It’s midnight in the middle of nowhere on the Trans-Siberian Railway but sleep is far from mind. Russian train-riders are gathered in the bar car, laughing and dancing around the ragtag string band that’s swigging vodka and making up funny songs on the spot.

The bandmembers are a bunch of Americans, in-country for the 2018 World Cup, and rather than geopolitical hostilities there’s a warmth of human connection forged around global sport and the universal language of music.

“We ended up being the house band on the Trans-Siberian for a week,” guitarist Ryan Salm remembered. “It was before the war [in Ukraine]. We ended up befriending generals and regular people, just singing songs and staying up all night.”

Salm is a founding member of the Home Team String Band, the Tahoe/Truckee-based group that’s traveled to the last four World Cups — bringing an open-armed vibe of music, good times, and cross-cultural connection as they celebrate the unifying power of soccer’s biggest stage.

This year’s World Cup will be played in North and Central America from June 11 to July 19, with the bulk of the matches taking place in the United States.  

“We’ve been welcomed wherever we’ve gone,” said Dan Hurley, the group’s unofficial musical coordinator who, along with Salm, also plays in the Tahoe-based band The Inappropriators. “I’m most looking forward to hosting, and to giving back to the world what they’ve given for us. We are going to show a welcoming spirit.”

To do so, the band bought an old Bluebird school bus and undertook a group-effort, custom build-out, readying their “Schoolie” to be a traveling home, fan-zone (with two TVs and a projector screen), music venue, and cultural welcome center. They’ll make and hand out grilled cheese sandwiches and throw parties, aiming to be a gathering place where people from all over the world can hang out before, during, or after the games and have a good time.

“We’ll play a bunch of songs and hope to get people to join our band along the way,” Salm added.

Folks may join the band forever, for a day, an hour, or even just one song. After all, impromptu additions to the group are what created the Home Team in the first place. The band is now 12-plus humans strong, but it all started back in 2010 with three Tahoe locals who just wanted to go the World Cup in South Africa. 

Salm arrived on the continent before the event began and traveled overland from Ethiopia (guitar and harmonica in tow) to South Africa. He knew Paul Raymore and Hurley independently, and they all made plans to meet up before the matches began.

Prior to linking up with them, Salm was checking out of a bungalow in Malawi just as another guy with a guitar was checking in. He was from L.A., and Salm told him he lived in Tahoe. The guy’s first question was, “Have you been to High Sierra Music Festival?”

Salm smiled. “I go every year,” he said. The connection was instant and the two made sure they’d reconnect in South Africa — and boom, Jeremiah Kent was added to the roster. 

Similar serendipity ensued at the USA vs. England game in Rustenberg when an American approached the group and it was discovered they had a mutual friend in Tahoe. He introduced himself as Pete Blanchard and they all hung out that night. “We had an empty spot in our car,” Salm said, “and the next day Pete was part of the crew.”

They met Tahoe-ite Trevor Husted at the USA vs. Algeria knockout match and the group of travel-seeking, soccer-loving musicians started writing funny songs about their World Cup experiences. The bond was tight, and the Home Team String Band was born.

Everyone has a nickname. Someone who joined eight years ago will always be New Guy (Dane Halter). Added in 2014 were Hulké (Martin Cavada), Hylando (Rylan Cordova), and Maximus (Kurt Beckering). Then there’s Godfather (Paul Raymore), Captain Jebbers (Kent), and Handsome (Hurley), among others.  

The nicknames are written on the back of the bandmate’s personal Sweatsedo — a sweet, custom-made velour track suit — in the local language of whatever country they are in. Sometimes the names get lost in translation. In Russia, for example, Trevor Husted’s “T-Bone” read as “T-Steak.” 

Eight years later, Husted is still T-Steak.

Blanchard earned his original nickname, Granada (Spanish for grenade), due to his proclivity for explosive late-night antics, but on the Trans-Siberian he turned sweet. On a short stop, he ran out and bought flowers for the Russian bartendress. She received them well and started calling him Pupsik — a term of endearment either romantic or maternal meaning something akin to “cutie.” The boys couldn’t resist that one either, and his nickname forever changed to Pupsik.

There’s an origin story, of course, for the nicknames. In 2010, the original crew was driving on a dirt road in Lesotho, the small, mountainous nation landlocked by South Africa, when a couple of locals boys threw a small rock at the vehicle. “Stop the car!” boomed Salm’s voice. In a flash he was running into the African plains after the half-laughing, half-screaming perpetrators. 

The team was beyond impressed by Salm’s speed. Right then and there he became “Cheetah” — and the naming began. 

The young-adult sons of Raymore and Halter, Ethan and Nathan respectively, will hop on the bus for their first Home Team action this World Cup. “They’re good kids but they haven’t done much yet,” Hurley said. “They’ll be known collectively as JV until they prove themselves worthy of joining the varsity and earning a nickname.”

Not your typical band

The group’s gigs aren’t pre-booked shows in concert halls, rather impromptu busking-type sessions played in crowded subways, outside stadiums, and on bustling city streets. 

“My favorite thing about it is that most of our material is written in the moment,” Hurley said, noting that the chord progressions are made up on the spot and the lyrics freestyled. “You write a song about a new person you’re hanging out with or the score of the game, a funny time at the bar or the street scene in Brazil we’re looking at.”

Many of their stream of consciousness songs, in a nod to true art, only ever exist once. Some, however, are played again and refined over time to become part of the band’s growing catalogue. 

