Brian Doherty

Rock ‘n Roll busses can be travelling frat hous­es. There’s little privacy, and they often smell like a combination of urine and diesel fumes. Remember that they stop almost exclusively at truck stops and not travelers rest areas (that gets old fast). The essential thing about bus touring is that it’s really your home away from home. Here’s how it works: the bus driver gets quality sleep in his hotel room while you’re hard at work sound checking, appearing at the local radio station, or actually playing the show. As the band blasts into the final chord of the gig, Mr. Bus Driver resurfaces from slumber land and heads for the bus where he waits for you and the rest of the band. You get on and wait for the crew to pack up everything — gear, lights, P. A., and monitors.

A couple of hours later, when this is finished and everyone has boarded the bus, it drives overnight to the city of the next engagement. It’s during this drive that you’re supposed to sleep. (I don’t know about you, but it’s hard for me to sleep well on a bus. I keep dreaming I’ll wake up to find the bus driver asleep in a bunk and no one at the wheel!).

Brian Doherty, Mark Oakley, Tyler Gibbons, Stuart Mathis, backstage at Red Rocks. Last show of our tour .

When we reach the next city, the bus parks near the venue. Makes sense right? But here’s the juicy part: Let’s say that the bus arrives at that city, after dri­ving 350 miles, around 6AM. What do I do? Most of the time, I’ll continue sleep­ing for a couple of hours. If I wake up at 10am — now what? Breakfast? Shower? Phone calls? Visit rel­atives? Maybe. If the bus isn’t parked in the thriving center of town, none of this might be possible. It’s been my experience, in fact, that theaters and clubs are often on the outskirts of town and are sometimes in their most down­right funky neighborhoods.

I can shower in the club, provided they have one that I’d be comfortable using. I can dine at the McDonalds down the road a mile or so, provided I’m up for a brisk walk through heavy traffic. As a rule, the bus always stays at the gig. Phone calls can be made and my distant cousin is a mere $20 cab ride away.

Okay, let’s say that I’ve successfully negotiated my morning routine. It’s only noon, and sound check doesn’t begin until 5pm. Now what? As much as I try to be productive, this aspect of bus touring can be really limiting and cramp my style. The best solution is to have a hotel booked. This brings us to our next surprise.

NO TELL HOTEL…

Surprise #2 — Accommodations. DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT assume that you’ll be in a hotel every night. In fact, most bus tours only provide hotels on days off. Management reasons that if we’ll be getting to the club’s parking lot at 6am, it’ll just be easier for us to stay there, at the venue. ALL DAY.

Management will also reason that check-in time at the hotel isn’t until 1pm, and that we’d have to check out at 4pm to make 5pm sound check anyway, so why bother? If right now you’re asking why we have to check out of the hotel, just remember the overnight bus ride. In my experience, the band either checks out before sound check, or on the way out of town.

Management loves this because they save large sums of money (courtesy of your discomfort) on hotels during the duration of the tour. Please let me clarify one thing here: If you are on tour with a band in which you’re a full member, by all means, save money any way you can. I’m assuming here instead that you’re a hired sideman.

So, at this time, I might remind our friendly tour man­ager that many hotels offer an early check-in. And here’s where I see his shoulders hunch up, as he pre­tends like he’s learning about early check-in for the very first time! I watch him squirm. As long as it’s set up as such in advance, there should be a hotel room ready upon arrival.

The Perfect Bus Day

My friends, here’s how it should really work: The bus pulls up at the gig. The crew continues sleeping on in a drunken stupor, until their 10am equipment load-in. My band mates and I step off of the bus and into a cab that the tour manager has called. The cab takes us to a nearby hotel, where I check into my room.

I now have the day to rest, write postcards, make phone calls, practice and whatever else I may want. There is one hitch, however. Don’t assume you’ll get your own room. Many tours encourage doubling-up on rooms, obviously to save even more money. But why anyone would want to share a room with someone they’re already spending 18 hours a day with is beyond me.

You may be wondering why man­agement is so concerned with saving money. After all, this is Rock ‘n Roll, ain’t it? Well, to their credit, manage­ment has to run a tour like they would any other business. They have to look at the numbers to make sure that the tour is bringing in more than it’s shelling out. After all, my salary is being paid out of the mon­ey that the tour is generating. Man­agement’s job is to run the tour effi­ciently, and cut excess spending every­where they can.

All of that’s okay, but here’s where I get fired up… Sometimes, the tour goes extremely well, like an oiled machine. It’s also generating large sums of money. Wouldn’t you think that as prof­its go up, accommodations would get better, and everyone would get more pay, too?

