Belle and Sebastian accidentally left drummer Richard Colburn in Walmart en route to a show in Minnesota.

The state the band were in was North Dakota where they had stopped for provisions and travelled 500 miles (sorry, wrong band) without him before realising.

The band had stopped at the store in Dickinson, as singer Stuart Murdoch related to Minnesotan radio station the Current.

“I was coming out of the Walmart, and [Richard Colburn] was coming into the Walmart,” he recalled, adding: “He was waving very happily, in a good mood. And that was the last time that we saw him.”

Murdoch blamed the unfortunate abandonment on a “blasé” system for checking onto the bus – describing the process of keeping rock’n’rollers accounted for like “herding cats” – meaning Colburn was left behind, in pyjamas and without either a phone or passport.

“He had a credit card, but he still sat in Walmart for four hours. He was probably thinking somebody was going to notice, but the trouble is everybody went to bed.”

The drummer then checked into a hotel, while the band took to Twitter to rescue him.

Eventually band and percussionist were reunited. As Murdoch told the Current: “I even had a friend who was driving down from Winnipeg on the way to the show here. So currently we have him in a car driving to Bismarck.”