Local indie-rockers the Walkmen, whose album A Hundred Miles Off came out in May, are facing a crisis: Someone stole the band’s gourd off the stage in Boston. “We just loved it,” says singer Hamilton Leithauser. “Walt [Martin] bought it and got us into playing the gourd.” They’re trying to move on, but it hasn’t been easy. “We bought a new gourd—this modern-looking gourd, which was not especially handsome,” Leithauser says with a sigh. At a recent show in England, “as Pete [Bauer] was playing it, the light man started going crazy and making it really dark. The gourd was glow-in-the-dark. Cheapest thing I’ve ever seen in my life. Pete was humiliated.” Leithauser says, “If I had to guess, we will never see that gourd again.” Not if erstwhile That ’70s Show star and Walkmen lover Danny Masterson has anything to say about it. “This is a travesty at the highest national level of security,” he says. “To all evildoers: Return the gourd and your families’ lives will be spared.”

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• Archive: “Intelligencer”
• Articles by Rebecca Milzoff
• Table of Contents: Jun 19, 2006 issue of New York | Subscribe!