For nearly five years now, the Dave Matthews Band has held the record for Most Country-Ass Escapade While on a Tour Bus. In 2004 the group made headlines by illegally dumping the contents of their bus’s human-waste tank while driving through the city of Chicago. They were, of course, crossing a bridge over the Chicago river, and happened to have the exquisite timing to unleash the torrent of feces just as an architectural boat tour, laden with tourists, was passing underneath. One can only imagine that at least some of the passengers were staring up, open-mouthed, at the bridge’s architectural wonder.
Now that’s pretty damn country. But not as country as what Keith Urban’s tour crew pulled last Wednesday here in New York. While the artist was inside performing at Webster Hall, his tour bus opened its septic tank and dumped gallons and gallons of sewage onto East 11th Street. “There was about 150 square feet of gunk, a half an inch thick, outside the main entrance,” one employee told “Page Six,” not able to resist adding, “It was a literal shit show.”
Basically, anyone trying to get out of the concert hall through the main entrance would be confronted by the horror — and forget it if you wanted to get onto the bus itself, which idled in its own filth for 30 minutes before pulling away. And the worst part is, they couldn’t clean the filth up until the next day, because they had to wait for it all to dry up. “The cleanup process lasted 12 hours,” Webster Hall owner Ballinger said. “Thankfully, it was a nice day.”
We’re not sure that Ballinger is using the word “nice” correctly in that sentence, but we suppose he was being a good sport. He said he was “pretty sure” Urban had nothing to do with the dumping, but even so, we’re officially passing on the mantle of Most Country-Ass Escapade While on a Tour Bus to him. Because if you can turn East 11th Street into a good old-fashioned Tennessee dookie swamp, then you’re pretty much as country as they come.
