Life in a band is a very tough row to hoe. It's eat, sleep and breathe travel, only to arrive at the one-hour or so paradise that is the reason for our trouble: the show. Many of us, as Wes testifies, did more than one show per day. There's nothing like getting back into wet show clothes before each performance. The costumes usually remained moist until that blessed day when they were emptied, washed and folded, to find their home back in the suitcase. This was our only private space, other than a briefcase that sat permanently on our lap. I lived the life described below for 6 years. I hope you enjoy Wes' memories from the road...
Well, first let’s establish just what is the road? I believe it’s something different to every touring musician. To the Rolling Stones or Shania Twain or any major touring artist...it is a “grueling” schedule of shows and press junkets. Say…25 shows in two months. It takes you away from home and loved ones, unless you choose to take them along. On tour, they intersperse plane and limo trips with shows at fantastic venues and brief stays at the best hotels in the world.
To a bar band playing grungy clubs, it might mean sleeping in the van, selling self-produced CD’s out of a suitcase, and crawling to the next city, stinking of beer, while surrounded by fast food wrappers.
To a touring production company of a Broadway musical, it means moving mountains of props and people from place to place every few weeks.
To me it means being in groups that did shows two or three times a day for 9-11 months at a time. That’s two or three set-ups and tear downs, not by roadies, but by group members. That means two or three costume changes and traveling between shows in clothes that you had sweat in, grabbing naps in the van or bus to keep your energy up, while trying to get a meal in there somewhere, and at the same time doing public relations with school, fair, church, or hotel staff when all you really wanted to do was eat or lie down somewhere. Sure, I know it was a run on sentence but that’s how you feel 24/7. Always trying to catch up to yourself.
The road, in the context I’m using it, is not just the pavement that connects all towns and states in America like a concrete spider web. The road is the exhilarating, and at times heartbreaking, bus-and-truck side of show biz. It is staying in cheap motels, situated at the edge of Everytown, USA: the ones near the railroad tracks, just off the outer belt. Lodgings known for rooms with paper-thin walls that can’t quite be darkened because of glowing, over-the-top neon signage flooding the parking lot and creeping in through broken window blinds. Their mediocrity is measured by overworked heating/air conditioning systems, not coming close to getting the job done, and rough, postage-stamp-size towels.
The road is Mom and Pop ice cream joints named Frosty Point or Whippy Dip, with small orange and black CLOSED FOR THE SEASON signs taped to their front window in winter. It’s sitting in a fatty-food- blue-plate-special New Jersey diner or a central Iowa Union 76 truck stop restaurant booth, looking out at the bus, bathed in garish, yellow florescent light, drawing swarms of mosquitoes and moths. It is truck stops full of foul speaking, heavily muscled, tattooed, chain-from-the-belt-to-their-wallet, leather-clad people. And those are the waitresses! My road meant diesel fumes on everything I owned.
Oh, what we will do for the opportunity to play and sing for anyone who will stop and listen. It's all worth it! If you have any stories from the road you'd like to share, send them to me and I'll try to use them in blog, soon. Blessings, Road Dogs!
Write me at: jamie@jamieharvill.com
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