Josh Dun will definitely be taking his time on his new ride this summer. The drumming half of genre-blending alt-rock duo 21 Pilots is the latest subject of Indian Motorcycle’s Forged web series, which celebrates the all-American bikes as a platform for fender-to-fender customization.
This build comes courtesy of Roland Sands, the founder of Long Beach’s Roland Sands Design (RSD) who helped make the make the racy Indian FTR even racier with this year’s limited-edition, Super Hooligan series-inspired livery. What Sands did for Dun’s one-off Indian Scout is significantly more dramatic.
“We’ve always taken cruisers and turned them into sport bikes, more or less,” Sands says in the reveal video. Accordingly, Dun’s bike is a mashup of the Scout and the FTR: the 17-inch forged wheel wrapped in Dunlop Q5 rubber, the fork’s triple-clamped neck, and swingarm were all also used on the aforementioned Indian x RSD Super Hooligan. Dun’s bike also has front and back dual-disc brakes, a custom flat track-style tail, and a custom Saddlemen seat.
But there were two other touches in particular that elicited the strongest reactions from Dun. Upon seeing his ride, he exclaimed, “This thing’s perfect”—the black-and-yellow color scheme just so happens to perfectly match the album art for 21 Pilots’ Trench, although Sands had penned the design before he knew that Dun would be the recipient. Then, after firing up the engine, an ear-to-ear smile formed as soon as the musician heard the V-twin’s diabolical belt through the RSD-fabricated exhaust.
Sands and RSD fabricator Aaron Boss go on to explain that the design was largely inspired by dominant old-school Indian racer Ed Kretz. As a tribute, they emblazoned Sylvester the Cat on the tail’s underside—according to Sands, Kretz printed the cartoon on his business card with the quote, “Take your silly-ass problems down the street.”
“What makes an RSD bike is taking the performance of the machine and elevating it,” Sands added. “Right when you look at this bike, you go, ‘Oh, that thing’s high-performance for sure.'” Head to Indian’s website for more on the Forged series.