Why The Fray Still Takes Tequila Shots Before Every Concert

Backstage right before The Fray go on stage the scene looks less like a rock band revving up for a show and more like a moment of reflection and introspection. 

The band raises a round of tequila shots, which is a sacred ritual that they honor even when they’re not drinking alcohol. “Sometimes half of us don’t even take it,” says drummer Ben Wysocki. “But the ceremony of holding them and circling up is always there.”

Before going stage The Fray take s a pre-show tequila shot.

Courtesy The Fray

The Fray—Joe King, Ben Wysocki, and Dave Welsh—will soon be back on the road for its Summer of Light Tour that promotes its new album, A Light That Waits. They’re the same Denver band behind smash-hit earworms “How to Save a Life,” “Over My Head (Cable Car),” and “You Found Me.” Just now they play to crowds that know every word of these songs by heart and often bring their kids along. 

The band’s drinking habits have evolved alongside their music. “We got old enough where the quantity reduced, but the quality increased,” says Welsh. In their early years, the band’s rider was defined by a single bottle: The Prisoner, a cult Napa red blend that mixed zinfandel with cabernet and syrah. “Every day we’d walk into the dressing room and there it was,” Wysocki says. “Gallons of it.” As they toured more widely, their tastes shifted—tequila in the States, Scotch in Europe and something else entirely in the heat of Australia. Eventually they stopped trying to select a signature bottle at all.

While the venues and songs may change, The Fray have a set pre-show ritual.

Courtesy The Fray

Welsh is the one whose curiosity went deepest. During the pandemic, he earned his sommelier certification, partly to fill the downtime and partly to see if he could “actually learn this stuff in a productive, academic way.” Now he’s the one who takes the wine list at dinner and the one who brings back bottles from off‑day winery trips—like the Yarra Valley haul he shared with the band in Melbourne. “There’s a little more purposefulness to it now,” he says. “It’s not the era of The Prisoner anymore.”

On the other hand, Wysocki’s palate leans toward Scotch. His drinking habits were shaped by an early encounter with an eager hotel bartender in Salt Lake City who pulled out every bottle he had and walked the band through them all. “I don’t even know if he knew anything,” Wysocki says. “But it set a bar for me early on.” These days he prefers a slow sip in a rocks glass, especially when the band is in the U.K. “If it’s cold out, finding a good Scotch feels special.”

King has become the band’s tequila voice—partly for taste and partly for his vocal health. “I had to make decisions to be less acidic on tour,” he says. So, he gravitates toward reposados, like Arette. Why that brand? “I love the oak, the vanilla, the honey, the little touch of citrus.” His go‑to drink is simple: tequila, soda water, and an orange wedge. “Tequila responds well with me,” he says. “I wake up the next day feeling ready to go.”

Their tastes have been shaped as much by people as by places. They speak fondly of star bartender Leo Robitschek who ran the bar at New York’s NoMad Hotel before it shuttered in 2021. He opened their eyes to craft cocktails and took them to some of the city’s best watering holes. 

They also had formative experiences in Amsterdam's Café Belgique, which is a Belgian beer bar. The first time they stumbled in, they were barely out of their twenties, discovering Trappist ales and was at the time “the best bar we’d ever been to” Wysocki says. 

Returning last fall, they braced for disappointment—bars rarely survive unchanged, and nostalgia is a dangerous lens. But the establishment was exactly as they remembered: narrow, candlelit, packed with locals, the same chalkboard beer list. “It felt like hollowed ground,” Wysocki says. “We were the young ones then, and now we were the old ones, but the bar hadn’t changed at all.”

As they head back on the road, the band admits they don’t know yet what bottle will define this tour. Maybe it’ll be a local IPA, maybe something Welsh discovers on a day off, maybe nothing at all. King, though, isn’t worried. He laughs: “No doubt you’ll find me in the corner with a drink that has a curly straw and an umbrella.”

source https://www.mensjournal.com/drink/why-the-fray-still-takes-tequila-shots-before-every-concert