Belle And Sebastian Accidentally Abandoned Their Drummer At A Walmart In North Dakota

You can find pretty much anything at Walmart these days, but yesterday, one particular location in North Dakota had an interesting piece of indie rock history in the store: Belle And Sebastian drummer Richard Colburn. Yesterday morning, the band’s Stuart Murdoch tweeted that they “left Richard in North Dakota,” and that they’d appreciate “a hero” stepping up to make sure he got to St. Paul, Minnesota in time for their performance that night.

Murdoch later told the story in an interview with Minnesota Public Radio show The Current, and said that after waking up from a nap, that’s when he realized what happened:

“I’m kind of partially to blame because we were in a Walmart, we were just leaving town, Dickinson, North Dakota — not the other side of North Dakota! And we stopped for water, and I was coming out of the Walmart, and [Colburn] was coming into the Walmart, and he was waving very happily, in a good mood. And that was the last time that we saw him.”

Colburn ended up waiting for a few hours in the store for somebody to go back and notice him, but he eventually gave up hope, got a hotel room, and went to sleep. Fortunately, the band was able to arrange for a ride to get Colburn so he could catch a flight to Minneapolis. At that point, though, a concern was whether or not the airline would even let Colburn on a plane, considering all it seems he had on him was the pajamas he was wearing and a credit card. Everything worked out, though, as hours later, Murdoch tweeted that Colburn was on a plane “in his pyjamas, sitting with a mimosa.”

The band currently has seven members, so it’s understandable that keeping track of everybody can be difficult. The good news is that they seem to be taking this error in stride with an Almost Famous reference:

They’ve also implemented a new system to make sure this sort of thing doesn’t happen again:

What’s most important is that now, Belle And Sebastian is back to being a big, happy family: