UK alt-rock stars Sports Team arrived in NorCal Monday night to begin their US tour. Their van was robbed at gunpoint first thing Tuesday morning in Vallejo, but they’re still performing Saturday night at The Chapel.
The English alternative band Sports Team, whose last two albums have hit Number 3 or higher on the UK charts, had a bumpy start to their US tour this week. They were scheduled to play at The Kilowatt the night of Monday, December 2, but that venue announced at the last minute that “TONIGHT’S SHOW HAS BEEN UNFORTUNATELY CANCELLED,” and “Due to a cancelled flight out of the United Kingdom, the @sportsteam show has been moved to @thechapelsf on Saturday night.” Things would get much worse from there.
KGO reports that Sports Team had their van robbed at gunpoint in Vallejo Tuesday morning. They were heading to Sacramento for the first show of the tour, and had stopped at a Starbucks in Vallejo when the armed robbery occurred.
The band posted video of the incident to their Facebook page. “Just been robbed at gun point 10 minutes into the US tour,” they posted Tuesday. “Stopped for coffee. Man runs in saying some guys are smashing into a van. Ran out to try to stop it and find masked guys ransacking the van. Start yelling and they pull out a gun.”
“They can take our Nintendo Switches but they can never take our ability to play rock songs about motorways,” the post added.
KGO spoke with the band’s drummer Al Greenwood. "Some guy came in sort of seconds later saying a white sprinter van was being broken into. So, instinctively, we all ran out and started shouting," she told that station, but said one of the suspects brandished a gun at them. "We retreated to go back inside and were forced to watch them carry out all our personal items from the van.”
The band still made it to Sacramento and played and they’re still playing that rescheduled show at The Chapel this Saturday night. That’s because the burglars did not get to the band’s instruments, though did get many of their belongings like laptops, cameras, and in some cases even their passports. And obviously, the band members have been left pretty traumatized.
"In the UK, you're incredibly shocked when someone's pulled a gun on you,” singer Alex Rice told KGO. “But then in the US there's kind of this resigned nature from a lot of people, which we find a little bit strange.”
If there’s any silver lining to this nightmare for Sports Team, it’s that the national coverage of this incident certainly gets their name out there, and they probably couldn’t buy this kind of publicity for their tour. So consider heading out to their Saturday night show at The Chapel to support, and the video for their latest hit “I’m in Love (Subaru)” can be seen above.
Related: Venezuelan Punk Band Robbed Of Passports in Oakland, Fans Raise Nearly $14,000 on GoFundMe [SFist]
Image: SportsTeamBand.com
