Air-raid sirens, fitness goals and Captain Birdseye: Life on the road with Skindred

Skindred vocalist Benji Webbe lifts the lid on the highs, lows, creature comforts and tour-bus weirdness of a travelling band…

“My USB key for movies. Most of the films on the bus we’ve seen many times before. It can get very boring on long road trips, particularly when you do so many of them. The number of times I’ve said, ‘Oh shit, I forgot my key!’ is mad, so I make sure I take it every time now.”

“There isn’t one in particular, but we’ve often got nothing from touring. I get stuff now, but we’ve had tours where we got back, paid everything we need to pay, and then we’re splitting £50 between us. A lot of bands who look like they’re doing well are actually still borrowing money off their mothers.”

“We played in Sicily at a venue that turned out to be an old bordello. The guy taking care of the rig looked like Captain Birdseye. He spent 45 minutes trying to figure out what was wrong with the rig as nothing seemed to be working. Turned out, he hadn’t turned it on. When stage time came we played to absolutely no-one. We still went for it – we just saw it as a paid rehearsal.”

“Since 2019 I’ve been going to the gym. Exercise is a gift from the gods – health is wealth. Drinking and eating typical tour food like pizza was catching up with me. My son said to me, ‘Dad, you look like a big fat fuck up on that stage. You’re singing great but you’re not doing yourself any favours in the looks department.’ I said, ‘Son, I love you, but fuck off.’ It haunted me for months, so I ended up doing something about it. I’ve lost four stone.”

“We played a place in Texas which had no toilet doors. That was the first time I took a shit in public. However, the worst toilets I’ve ever experienced were in a bookies across the road from the Liverpool Academy. Every other place was shut and I was busting. I pushed the toilet door open and the place was full of shit, literally all over. Even the urinal had shit in it. There’s an unwritten law never to shit on the tour bus, but after seeing the alternative I thought, ‘Fuck this, I am shitting on the bus.’”

“Gloucester services on the M5. It’s a big organic farm shop, and the pasties are outstanding. It’s independent and we always look forward to stopping there. I even bought some nice wine – it’s a cut above the rest.”

“Oh my goodness, it was amazing. We played in the festival’s Shangri-La area. We had to jump through some hoops on arrival but once we got to our area, it was wonderful. The stage manager welcomed us and pointed to this glorious caravan, one of those big silver things that look like diners. It was boiling outside but this thing was brilliant – air conditioning, the lot. We had it for the full day and we could not have had it better.”

“When you connect with a crowd. Onstage I am doing my job, I’m working, but when you finish a song and hear the reaction, you realise some of those people have been waiting forever just to hear that particular song. That’s something magical, and you can’t recreate that sense of satisfaction any other way. I wrote that song in my little studio in Wales, and then there’s 80,000 people at a festival singing it back to me.”

“Someone threw an empty cup onstage in Fort Lauderdale. For some reason I threw it back and shouted, ‘There’s nothing in this, you c**t! If you’re gonna buy me a drink, buy me a fucking drink!’ I’ve said lots of offensive things, which I won’t repeat. The worst thing wasn’t something I said, but something that happened. I used to wind up an air-raid siren, but I was wearing a kind of string vest, which got caught in the siren’s mechanism. You can’t stop a siren once it starts, and it proceeded to pull my vest apart in slow motion. I stood there like an idiot as it unravelled while a roadie tried to find me another T-shirt!”

Skindred tour the UK from March 14. This article originally appeared in the winter 2023 issue of the magazine.

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