On the Road

Those of us who tour for a living, we certainly lead the glamorous life. We travel across North America in state of the art tour buses. Buses with internet, flat screen TVs and DVD players in each bunk. Coolers stocked full of beer & booze with plenty of food, none of which we pay for. Buses worth in excessive half a million dollars.

We fly around the world to do a handful of shows & sleep in lovely hotels. Promoters take us to fancy dinners, town cars rescue us from the airport after a long international journey to whisk us home. Occasionally, we find ourselves flying on private jets, where limos pull up to the plane on the tarmac, load our bags in to the car and speed us to the venue so we get on stage just in time. Loads of celebrities come to our shows, we have after show parties that go until the wee hours…. we have access to anything & everything on a moments notice. As long the artist is selling out venue after venue, no one will say no to you. Money is no object and because you spend so much of the artist’s money to keep them happy - you find yourself spending your own money the same way, but it’s of no consequence, because so long as you tour, the income is usually quite spectacular.

But with the glamour comes a harsh & hilarious reality. You can be on tour with the hottest band, doing multiple shows in a row, by way of zigzagging across the country for 3 months - due to piss poor planning on the part of management. The crew can go days with only 4 hours of sleep, no showers and no one should ever have to wear the same underwear 3 days in a row. Catering runs out of food, flights get canceled, your luggage goes missing - never to be found. Drivers can be inept and take you to the wrong venue 25 miles away from where you should be. Sometimes your office ends up in a parking lot next to the club you are playing, amongst the chaos on Sunset Blvd. And then you find yourself unemployed, struggling to find a way to keep the lifestyle going, at home, like you do on the road. At home where you aren’t given a weekly per diem, you have to wash you own stinky undies, where room service doesn’t exist, you have to buy & stock your own refrigerator and you have to learn to fend for yourself. Its a hard knock life.

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