Like a Crash the Whole Thing Spun Out of Control

“Hi guys! My name is Harlow Bennett, and I’m the vocalist of the band; Flight For Earth!” Harlow grinned into the camera. “This is my day in the life at the Warped Tour video! First of all, I’m going to give you a tour of our bus!”

Harlow stood back so the camera man could come up the stairs and into Flight For Earths bus.

“This is our front lounge, and as you can see our bass guitarist Caillen Walker is laying here eating a salad…” Caillen looked over at the camera and waved. “Dude, why are you eating salad? It’s Warped Tour, go eat a burrito.”

“Darling you know that burritos are really fatty!” Harlow rolled her eyes and motioned for the camera man to follow her further into the bus.

“This is our kitchen, and also where we sit down and eat. Let’s see what we have in the fridge on the first day.” She pried open the door to the fridge and peered in. “Alright, we have a whole shelf of watermelon Gatorade, three bottles of grape Gatorade, another whole shelf of water bottles, we have a bowl of green jelly, a bottle of coke, a bottle of Jim Beam, jam, a half eaten chicken and salad sandwich, three blocks of chocolate and a bowl of spaghetti…” She held a straight face for a moment before she laughed. “It’s the first day and we have the weirdest shit in our fridge already!”

She left the kitchen area, opening the door to the bunks.

“This is where we sleep like vampires,” she laughed. “Get it? ‘Cause it’s dark in here? Tough crowd, anyway… I won’t show you anyone’s bunk but mine-“

“Come show people my bunk!”

“Trent, I didn’t know you were in here!” He stuck his head out from his curtain and grinned down at her. “What are ya doing?”

“I just Skyped my sister. Are you doing your day-vid thing?”

“Yeah.”

“Sweet.” He opened his curtain wide so the camera could look inside. “Hey guys, I’m Trent, I play lead guitar, and this is my bunk!” He motioned towards his feet. “I hide all of my secrets down there under the mattress, like my diary…” Harlow started to laugh. “Shh Harlow. I put some pictures up of my family over here, and my Dog, and I hide my Macbook under my pillow. That’s the end of my bunk tour. Come back at the end of tour when I’ll have more stuff.”

The camera man climbed down and directed it back at Harlow.

“My bunk isn’t as interesting as Trent’s, so we’ll go straight into the back lounge.” Harlow turned around and opened the door to the back lounge. “Oh, hey guys, what’re you doing?” Angus was sitting on the couch with Daniel Flint, Josh Franceschi and Max Helyer from You Me At Six.

“Hey!” They all cheered.

“What’s going on Harlow Bennett?!” Daniel yelled with a grin.

“Kevin asked me to do a ‘day in the life at Warped Tour’ video today,” she replied before turning back towards the camera. “We have a couple of visitors here today, I’ve sure y’all know Josh, Daniel and Max from You Me At Six?” She turned to the guys. “Say something to the fans?”

“What’s up mother fuckers?” Angus sat up straight, looking into the camera. “I’m Angus River, I play the drums!”

“And we are You Me At Six!” Josh exclaimed. “Minus Chris and Matt!”

“Anyway,” Harlow pulled the camera around so it was pointing at her again. “So this is our back lounge, we have Xbox, DVDs and acoustic guitars. Caillen’s knitting…”The guys laughed. “He’s actually pretty good, look, he’s knitting a scarf!”



A camera man had been following me around all day. First, I gave a tour of our bus, then the camera guy followed me to the catering tent where I had breakfast with Jack and Alex. Now, I was sitting behind the Hurley stage with a lady called Erin about to have my first interview. We were supposed to have one yesterday, but the interviewer got sick and cancelled.

“Are you ready Harlow?” Erin asked, flipping open her notepad and smiling. I nodded and cleared my throat. “Awesome. Okay, so obviously the viewers have been following you around all day via the Warped Tour camera, so they already know who you are.” I nodded. “So we’ll just go straight to the first question.”

“Lay it on me.”

“The first question is: how on earth do you come up with your band name: Flight For Earth?” She asked.

