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By Jeff McCord
On July 8th, the first day of what was to be a three-week tour, en route to a show in Hot Springs AR, Austin’s Good Looks was involved in a horrific auto accident. Hit from behind by a car traveling at high speed, their van was pushed into an 18-wheeler in front of them, causing them to spin off the road. Dazed, they all had the good sense to escape their van, which quickly burst into flames.
Fortunately, no one was seriously injured.
“Everybody’s mostly okay. I mean, no broken bones or anything like that. But, a couple of the guys, Jake and Phil, got pretty banged up because they weren’t wearing seat belts. We have benches in the van. Usually, the guys in the bench seats are just lying down. Both of them got thrown pretty far forward, with Jake taking the worst of it, because he got wedged in between the front two seats. It was a super high-speed collision, and the fact that nobody died or got thrown out of a window or [suffered] broken bones, it’s pretty remarkable.”
That’s Tyler Jordan, the band’s songwriter and frontman, who I reached by phone in Cincinnati.
“I just flew up here today,” he explains. ”I think for the next week I’m going to play the shows solo that we were intending to play as a full band, while the other guys get over their injuries and gather equipment and stuff. The plan right now is to have them meet me somewhere along the route and resume doing full band shows. It’s just hard to know exactly what date that is going to be.”
With barely enough time to get out of the van, they lost, well, pretty much everything.
“Four guitars, a bass, all our amps, the vintage drum set… and we had just re-upped on merch too.” Tyler reels off the van’s cargo. “We were going for three weeks, so we had $6,000 worth, more merch than we’ve ever bought. Everything else is gone too. You know, laptops and your favorite t-shirts and your favorite hat. So like, just watch it all go. It’s crazy.”
They’re insured, so they’ll hopefully be able to get some things replaced – eventually.
“I do think insurance is going to end up covering some of this,” Tyler explains.”Hopefully all of it. I don’t know. But we’re a few months away from that. They haven’t even filed the police report fully. Every step seems like it’s going to drag out. And we’re just trying to get back out there.”
To that end, a friend of the band posted a gofundme link on their IG page.
Donations will help the band find their footing again.
Of course, Good Looks is no stranger to tragedy. In April 2022, the night the band released their acclaimed EP, Bummer Year, guitarist Jake Ames (who also leads the Austin group The Stacks) was hit by a car and seriously injured, putting the band on hiatus for several months.
This time, they’ve miraculously escaped serious injury, only to watch everything they need to do their jobs go up in smoke.
“Yeah, I don’t know, I can’t tell if we’re lucky or unlucky.”
Tyler Jordan of Good Looks