Unfortunately, this doesn’t happen all of the time. Often, when a tour begins to pull in a lot of dough, the artist and management may want even more corners cut. To avoid what I term “diminishing returns” as one helps the artist to make an even greater profit while perhaps accepting something less than spectacular for yourself, think about negotiating for what will become a bet­ter deal down the road, when and if rev­enues permit. Otherwise, relatively speaking, a salary can become less than what it was when one started.

I share some personal Rock ‘n Roll tour experiences here.

Marit Larsen of M2M walks to our tour bus on our very last tour

The years of practice and hard work have paid off, and you get a call to go on the road with a well known band. You readily accept the tour; now its dates beam out from your desk calendar. It is great to tell your network the good news about your upcoming gigs.

After all these years, I still love touring. I’ve heard lots of road stories and told my own share as well. I’ve had some great experiences but others still haunt me. Touring has been a character builder and my free ticket to world-wide travel. I’ve never met a musician who didn’t romanticize the road and all its bumpy glories. However, there is a lot about touring that I wish someone had told me about before I signed up. Chances are, these issues will not disappear, and we may as well protect ourselves as professional musicians.

SURPRISE, SURPRISE!

The calendar shows that you are in the middle of your tour. It’s going well, except for the many surprises. Surprise #1 – TRAVEL. This is a good one. There are only two methods of tour travel-ground or air. Air travel is really only necessary in situa­tions where it’s too far to drive by bus. Seems obvious, right? Brace yourself. Many tours will make you take the bus for great distances anyway, if there’s enough time before the next gig. For instance, if the tour is slated to begin in Idaho on Friday, manage­ment may try to get the band to leave on Monday, from New York, ON THE BUS. This can become frus­trating when you find out that the star artist isn’t on the bus, because he’s flying straight to the gig. When you can say, “No way!” and fly instead.

MEN WITH A VAN

I used think that travelling on a tour bus was living large. That was until my first tour on one. Later, I’ll tell you what I don’t like about bus travel. But first, let me tell you what I do like about touring in a van. Actually, I love touring in a van. No, I’m not talking about a tour where the band, crew, gear, and a dog are packed into something like a “Cheech and Chong” vehicle. I prefer the adult approach. And here’s why: the van gives everyone in the band mobility. A van means that just a few people (usually only the band, and let’s hope that it’s a five piece band), can fit into it. The tour man­ager and crew ride separately on a bus. The gear, the P.A., and the merchandise are in separate trucks. As a matter of fact, the crew actually needs to be on a bus because load-in at most venues is early in the morn­ing. They can’t possibly sleep after the previous night’s show, wake up, and drive 300 miles, all by 10am the next morning. The band, on the other hand, doesn’t have to get to the next city until 5 o’clock for sound check.

One van to another. I'm in Jim Johnson's van while on The Silos tour in California

So, here’s a perfect van-tour day on the road: this day, in fact, really begins the night before, when I look in my room and find the “daily info sheet” that the tour manager has left for me. Every evening, one of these is put under each band member’s door. It contains everything we will need to know for the next day; destination, direc­tions, important phone numbers, hotel specifics, etc. It also tells us what time we should meet in the hotel lobby for departure.

On this perfect day, I wake up early around 8 am. Am I nuts? After a show that didn’t finish until 1 am? No. I’ll have plenty of time to sleep during today’s six-hour drive to the next town. This way, I have a couple of free hours before we leave, and I can exercise by jogging or going to a gym.

After breakfast, I check out of my room, and meet the band in the lobby. We pile into the van and are on our way. A fifteen-passenger van has three bench seats and two club chairs up front. If there’s only five guys, that means one to a bench and one to a club chair. This makes for a very comfortable ride and allows everyone to stretch out and relax.

Who’s driving? One of us. To have a professional driver would just take up valuable space. I love it when band members take turns driving (unless we have some scary drivers among us). On the road, we can stop for lunch and maybe a few sights, as long as we’re on time. The guys on the bench seats can lie down and sleep. For me, this is a great way to tour. We do what we want, when we want, and stop as often as we please. Some of my favorite towns and restaurants were discovered like this.

If we get to the next town early, we can check into our rooms and relax. If the hotel is close enough to the gig, we are also able to go back for a nap before the show. Want to see a movie on your day off? You can borrow the van. With this set up, the band is really independent from the rest of the tour crew. Many times, I’ll only see them at the gig. Unfortunately, this is not the way a bus tour operates. More on bus tours coming up.