10/16/06
At their Saturday night show at Emo’s, Langhorne Slim announced that the previous nights gig had erupted in chaos as cops stormed the club and attacked Two Gallants on the stage. Details are finally beginning to emerge, though still rather sketchy, as well as some photos and video of the incident.
Apparently, Houston PD officer G.M. Rodriguez responded to a noise complaint from a neighbor of the club Walter’s on Washington where the show was taking place. Rodriguez asked the manager that music be turned down and was complied with. But upon his leaving the bar, the music was reportedly turned back up and Rodriguez confronted the band on stage telling them to stop. Two Gallants’ Tyson Vogel and Adam Stephens, unaware of the problem asked why and Stephens either did, or did not, bump Rodriguez with his shoulder. And then all hell broke loose.
Both Stephens and Vogel were thrown to the ground and Stephens was shot with a taser gun. Also tasered were the group’s tour manager and two members of the audience, including a 14 year old boy. Vogel and Andrew Kerwin (of the Trainwreck Riders) were both arrested. Not least among the casualties was the 90-year-old stand up bass of Langhorne Slim’s band.
Here is the Houston Chronicle’s report of the incident, while ABC spun the melee as an attack on the officer.
At the Emo’s show, none of the members of the band seemed be suffering from any ill effects - that is if you don’t count some still pissed attitudes and Langhorne Slim’s band struggling to get their new bass in line (they eventually settled for a bass guitar, which made things interesting to say the least)
Here’s a much hurried first-hand account from dsharber’s Myspace:
so two gallants were on their 4th song i believe and a cop shows up for a noise complaint. he did not go to the soundboard but immediately heads to the stage. he has some words with the singer adam and then the cop grabs his guitar. adam pulls it back and then the cop grabs him around the head and slams him down on the stage. tyson (the drummer) jumps up from the drums and moves to where the cop is holding adam down. the cop then thrown tyson down too. you can in the pics below where tyson is pretty much on top of adam with the cop holding both of them down.. some other dudes get on stage and a bunch of others swarm up and start taking pictures. someone gets between adam and the cop and is calming things down. it could’ve ended here as everyone is calming down. then the cop turns on my friend greg who is taking pics and says ’stop touching me’ or something like that and knocks greg’s camera out of his hand. great is all like what the fuck? and then the cop jumps off stage and starts pushing greg in the chest across the room while greg is just backing away. the cop also is waving his tazer around at this point. he eventually backs greg into that corner where everybody puts their instruments (to the right of the stage) and pushes him down into a pile of drums and the standup bass the opening band was playing. people freak out and about 20 people rush over there including the dudes from the opening band and adam and tyson. i thought at this point the cop was going to get the shit kicked out of him. but i guess everyone was just standing around yelling or something so anyway the cop manages his way out of that pack and then starts chasing adam. adam runs across the stage and around the back of the bar with the cop right after him. he runs behind the bar and jumps over the front of the bar and runs out the door and down the street. later that evening my friend jennifer was riding her bike home and saw adam walking in the neighborhood. she took him back to her house until around 2 when he got ahold of his manager who had a hotel room already. she took him to his hotel room. meanwhile, the cop comes back around the door and is yelling at everyone to leave. he then walks outside and grabs tyson and cuffs him. he tells tyson something like he is being arrasted for what his buddy did. meanwhile some other people are yelling at the cop and he is walking around with his handcuffs out threatening to arrest everyone. he then grabs another dude and arrests him. then about 9 other cop cars showed up and those cops all jump out of their cars. we walked across the street so as not to get arrested or anything. i see them then arrest my friend greg as well as 4 or so other people. i hear they were arresting the opening band folks but that pam (the club owner) got them out. that is all i know. except that the first cop that came was a fukcin lunatic. you do not walk into a show and do what he did. he seemed way more interested in fuckin shit up then he did in calmly difusing anything. that guy had a real chip on his shoulder… i have just never seen anything like that… i guess they are never coming back to houston again
And here is video of the incident and several pictures from the Two Gallants message board:
As this continues to unfold, we’ll keep the story updated.
