Singled Out: Odds Lane's Blood On The Van

06-17-2019

Blues rockers Odds Lane recently released their new album "Lost & Found" and to celebrate we asked Doug Byrkit to tell us about the track "Blood On The Van". Here is the story:

We have chosen today to talk about our track "Blood On The Van" off our Gulf Coast Records debut album "Lost & Found". Lyrically, we've found that writing from our own experiences is honest and works best. We try to bring something from our own lives into every song and this particular track has quite the interesting true story behind it, as you might imagine from the title. However, it's not necessarily a unique story to us. When we were younger it seemed most of the stories involving the bands we were in were generated by the crazy situations we would inject ourselves into. We were young musicians with something to prove or just looking for a "good time" as they say. However it seems the last few years that weird, crazy, or odd (no pun intended) things just find us through no fault of our own. One memorable hotel stay in Ohio, while on tour supporting our last album, was no exception.

We had pulled into town a couple hours before the show and changed hotels at the last minute. I didn't bother to read the reviews of the first hotel, which were awful and we thought we had dodged a bullet with this newer nicer place. It turns out that we just made a classic Odds Lane move to help let the crazy find us. We had encountered the lady staying next door to our room when we pulled in. She seemed a bit off, but we had no idea what was in store when we got back to the room after the show around 2am. We had been winding down drinking a couple of beers and eating some celebratory fast food for having a good show, when the first knock at the door came.

Apparently, the women next door had been locked out of her room and couldn't get back in. Naturally she wanted us to help. We tried calling the room but her husband/boyfriend or dog, we never really figured that part out, never answered and we politely sent her to the front desk. An hour or so later, we were woken up by knocking at the door again, but this time it was her door. The knocking was accompanied by a very quiet voice calling for Matt and then Randy. It kept getting louder and louder. She'd get in and then get locked out again. The whole scene would repeat several times for another hour or so until before we knew, it the Police and EMS started showing up trying to help get her back in the room. When they eventually did get the door open this time, every officer and paramedic that came out was laughing like they had just seen the most hilarious episode of COPS ever. It was a crazy scene all around and when we left in the morning there was blood all over her door, her car, and our van parked right next to it. It was all very surreal and we never got the full story. The drive back to St. Louis was filled with hours of speculation and we knew immediately we had to write a song about it! It might seem like a freak thing but it happens to us all the time... and this was only the 2nd craziest thing that happened to us on that tour run. However, that's a story for another song, perhaps on our next album!

Hearing is believing. Now that you know the story behind the song, listen for yourself and learn more about the album right here!