So, here is a little peak behind the curtain, dear reader. Yours truly isn’t only the preeminent adult magazine music journalist in the Pacific Northwest, but I also actually dabble in some of the performing arts myself. Think not of me as the crossed-arm critic in the back of the club, complaining about how the kids on stage aren’t playing real hardcore because they’re wearing Fred Perry, not Lonsdale shirts. I put my time in the trenches. And coming off a small west coast tour, I thought I might share a morsel of wisdom from my travels with those of you dumb enough to try this at home.
Lots of them. More than you think you need. I am serious. This seems trivial, but you will hate life and everyone around you if you don’t do this very important thing before striking off on even one of those long weekend tours. I can’t stress this enough. When I was a young lad embarking on my first week-long tour, I asked my seasoned elders in the music scene what wisdom they could impart, and without missing a beat, they said, "Socks." They couldn’t have been more right, and now I’m imparting it onto you young, lusty bucks.
So, here is a little peak behind the curtain, dear reader. Yours truly isn’t only the preeminent adult magazine music journalist in the Pacific Northwest, but I also actually dabble in some of the performing arts myself. Think not of me as the crossed-arm critic in the back of the club, complaining about how the kids on stage aren’t playing real hardcore because they’re wearing Fred Perry, not Lonsdale shirts. I put my time in the trenches. And coming off a small west coast tour, I thought I might share a morsel of wisdom from my travels with those of you dumb enough to try this at home.
You need at least one rest day. I might put a little asterisk that you can probably pull off one of those three-day weekend excursions and play Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night, before driving back hungover on Monday...but anything past a week, you definitely need a night off. Depending on how far away the stops are—because you can only drive for six hours, hop out of the van, load in gear, and perform without so much as a smoke break for so long before you just drop dead. Union strikers paid for the very existence of a weekend with blood. Let’s honor their deaths, even with our ego-stroking project.
You’ll definitely need extra hands unless it’s physically impossible due to vehicle space. At least one. Especially for the long ones—even if it’s someone’s girlfriend for emotional support. They can set up the merch booth, look cute next to it, and flirt dopes into buying something while you seethe with jealousy from the stage, like the manchild you are. She’s literally trying to help you pay for gas; the door money is going to the door guy and the sound guy, idiot. But on the real, if you’re taking off for one of those west coast long hauls, do not just take the unlucky bastards that have to be on stage. You’ll implode faster than a submarine made out of expired carbon fiber without any safety features.
Leave an hour earlier. I couldn’t be more serious about this one. Especially the west coast, which is—in my humble opinion—too fucking big. It’s a goddamn James Cameron movie between relevant cities in the Pacific Northwest, and then an entire Netflix mini-series to the Bay Area and another goddamn mini-series to LA. And it’s not much better on the east coast since even though everything is much more (Europeanly) clustered together, traffic alone is going to make those Google Maps estimations about as accurate as the company is not evil. Whatever time you agree to leave after all the calculations, just leave an hour earlier. Trust me.
Now I know this comes off as the creepiest thing you’ve read in a magazine with naked women in it, but let me elaborate. It seems the smart thing to do would be to hit the big cultural centers of America: Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, etc. And while it’s true that a bigger city will likely give you access to more people and more opportunity (except LA, they literally couldn’t care less about another band rolling through town), absolutely do not skip over the Bumfucknowheres and the God’s Country One-Horse Stops. You’ll likely make more money in these small towns since—depending on the day of the week—you’re the only exciting thing happening in town. And I say all ages because the kids in these shithole small towns are bored as all hell, and any excuse to do something besides smoke meth or harass wildlife is a no-brainer. Bars in small towns might misfire since you could be interrupting the locals’ line dancing night or karaoke, but the kids wanna go to a live loud band like they have posters of in their room. And they’ll pay good money they stole from their parents to do it.
I’m sorry, but at the end of the day, it’s a lot of work. No money. No sleep. No sex—unless you bring your romantic partner or seduce a towny, and ultimately, if you’re trying to further your musical career, this is definitely the most inefficient way to do it. You’re much better off doing something dumb on TikTok that blows up for some reason. I don’t make the rules. Show me the last new band you discovered, and I’ll show you the promotion or management company that manufactured them or the rich parents funding it. Maybe if we finally rebel against Spotify and boycott social media, some sea change might happen, but for right now, it’s an expensive hobby at best. If you want an idea of how bad it is, you can read Hit Parader interviews with Jawbreaker from the early ’90s, where they complain about only making $200 from the door at each stop on tour. I did the math; that’s about $450 today. Oh, Jawbreaker, if only you coulda been around now trying to make it. I wonder if you woulda broken up.
