I first met Scott Toepfer outside of The Blank Club in San Jose during the waiting period of pre-load-in for the Revival Tour bus. The scene was something along the lines of Chuck Ragan and Ethan Anderson picking by the club entrance, Konrad Wert plucking on his fiddle outside the bus, and a few small clusters of the musicians and close friends catching up on the bus. Scott was taking some photos of all the hustle and bustle and jamming outside, and he stopped what he was doing and came up to my brother and myself and introduced himself to us.
For the few days that I was along for the tour, Scott always was always a smile and a good conversation waiting to happen. He kept track of my beer koozies when I couldn't, he found my friend's lost phone, he was always down for adventure time in the new cities we were in, he helped out with the Anderson kids, and he was always game for a ginormous burrito.
He's been supportive of Lubricated since we have met and on top of him being a solid individual, he takes some of the most stunning photographs to date in the sea of generic stale "band photos" you see all too often these days. Scott doesn't just capture amazing people doing amazing things, he captures on film the true heart and soul and purity of those particular moments. Scott's photos capture the intimate moments on Revival Tour... from Jim Ward playing "Bear-Ninja-Cowboy" with Daisy Anderson, Jon Gaunt and Frank Turner throwing the football around in the back lot of the club at 3am, Joey Cape writing, the beauty of each and every member of the Anderson family, and Chuck and the infamous tiger and lion heads from the tour bus.
Scott will be doing a sweet photo spread and tour journal of his time on The Revival tour in Issue Three of Lubricated. We thought it would be fun if he gave us a bit of a teaser for our blog in the meantime. Thanks for the support, Scott.
Crucial Scott G. Toepfer links:
To avoid caddy suspense or teasers, I'll just give you the first 12 hours of what became a week on the road with The Revival Tour and no shower. I awoke at 3 am on a Wednesday, and after 20 minutes of desperately trying to convince her that she should've charged me less for my airline ticket, I give up. I finish packing, only to realize that I do not have enough film to cover my trip. Shit. I call my cab, and bolt to the only photo store open at this hour to purchase their entire stock of my favorite film. 12 rolls...that'll cover me for a couple days. I speed back to the house, hoping that I haven't missed my cab.
Well, I make it through security without much issue, just the normal hassle of some TSA employee telling me I don't have to hand check film. I insist that my film is "special" and can't be X-rayed, hoping to avoid any further discussion. The building line of anxious commuters won't allow him to argue with me, so I get through with relative ease. I should mention, that at this point, I still didn't have any idea if I was going to be allowed to sleep on the tour bus. The conversations between me and Chuck had been short and strained, as the tour had ran into some extreme weather, and nothing could be considered "for certain" at this point. Let's just say I took a leap of faith buying the plane ticket the night before.
I'm on the plane, which is now delayed, and adding to my stress level, when Chuck calls me. The moment of truth arrives while I'm already on the plane!
"Hey man, it's Chuck, are you still coming up to meet us?"
"I'm already on the plane, I'll be there in a couple hours." I managed to keep my cool in spite of my joy.
"We are on our way too, you can sleep in the back for a few days, see soon."
I said my thanks to the powers that be, and took a short nap, knowing that I wasn't going to get much sleep for a few days.