“You know, I’m not even sure…” I laughed. “I’m pretty sure Angus and Trent came up with the name Fight for Kansas, which is where Angus is originally from. Angus ran away from his home, so they changed it from ‘fight’ to ‘flight’ and I really can’t tell you how we got ‘Earth’… I think maybe Caillen did that…”

“Right,” Erin chuckled, nodding her head. “So you had nothing to do with the name?” I shook my head.

“No. I mainly write lyrics with Angus, and I don’t really care what we’re called, ya know? As long as we can make music, and I can sing, who cares?” Erin nodded.

“Tell us one thing about each of your fellow band members that you love, and another word about them that you hate.”

“Hmm, okay.” I had to think about this one. “Alright, I’ll start with Caillen. I hate that he is sassy and I love that he is loyal. Angus… He’s an asshole, but he’s hilarious and Trenton. Um, what can I say about Trenton… He’s creative and he’s messy.”

“Do you have nick names for one another?”

“Oh sure,” I nodded, “they all call me ‘Har’ or ‘Benny’. Trent is short for Trenton, we call Caillen ‘Cay’ and Angus is Angus’ middle name, his first name is Maximus.”

“What are you most excited for on this tour?”

“I’m super, duper excited that we actually have a bus this year! Last year we had our van and the air-con sucked and it was disgustingly hot and gross. I’m also just really keen to play some shows and meet some kids.”

“What bands are you excited to see this tour?”

“I haven’t seen Mayday play in a year or two, so I’d kill to see them play and Every Avenue,” I nodded. “My good friends in The Maine have just finished recording their new album and they’ll be releasing that in the next couple of weeks, so I’m excited to hear them play a couple of songs from it.”

“How do you know The Maine so well?”

“Well, their bassist, Garrett lives in the house behind mine, so I practically grew up with him and his brother Trey. And I’ve been best-friends with John, their singer since like ninth grade or something.”

“Love interest?” I almost chocked when I laughed.

“Oh god no, Garrett has a girlfriend and John is asexual.”

“Asexual?”

“Yeah. He claims that he isn’t attracted to either gender.” Erin laughed and moved on to the next question.

“Any ideas on when you’ll be releasing an album?” I gave her a funny look.

“We released one like, a month ago… It’s called ‘I Refuse To Sink’. We released it with fearless records.”

“Oh, lord, I’m sorry!”

“Don’t worry about!”

“Tell me about it though?”

“Well we released it on the 19th of May, and I’m happy to say it’s doing extremely well!” I grinned. “we’ve sold I think it was around ten thousand already thought out the US and another two grand internationally.”

“Wow, that’s a few international fans you must have!”

“Yeah, we have a good following in the UK, Australia and Brazil.”

“I think Brazil loves everyone’s music,” Erin joked. I laughed and nodded.

“I agree, but they’re still amazingly supportive of us and I love them all to death.”

“Alright, I have some questions that fans have sent in via their Twitters. The first one is from KayleeNoo92 from Nashville, Tennessee, and she asks: Is there anything you like fans to bring you on tour?”

“Angus loves people bringing him alcohol. Any type at all. Trent loves sour gummi worms. Caillen loves people bringing him drawings. He has a massive folder in the junk bunk where he get’s the fan to sign, date and write where it’s from on the top then he files it under the state. And I love getting things I need for tour, like socks, shirts, hats, shoes, drinks and sunscreen.”

“MnMlover69 from Colorado asks: What are your pet peeves?”

“I get really annoyed and weird if people don’t use correct spelling and grammar. Caillen and Garrett use text slang, and I hate it. It makes me want to punch them in the face. So yeah, if you ever tweet me or something, I’ll ignore you if you use text slang or if you don’t use your grammar properly. We were sent to school to learn this shit guys!”

Alright, and lastly, MableJones from Tempe, Arizona asks: What is your favourite place in Arizona to go for coffee?”

“Definitely Cookies on Mill, which is down the road from Starbucks in Tempe.”

Once the interview was over and Erin had said goodbye and gone off somewhere with some guy who had been sitting behind her waiting for her to finish, and the camera guy said he needed a break and turned his camera off. I went up to the side of the Hurley stage to watch whoever was playing. I wasn’t up there long before I got a message.

John O’Callaghan:
Where are you? I’ll come hang out.