“We want people coming into it to feel welcome. It’s about the fun, the merriment, the global soccer-sports-music brotherhood that we’ve all come to know and love so much.”

~ Dan Hurley, unofficial musical director of The Home Team String Band, on the 2026 World Cup

And while they’ll mix in some covers — “California Dreaming,” “Hotel California,” and “Born in the U.S.A” are oft-requested when overseas — there’s never anything like a planned-out set list, which appeals to Hurley’s artistic sensibilities. “It’s total musical freedom,” he said.

In addition to the soccer and the music, adventure is a big part of the Home Team’s overall gameplan. On their World Cup-focused trips, they’ve hiked in national parks in Africa, explored the Amazon in Brazil, and embarked on multi-day, self-guided paddleboard trips around Russia’s Lake Baikal (the largest freshwater lake in the world and Tahoe’s sister lake), and the Arabian Sea, including in the Strait of Hormuz. 

When Beckering joined the band for the 2014 Cup in Brazil, he brought along his banjo. The circular part of the instrument was white. One day he drew black markings on it to make it look like a soccer ball, and The Soccer Ball Banjo came to be.   

“If there was a symbol of our band, that would be it,” Raymore declared.   

The band was hitting their stride, but four years later the unthinkable happened: The U.S. failed to qualify for the 2018 World Cup. “It was shocking,” Salm said. “We didn’t know what to do.”

After some debate, the performers decided the show must go on — a decision that led to perhaps the band’s greatest moment, those days and nights of song and merriment as the house band on the clickety tracks of the Trans-Siberian Railway.

The 2022 World Cup, held in Qatar in Nov. and Dec. ’21 to avoid the region’s stifling summer heat, featured another changeup: The vodka-swigging, beer-crushing Home Teamers found themselves in a dry country. So, they traded booze for bikes and began cycling to the games, oftentimes two matches a day, and from place to place with their instruments and antics. “A lot of people over there hadn’t seen anything like us,” Salm said.  

So, what do these 2026 home games mean for the Home Team String Band?   

“We want people coming into it to feel welcome,” said Hurley, who recently wrote a song called “Host the World,” which can be found on YouTube. “It’s about the fun, the merriment, the global soccer-sports-music brotherhood that we’ve all come to know and love so much.”

The Tahoe kickoff party takes place on June 12 at Alibi Ale Works in Truckee to watch Team USA’s opening game against Paraguay. The match starts at 6 p.m., with the pre-party starting at 4 p.m. The bus will be on site for tours and photos, and the boys will play tunes. All ages are welcome and bringing instruments is encouraged. “We’d love to see the biggest street band we can make in downtown Truckee,” Raymore said. 

After that game, the Home Team will put the bus in gear and start attending matches in person. First, it’s down to San Francisco where Levi’s Stadium hosts Qatar vs. Switzerland on the 13th and Austria vs. Jordan on the 16th. Then it’s up to Seattle for Team USA’s highly anticipated June 19th match against Australia. 

But the true destination is the journey — being on the bus and spreading the vibe like some version of the Merry Pranksters with a Pelé predilection and well-tuned instruments. 

“We’ll stop anywhere from a town square to a dive bar or a trailer park,” Salm said. “It doesn’t need to be a million people. We’re not an arena band, it’s about intimate.”

From Seattle, the Home Team dips north of the border to catch New Zealand vs. Egypt on the summer solstice in Vancouver. Then the bus will turn around and meander south to get to L.A. in time for Team USA’s final group match June 25 at Sofi Stadium against Türkiye. 

After group play the teams with the best records will advance to the knockout stages, the details of those matches being unknown until the completion of the first round. “We don’t have any idea yet where we’ll go,” Salm said, the band perhaps leaning into its ability to play things by ear. “We’ll try to follow the USA if we can.”

The Beautiful Game 

Estimates are that 5.8 billion people, roughly 75% of the world population, will view the 2026 World Cup in some form — making it the most watched sporting event in human history. 

Soccer, like music, is truly a global language. While there have been historical instances of violence breaking out between different fanbases, the majority of the sport’s power lies in unification. 

“We may be enemies on the pitch, but before and after let’s put the differences behind us and hang out,” Salm said. 

Not every minute of the band’s travels, however, has been filled with kumbaya. In Qatar, the boys were on a bus before the USA vs. Iran game. The bus was pretty much all Iranians. Some back-and-forth jarring started up that quickly turned heated, the fans at each other’s throats. “For a minute, you thought there was going to be a brawl,” Salm relayed. “But then we came together, like ‘hey, we’re all just human beings here.’”

The two countries are now at war. 

There was a similar time on the Trans-Siberian Railway. “We met this guy who looked like a giant ogre, and we were all kind of intimidated,” Hurley recalled. But that mean-looking Russian played the guitar. And the guys bought him some beers. “By the end of the night he was kissing us on the forehead,” Hurley continued.

The Home Team is about getting past stereotypes, about breaking down barriers of preconceived notions of this country or that culture. 

“Our adventures are a good chance to be face-to-face with people you don’t think you’ll get along with,” Hurley said. “Then you watch some soccer together and play some tunes and see what happens next.”

Mark Twain wrote that “travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.” It seems like the Home Team String Band has picked up on what the author was putting down. Over the past 16 years, the group has set out across the globe to take in four World Cups, creating innumerable moments of beautiful connection between humans of different cultures.  

They have always been visitors in a foreign land, yet wherever they have gone the Americans have been welcomed. This summer, they play host — ambassadors of our nation, doing what they can for international relations and having a good time doing it — one goal, one song, one new member of the Home Team at a time.