British indie band Sports Team have been robbed at gunpoint at the very start of a tour of the United States.
The six-person group, who are due to play dates across the United States this month, had not even performed their first show when their tour van was broken into at a gas station in Vallejo, California, on Tuesday morning (Tuesday evening in Australia).
They posted a video of on social media, together with a brief account of what happened when they stopped on the road for coffee.
Watch the video above.
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“Just been robbed at gunpoint 10 minutes into the US tour,” they wrote.
The post includes a short clip that shows their white van being broken into and somebody shouting to “get down” and “get inside” the Starbucks where the band members had stopped.
The post continued: “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.”
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Cameras, laptops, in-ear monitors and other personal items were taken, the group told Sky News, but the instruments were safe because, as they explained, “the back of the van is fortified.” However, front man Alex Rice said three band members had their passports stolen.
According to their post, the group called the police about the break-in and were told to “submit an online report.”
Despite the shock, the group were determined that the show must go on.
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They wrote: “Lost a lot of personal gear, but they didn’t get the instruments so driving on to Sacramento to play tonight. They can take our Nintendo Switches but they can never take our ability to play rock songs about motorways.
“In all seriousness pretty shocking how resigned everyone seemed to be to it. ‘It happens’. 9am at some petrol station Starbucks. Wild.”
Speaking from California, lead guitarist Henry Young told CNN that the gig in Sacramento went ahead as planned, despite the fact that they were all “pretty shook up.”
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He said that “it was so special to meet people who know our music on the other side of the world,” as well as others who simply came along to support them after hearing about the robbery.
Young told CNN that his passport had been left on the road by the vehicle but that some of the other band members were not so lucky. “None of it is ideal 20 minutes into the tour,” he said, though he remained upbeat about the rest of the live gigs to come.
Sports Team have had two top 10 UK albums, and their debut album, Deep Down Happy, was nominated for the Mercury Prize in 2020.
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Young is a former CNN sports writer who was based at the network’s London bureau. In 2020, he wrote a piece for CNN in which he described deciding to finally give up the day job and focus on music full-time.
He wrote about how he and his fellow bandmates had got together at university and had mostly managed to balance their day jobs with their musical aspirations.
But when Sports Team were offered the chance to support Spanish band Hinds on a five-week European tour, Young said it had been a “now or never moment” that forced him to act.
He went on to describe the unglamorous side of live music and even related an incident similar to the recent crime.
“Waking up with banging headaches the morning after supporting Two Door Cinema Club at the O2 Arena, we found our van had been broken into in broad daylight and all our equipment stolen,” he wrote.
“And yet it’s all worth it.”
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