Feature: #TourLyfe, a Look Inside Life on the Road
By Chris Reinbold, Staff Writer
When one thinks of a touring band, I would bet a hefty dollar that most imagine the luxurious tour buses, alcohol and drug-fueled debauchery of the eighties hair metal bands. Images of Nikki Sixx shooting-up and Axl Rose storming off the stage flash through many minds. However, these images are not the norm among most low-to-mid-level touring bands within the independent music scene--and a majority of all touring bands, period. I know this due to my own experiences touring last April as bassist with my former band, Athens progressive hardcore outfit, The Welcoming Party, and through the many conversations and story-swapping with others who have shared in the experience.
I have spoken to many musicians that have toured, be it a very small band, or a nationally recognized mid-level band. For the purposes of what is about to be spilled before you, these stories and conversations come from my own experiences and many emails and over-the-phone conversations with the following crew of characters:
Mike Hansen, drummer of Pentimento
Nathan Staab, guitarist of Lakota de Kai and Owner and Talent Buyer with Addict Entertainment
Ray Harkins, vocalist of Taken and host of the 100 Words or Less podcast
Austin McCutchen, vocalist and guitarist of Choir Vandals
Chris Daley, vocalist of Mace Ballard
Now, for any tour, step one is the booking and planning. Many bands, at one time or another, have had to endure the trials and tribulations of DIY (Do-It-Yourself) tour booking. There is this understood rule that someone will spend ten hours in front of a computer screen sending emails to secure one tour date. For a six-date tour, that’s a lot of hours, especially without any real prior experience.
“When we first started touring, it was as DIY as we knew how to be. Definitely fit the bill for a solid amount of hours in front of a screen, sending e-mail after e-mail … I won’t say it was easy, but it could have been a lot worse. I’ll say we were fairly lucky,” said Pentimento’s Mike Hansen. Lakota de Kai’s Nathan Staab concurred, “When you are booking a DIY tour it is extremely time consuming!” Sometimes, it is easier for a band to hook-up with another band for the tour and share booking duties, as Austin McCutchen and his band Choir Vandals did with Flawless. “It was a two week tour … Whoever got something would be like, ‘Hey, we got this date booked!’ It was pretty much a joint effort,” said McCutchen.
Going hand-in-hand with the planning of the tour route comes finding a set of wheels. With most bands, you have to be ready to sleep in your vehicle. Very rarely do bands have the money for a motel room, since they have to put gas in the tank and keep some money to sustain themselves. Plus, it is nice to have a back-up plan if there are no arrangements to have somebody put the band up for a night. A roomy vehicle is a major plus, but not a must.
“We used to have a Jeep named Dick Brooks that we put a hitch and trailer on,” said Mace Ballard’s Chris Daley. My former band, The Welcoming Party, had a similar story. Four guys made up the band, then we had our tour mate, Deek, who is a rapper, and our tour photographer, Olen Queen.
We traveled in a cramped SUV with a U-Haul. Deek was driving and Olen occupied the passenger seat. The Welcoming Party’s guitarist, Addam, and vocalist, David, sat in the back with me. In the far back, the hatch-space, however, we stowed our stash of Doritos and our drummer, Judd. Judd preferred lying back there, even, saying, with a laugh, “I like it back here. I don’t have to talk to you guys.” Pentimento’s Hansen added, “We started out in a rental mini-van with five guys and all our gear.” Pentimento, though, was able to upgrade to a 15-passenger van through constant touring and growing success.
“The first tour we did was done with our bassist’s minivan and we decided his parents had, like, a camper trailer. It wasn’t like a small camper trailer, it could sleep two, maybe three, people,” said Taken’s Ray Harkins. He continued, “Just imagine some stupid kids loading equipment. We had the bass cab between beds.” Harkins acknowledged how they could have saved money by sleeping in the trailer, and he noted that they did a couple of times, but that was not the intention of the trailer.
Once the route and ride are figured out, it’s nice to have people in the area to crash with. “We knew when we were going through Philly we could stay with Leah [a friend of the band’s], and that would be our jumping off point for shows in New Jersey and New York,” said Harkins. He encapsulates the essence of how valuable having a place to stay on tour is, especially if whoever is offering their home always puts the band up.
If there are no available accommodations, bands are relegated to asking the audience at the show, “Hey! We need a place to crash. Put us up, please?” or they have to sleep in the van. Most of the time, when touring in a decent-sized van, bands use a little ingenuity to make the most out of their space. Lakota de Kai’s Staab paints the best picture of van sleeping, “We took the front-most bench out and put blankets down. For sleeping, we have one [person] on the bench, two on the blankets on the floor, and someone has to sleep across the front. Everything is comfortable, except sleeping in the front sucks.” On The Welcoming Party’s tour, Olen regaled us with stories of the last tour he went on with now-defunct Of Fortune and Fame and how they slept in their van, exclusively, for an entire two-and-a-half weeks.
When a band finally hits the road, there are some things that they absolutely cannot live without. “Pop Tarts and baby wipes, man. That’s all ya need,” said Pentimento’s Hansen. Hygiene and money, especially when it comes to food, are arguably the two biggest issues when it comes to touring. Showers are usually not readily available and every band that has grinded it out on the road for a little while will always tell you how much of a lifesaver baby wipes are. It’s like a shower in a convenient little pack.
