"We Almost Died In Bend, Oregon:" Kaitlin Butts & Her Band's Whirlwind World Tour Antics

In August of 2025, Kaitlin Butts got the opportunity of a lifetime when she was tapped as one of the opening acts on Lainey Wilson's blockbuster Whirlwind World Tour.

Teaming up with the highly decorated star throughout the month, with stops in Phoenix, Denver, LA and a trio of shows in Canada, Butts explains that the run was "the most insane three weeks of my life and the hardest thing I've ever done."

Surprisingly, though, it wasn't the travel and performances so much that made for most of the insanity. On the contrary, as she told it to Holler, the band's trials, tribulations and utter antics started from night one.

"On the first night of the tour that we were on the bandwagon, my band was so excited to be staying overnight on a vehicle that they were doing scissor kicks," Butts reminisces. "I didn't get to be with them that first night, but the bandwagon didn't make it two hours down the road. They were literally in Elk City for 18 hours in the middle of nowhere Oklahoma... That was how it started."

Setting the bar high, they got the bandwagon fixed and took it all in stride. Yet, just a few stops later, the tour gods would again intervene when their generator went kaput.

"Basically, how I dealt with this tour was like we were on a roller coaster and you can't tense up. You just gotta give in to the roller coaster and be loose or it'll destroy you," she shares with a laugh.

Everything really came to a head, though, in Bend, Oregon.

"I was sitting in a coffee shop editing a video and I called my tour manager to see where she was at. She said, 'Well, the band bought skateboards.'" Pausing to let that odd statement sink in, she continued, "I said, 'Okay, where are you?' She said, 'Well... I'm at the ER.' I said, 'Oh, that's really fun. With who?' and she said my guitar player."

After attempting a parkour move off of the bandwagon and landing wrong–having nothing to do with a skateboard, mind you–what resulted was a broken foot for the shredder and quite a humorous tour memory to share. It doesn't end there, though.

The next day, their bandwagon driver was headed to the ER, too, after slicing his leg open on the trailer. Seven stitches and a tetanus shot later, on that same day, Butts went floating and managed to rip off half of her second toenail.

"It was so gorgeous there, but we almost died in Bend, Oregon," Butts puts simply.

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