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URBANA — Terry Luttrell is spending a little more time in Champaign-Urbana than he had planned.
The REO Speedwagon singer, who was part of Saturday night’s concert at State Farm Center in which the band and fans said their goodbyes, wrecked his car Sunday morning on Interstate 57.
Luttrell suffered a cracked sternum from airbag deployment and is recuperating at Carle Foundation Hospital in Urbana.
Speaking by phone from his hospital bed Tuesday morning, Luttrell said he expects to be in the hospital for the next few days doing rehab.
Luttrell said he fell asleep while heading south near Arcola.
“I was able to get up and get out of the car,” Luttrell said. “The airbag went off and cracked my sternum a little bit.
“I have a little back pain and neck pain. It’s nothing that can’t be overcome.”
Luttrell said he was headed to St. Louis for business. The keyboard player from Luttrell’s REO Classics band was traveling behind him.
Luttrell didn’t get much sleep before hitting the road, saying he signed countless autographs at the concert after-party.
“It was just sign-sign-sign,” he said.
He left the party about 2 a.m. Another 40 autograph-hungry fans awaited him back at his hotel.
“I had people with Starcastle albums and REO albums. People were really friendly. You’ve got to” take time for the fans, he said.
He got to bed about 4:30 and then hit the road a few hours later.
Luttrell said he felt “a little bit sleepy” when he headed out, but thought he would be OK.
“It just happened,” Luttrell said. “I nodded off. I rolled the car over, and I woke up and I was in a cocoon (the airbags). Unfortunately, it totaled the car.”
Luttrell was taken to the hospital and later learned that some of the nurses who tended to him had seen been at the concert the night before.
He said the concert “was a good show all the way around.”
“You never know what it’s going to be like,” he said. “Everybody (in the band) was excited. It was just a fun evening.
“It was exactly what we thought it was going to be. It was a one-off concert that will never happen again. To say that you were there was a pretty big thing.”
Luttrell said he was glad to have been a part of it — though the car-rolling part, he could have done without.