If there are two things a band sinks money into, and I mean Titanic-levels of sinking, it is food and gas. Most money made from a show’s guarantee, or money guaranteed to be paid to the band by the promoter, goes directly into whatever vehicle they are relying on, so it is critical to budget and prepare to eat cheap. Lakota de Kai’s Staab said, “When we first started touring we would hit fast food all the time and it drained our bank accounts… We will bring small baskets of food and stock up at Walmart. One thing I will do is buy crackers and Spaghetti-Os, I will put the crackers in the Spaghetti-Os and eat it cold. It's cheap and fills you up.”
Staab, again, put it best, as he continued, “If you are just starting out there really is no way to eat ‘well’ without breaking the bank.” Until you have been in an SUV surviving on gas station water fountain water bottle refills and individual bags of Doritos, courtesy of my supportive mom, it’s hard to grasp just how unhealthy tour eating is.
When it comes to actually playing a show, a lot can happen. The touring band can absolutely blow the roof off a place, leave people with their mouths open and begging for more, or it can be an absolute disaster. Through my experiences, I have had both of those. The Welcoming Party’s Athens tour kick-off packed at least eighty people into the Smiling Skull and left one pit-goer with destroyed glasses. A couple days later, in Kent, OH, we played to the promoter, his girlfriend, and a high school kid that I would again meet in the fall at OU, fellow ACRN Media contributor, Marc Blanc. “A huge element of playing music and songwriting is vulnerability. You're letting other people in on something that's personal and a positive reaction isn't guaranteed,” said Mace Ballard’s Daley.
People will leave during a performance. Luckily, I have never had to cope with clearing a room during a performance. “I was getting ready to get up on stage and pour myself out there, prepping myself for going onstage and going into the bathroom and just crying,” said Taken’s Harkins, "I felt so alone, although I was surrounded by people.” He reflects on a show in Montreal that had “forty or fifty people” but absolutely nobody was there to see Taken. Every band has felt that, especially after a day of heightening tensions.
A bad show can give way to frayed nerves and sour attitudes. It can really impact morale. After the Kent show, in Erie, PA, our guitarist and I went at it for most of the day as we drove. Our bickering culminated in a near-shouting match during our load-in at the venue. Luckily, Olen told us to go our separate ways and calm down for a bit. We apologized to each other later that night and we still do, on occasion.
“Generally speaking, [Taken] was pretty cool with one another. We had known each other for so long that we knew when each other needed space,” said Taken’s Harkins. However, he does recall two instances where things did get physical. “There was an open-handed slap and then a person just punching somebody in the arm, not maliciously. It was just a ‘Dude, knock it off.’” First and foremost, on tour, you’re making music with some of your best friends, essentially a family. Space is necessary on tour, it is critical to have some breathing room when you can get it, especially when you’re in a Trailblazer with five other guys for hours on end.
I remember sitting in the stairwell of the hotel after our Kent date, since the promoter nor anyone in the audience could put us up. I had to drain my bank account on the cheapest hotel I could find. I was on the phone with my fiancée, sitting in the stairwell and telling her about the show and how our nerves were already a little bit shot. She said to me something like, “Stop. Have fun. If you’re away, I want you to have fun. I don’t want you to be miserable.” I smiled. After a bad tour date, little things can pick you up, and getting the validation from someone close to you has immense value that is next to unexplainable.
Being away is definitely not easy on those you love, your family, those you left behind. I’m sure it wasn’t easy for my fiancée to tell her family that I was playing music with my friends when Easter rolled around and I wasn’t there. I’m sure it was hard on my family, also, since it was the first Easter I wasn’t there.
“It’s a struggle,” said Harkins about maintaining healthy relationships on tour. “And I dare say, the more successful you are, the more alienating it is.” As a touring artist, you live in an almost suspended state. Everything you leave behind, no matter if it is six days or three months, keeps going. Life does not stop because you are not there. “The people that are closest to you are either suffering the most or you’re taking out whatever stresses are happening on them,” Harkins continued. “There’s a level of understanding that has to be had.” It is not uncommon to have to deal with coming back to something completely different from how you left it.
For any musician, touring is one of the most rewarding and informing experiences there is. With all of the cons--some bunk shows, the atrocious amount of food consumed with no real health benefits, band tensions and leaving behind loved ones--a musician is still pursuing their passion. From the planning and the retina-frying hours in front of a laptop screen to the sweat-drenched shows and the restless nights between, tour is nowhere near glamorous, but it is still a dream to be fulfilled for many bands.
I am lucky enough to say I have done it. I could have never done it without my family and fiancée supporting me and, of course, my friends and bandmates. It wasn’t easy on anyone involved, at least through my experiences. My brothers in The Welcoming Party, Deek and our photographer, Olen, were in the trenches with me. We survived. It was an experience I will never forget and something I cannot wait to experience again.
I would like to thank, from the bottom of my heart, Nathan, Chris, and Mike for their much appreciated email and social media correspondence. I would also like to thank Austin and Ray for taking their time to chat over the phone about touring and other associated adventures.
