage for shoes and extra items back there, baggage and whatnot. We've got a central charging station for everyone in the back. They get their own USB with dual tips once again. Maybe very important and we can power like two laptops so you can always be working and doing work while we're on the road which is nice. And Ian has something to show back there on the headrest. Yeah yeah we got some phone mounts over here too for when you want to just have your phone. Like, oh ----, like that, it's not perfectly in, but if we're watching TV, movies, and you can doze off, we've got neck pillows galore here, this is a good spot for really dozing off. That's actually, I haven't tried this yet, it's still only a week into this tour, so I haven't fully tested the capabilities of sleeping, but I think that's the zone right there. Oh gosh, long drive, I'd say a funny thing, it'd be... It would have been interesting if you had seen our old van. It was a F-450. It was when we were just the four of us, no crew. Two guys in the front, all of our gear in the middle, and then two guys in the back. So it's very isolating. So this time it's actually, we're all together, and we actually like just kind of chit chat for a while at the start of a drive day. And then kind of as the day goes on and we get tired, people put in the AirPods, people start sleeping. Yeah, I haven't used this yet, but a couple of guys really go full sensory deprivation with this. Earmuffs. I haven't had the pleasure yet. And then just chill out until it's switching time, and then I might be driving, I might be in the passenger seat, and I might go up there, and I might stay. Yeah, I don't know what, there's pillows, there's a blanket, I also haven't gone into that yet. I think that's, Chris is here. Chris will really get up on the side there, like that. There's some stuff under here, mostly just like water from the green room, and we got, oh, this is some safety stuff, like if we have to pull over in the night or something, we got, what do you call it, the high-vis stuff. Which is a nice safety feature. And this is James' cooler where he's been trying to save some money. Oh, this might be fun. Let's see what's in here. It's kind of slimy on the outside. Oh God, we got mayo. Damn, oh my god. This is my first time looking in the lab. We got tomato, I think. Oh, we got lettuce. No, that's cucumber. There used to be some slimy lettuce, but it looks like he's... Figuring out that situation. I'm gonna leave that. Oh no. I'm gonna leave that be. So this is the back of the van, the storage area where we keep most of the merch. If you look at it inside you'll see there's some custom shelving built in which looks like bunks. We haven't used it for that. I'm not sure if we ever will. they don't really look like bunks but sometimes james uses a bunk uh i don't know where he is i thought he was going to be in this video yeah hi guys welcome to the back of the van this is where we keep all the merch and uh all the gear stacks right up in here real nice Put things in here, guitars can go in here, lots of room for shirts down here. It's a beautiful system and one we're very, very proud of. The most fun part of being in a band is loading gear into the van at the end of the night. It requires a lot of Tetrising. I'm practicing. There's a very specific order of things that have to go in. Suitcases, amps, merch. It's kind of ridiculous that we can fit it all in here, but there is a way and we do it every single night. Yeah, so my dad actually kind of custom-built this rack. It's just two off-the-shelf racks, but we kind of bolted them together and he custom-made it so that the side would actually fit the rack width because it was a little short. And he cut the middle two middle legs and had an extra piece of metal straddle across so it kind of goes over top of the wheel wells. So it kind of was like a custom fit to make this off-the-shelf rack sit in here. And it's been bolted in so many different places as well as the wall itself so the whole wall and rack is kind of just one strong force within the build so it's just like super solid and doesn't slide around at all so it makes it really safe to like keep everything stacked heavy and loaded up full. We're Melt. Check out our new album Pathways and come see us on tour. You can find us at Melt Music on Instagram and hope to see you out there soon.