Twin Shadow Opens Up About the Horrible Bus Accident That Nearly Killed Him

Back in April, George Lewis Jr. (Twin Shadow) and his crew were nearly killed when their tour bus crashed into a tractor trailer in heavy fog. For the first time since then, Lewis has gone into detail about what happened that morning.

"It was supposed to be springtime, and we just kind of kept running into the end of winter everywhere," he told NPR's All Things Considered. "I was kind of tossing and turning all night, which woke me up before the accident actually happened. There were 12 people on the bus, but I was the only one awake and actually up and walking around."

"I think my phone rang, and I reached for it — and right in that moment, I just was thrown across the room and kind of landed with everything that was in the back lounge on top of me. There was a couch that had flipped on top of me, a mattress had come off the bed and was on top of me."

That's when Lewis said he realized he had been badly injured. "The first thing I realized was that I couldn't pick myself up with my hand, then [I remember] looking at my hand and seeing the bones sticking, kind of making a teepee out of my hand."

Lewis said he's still not sure what exactly caused the accident but emergency responders arrived on the scene almost instantly. "I've never seen people show up that fast," he said. "With a chainsaw, they cut out the whole side of the bus and got everyone out. Almost everyone had some kind of injury where they couldn't immediately walk. So everybody came out on these gurneys one by one. There was so many of us that the hospitals couldn't take everyone, so we kind of got split up between two hospitals, which was really stressful for all of us, because that was everyone's biggest concern: Is everybody going to be Okay?"

Lewis' hand, however, required reconstructive surgery and seven pins that now make playing guitar a painful challenge. "I can play guitar for a song or two, and then my hand really starts swelling up," he said. "It's just frustrating right now. I don't think I'll ever be 100 percent, but I consider myself a songwriter, not a guitar virtuoso. Piano, guitar, drums — these things are just tools. I'll still be able to create the music that I want to create."

Twin Shadow just embarked on the band's first tour since the accident. Check out dates here.

Three weeks after the crash, Twin Shadow played a previously booked appearance on Late Night With Seth Meyers. That performance is below.