I smiled. I hadn’t seen John, or any other member of The Maine since last night at the party when Pat walked past with Garrett slung over his shoulder grumbling.

Harlow Bennett:
I’m side stage at the Hurley stage watching The Silver Comet. They look pretty chill.

I didn’t stay there to watch because I didn’t really like their music, so instead I waited for John down where I’d had my interview. He showed up a couple of minutes later wearing his black skinny jeans, sorry for partying tank top and a pair of flip flops.

“Good afternoon Mr. O’Callaghan!” I exclaimed when he noticed me. He walked up to the box I was standing on and hugged me around the middle.

“Good afternoon Miss. Bennett!” He mocked. I laughed and hugged him back. “Aren’t you watching the dudes on stage?”

“Nah, not really my type of music.” He nodded. The camera guy turned his camera on and gave me a hand signal to tell me we were back on air. I stared into the camera and grinned. “hey guys, look who I found!”

John glanced at the camera and smiled, un-wrapping his arms from around me.

“Well what the fuck do we have here?” He joked. “Did you get famous without telling me Har?”

“Oh yeah.” John rolled his eyes. “We’re going to go for a wonder around the grounds for ten minutes until we come back here so I can do my sound-check!”

The camera guy walked behind John and I, only coming closer when we had stopped to talk to a fan or to another member of a band on the tour. Eventually though, it was time to head back to the Hurley stage for Flight for Earth’s sound-check at 5PM.



“Hey there!” The crowd erupted into screams as I waltzed onto the stage and took my spot in the center. “My name is Harlow, they are Caillen, Angus and Trent, and we are Flight for Earth!” There was another round of mind boggling screams. “I’m glad y’all are excited, ‘cause we are too! So this is our first ever song we wrote, and it’s called Apocalypse.”

Caillen and Trent started to strum on their strings, and then Angus started to tap his bass drum. I waited a few minutes before I opened my lips and started to sing.

“It all started with a god, damn kiss. The water levelled before the big storm hit. We wanted shelter but you kept, on, running.” Trent started to play a bit louder and so did Angus. “You never understood, but heres the gist: You started a god damn apocalypse.”

It felt amazing to be on that stage again, singing to all of those people and hanging out with the guys. We played four more songs and then it was time for our last one.

“Alright guys, this is our last song!” Angus played a beat on his drums. “This song is called Home.”

While the guys started playing the start of the song, I glanced to the side of the stage at John who was sitting on a speaker, side stage. He was smiling and nodding his head along to the beat of the music. He waved when he noticed I was looking, so I smiled and waved back.

“Alright, here we go.” The crowd started swaying. “You never understood my home sick heart, when we went away together right from the start.” I took in a deep breath. “You told me I was useless and had to grow up. When all I really wanted was to go home.”

Once we’d left the stage, Simon had me sit down so I could sign off from the day at Warped Tour video.

“Hey guys, thanks for sitting and watching my day at Warped Tour video! I hope I’ll see some of you out here this summer! Come say hi! Love you!”



“You know Harlow, I’ve never really seen you like you were today,” John mused. “You haven’t been that happy since uh, since before.”

We were sitting on the ground outside The Maine’s bus. I’d just finished at the signing, and the camera man had finally gone away so I had free time to talk to John with out anyone overhearing us.

“I guess I was just nervous because Aaron would be around all summer.”

“But you’ll be here, on tour.”

“But what if something came up and I couldn’t come on tour?” I replied, “I would have had to stay home by myself, with him down the road.” John pulled me into his side and kissed my head.

“I would have bought you if the guys couldn’t come.”

“Thanks John.”

“Anytime Harlow.”

We sat there for a while longer, talking about how our first day on Warped Tour was. John told me how someone flashed him when they played, and how Garrett had yet another argument with Rachael. By ten o’clock, people had finished packing up their merch tents and the only sounds were the engines of the buses leaving for the next venue.

“I’ll walk you back to your bus.”

“Thanks John.”

“Anytime Harlow.” I smiled. John was a good friend and I knew that even though he’d not been there that one night, it wasn’t his fault. I knew in my heart that he was someone I could definitely trust.