Short Story | The Range

From the comfort of home, The Range’s James Hinton produces some of the most meticulous, mathematically crafted syncopations. But life on the road isn’t quite so formulaic. James tells us an all too familiar short story about late nights, alarm clocks and early morning duties.
 

I would have to say the most recent tricky situation I was in was at SXSW this year in Austin. Really late on Friday night I went to see Skrillex play with a bunch of people for the first time outside downtown Austin. Schoolboy Q played sections of ‘Man of the Year’ at least three times, the whole A$AP mob (definitely over 100 people) was onstage and I saw way too many Billionaire Boys Club shirts; it was one of my favourite nights in recent memory. By the time I got to bed that night it was probably 6.30am, and of course I dutifully didn’t set any alarms for my early show the next day.

I woke up at 11.40 to: ‘James, James, JAMES, WAKE UP YOU HAVE TO GO!’ and sprang up to attempt to somehow get to the show on time, which was at 12pm. I knew I’d have no shot at catching a cab in the neighbourhood I was staying in so I started running towards the main highway that runs through the city in Austin hoping to catch a cab closer to downtown. I thought I’d be able to grab a cab on one of the service roads next to the highway but there were none. I ran up one of the on-ramps to the main highway hoping I could grab a cab there. Of course, no cab would dream of stopping while on the highway. Eventually I realised I’d be going by foot and started to run as fast as I could straight to the venue and somehow made it to the stage at 11.58. Google Maps had said it was going to be a 17-minute cab ride from where I woke up so I’m still a little unclear as to how I made it in time, but somehow it all worked out and I ended up taking a selfie with DJ Mustard. Maybe I should start more days that way…

The Range returns to NL for Le Guess Who? May Day, playing the hip hop stage at Tivoli Vredenburg, Utrecht on 24 May, alongside Jeremiah Jae, Tree, Paul White and more.