The guys in Hot Chelle Rae have been on tour so often in support of their albums that they’re basically professionals at it. They’ve traveled the usual, and unusual, routes and played in hundreds of places. After a while, any band starts to make the bus and the venues into their home away from home. That’s where the tour rider comes in.

When a band plays somewhere, part of the deal is providing a list of requirements to the venue. It might be for special food, stage equipment — any and all requests of the band are honored. Some artists abuse this. You might remember the rumors that Jennifer Lopez demands her dressing rooms be all white or the famous old story that Van Halen requested they be served only green M&Ms backstage.

Hot Chelle Rae have taken it one step further. On the rider for their current tour, the guys request a “fresh puppy.”

Singer Ryan Follesé told CBS Local, “Our tour rider is not that exciting. We have the usual stuff like peanut butter & jelly and stuff for the bus. But we do have one fresh puppy. That’s just purely to see what people say.”

The request hasn’t yielded very many puppies for the guys so far on this tour, but Follesé says, “One time we had a promoter call our tour manager and he was like, ‘Alright I got everything on your rider but I’m having trouble locating a puppy.’ And [the tour manager] was like, ‘We’re kidding dude.’”

It may be a joke, but the guys wouldn’t turn down a puppy if one did show up. “But we just hope that one day we show up and there’s a puppy in the dressing room,” Follesé said. “Because how fun would that be?”

-Courtney E. Smith, CBS Local