Traveling with a task is the worst kind of travel. 

Maybe you’re some middle aged guy departing his two car garage to head to a landscaping technologies conference in Wisconsin and are wearing a tucked in polo shirt checking in to the airport Holiday Inn Express when your cell phone - conveniently located on a belt holster like you’re a western gunslinger whose bullets are emails that begin, ‘Howdy,’ - rings and it’s your boss Pete who is just the fucking worst and his name in your phone is ‘Painful Prick Pete’ and you answer and he tells you that all of the technology that you brought for the conference is lost by the airline and you have to now crowdsource all of your landscaping technology from Instagram stories. 

Sorry, did I say middle aged guy checking into a Holiday Inn Express for a landscaping conference and the airline lost the landscaping technology that you need for the conference? I meant to say you’re a young musician in a band checking into a shitty motel for a music festival and your manager just called to tell you that the airline lost all of your guitars that you need for said music festival. 

Touring is a fucking nightmare for all. It is extremely unglamorous, extremely tedious, extremely tiring, and worst of all, is essentially the only way a musician can make money these days. To lubricate the process for you, oh young and naive reader whose shitty garage band is about to go on a pub tour across the state which you are very excited about, we have asked some of yours and our favorite bands for advice, tips, and tricks for turning an unbearable experience into an ever so slightly more bearable experience.

The gut is God.

Of the nine artists we asked, five of them listed taking care of your gut as the first and foremost priority, and so we list it first. What does that mean exactly? For some, it means probiotics and Lactaid. For others, it simply means taking some sort of supplement or mixture of supplements to keep your body in good working order. If your body is shot, you can’t perform, and the whole tour crumbles. Or worse yet, you will crumble. There is nothing worse than trying to perform with a cold, or diarrhea, or a broken elbow, or dysentery, so do your best and take steps to avoid all of the above. Take it from the pros.

‘I’m currently at Target picking up probiotics for tour. It’s a marathon not a race, so you gotta take care of your gut.’ - Nic Gohl, Deeper.

‘Wellness formula, lyposheric vitamin c and the white noise app for me.’ Nick Zinner, Yeah Yeah Yeah’s.

‘Om master blend of mushrooms every day, magnesium before every show, lots of water, and no alcohol.’ - Halle Gaines, Automatic. 

Neck pillows, comfy pants, and other essential items.

Above all, it is very advisable to pack light. You don’t want to be lugging around multiple suitcases for weeks or months at a time, all of which are full of very unimportant crap that you thought you’d need but don’t (photos of loved ones, that book you have owned for a year but haven’t read (you won’t), a curling iron, your back up Magic The Gathering deck). When packing, you will want to be very choosy. Every garment has to be a garment that you will actually wear, and the luxury items - the headphones, the special skin soap, the framed photo of your dog - have to not only make sense, but be applicable to the goal of having you complete this slog of artistic expression. What might you not know that you need? We recommend Pepto, a neck pillow, ear plugs, an external battery for phone charging, a dopp kit, chapstick, more guitar strings than you think you need, and shoes that are new but broken in. What else? Ask Halle and Etta.

‘Comfortable and cool pants to wear in the van.’ - Halle Gaines, Automatic.

‘The first thing that popped into my head was the idea of how useful slides are on tour. like, shower shoes. for long van rides, popping in and out of hotels, or when you have to take an inherently weird shower at some random venue - slides are crucial. Secondly, two pairs of headphones are a must. two, meaning earbuds and also over the ear headphones (both noise canceling if feasible). Lastly, this one is more personal to me, but I definitely need weed to come along on the tour. some of the best memories i have on tour revolve around a shared joint with the band, before bed, outside of some random hotel somewhere.”’ - Etta Friedman, Momma.

Know where you are and where you are going and when.

Having an organized, pre-planned schedule is a key to success. Have everything booked in advance - where you’re staying, when you’re picking up the van, where the venue is, how long it’ll take to get there - and if you’re an over achiever, have all of it in a spreadsheet broken down by day with columns for destinations, times, on-site contact names, and everything else you might need. Having a specific time to wake up, to leave, and to arrive, and having that all clearly communicated is extremely important. If you aren’t all on the same page about what the mission of the day is, things fall between the cracks and you could find yourself missing a gig. It seems kind of lame, but a meticulously planned tour means that you won’t be scrambling in the moment, which will leave more time for fun and spontaneity, which you’ll want to take as often as possible.

Additionally, when you get to that place, know the sound guy’s name, the production manager’s name, and the bar manager’s name. Head of security, too. These are the people that you’ll want on your side when shit goes to absolute shit, and they’re also the ones who will confer with management when your booking agent (or you using a fake accent to disguise your voice) asks if you can return next year.

‘I have been on tours with hardcore bands where they simply ask the crowd for a place to sleep that night between songs, and if I had known that it was that kind of tour, I would not have gone.’ - Slater B, tour manager.

‘Don’t be late to the morning van call.’ -Dougal Gorman, tour photographer.

‘No matter how big or small your team, whether an agent or another person in your band is booking the tour, be as involved as you can. Be intentional about where you play and what venues, research the bands in that city, be kind to the people working at the show, know what’s going on. And don’t drink two hundred beers before an eleven hour drive.’ - Nik Soelter, musician, manager, agent, pr representative @ Grandstand HQ, gentleman.

Try the local ____.

Touring isn’t a holiday, it’s work. You will surely tell your friends that you’re visiting thirty cities, and they will tell you how exciting that is and how much fun you’re going to have and give you a list of a thousand places to see and things to do, but that’s because you failed to tell them that you are visiting thirty cities in twenty nine days and will have absolutely no time to visit that one cafe they went to years back that’s a three hour drive outside of Copenhagen. That said, wherever possible, dive into the culture. If you are playing a gig in Belgium and the venue has Budweiser or a local brew, opt for the local. If you’re playing in Sudan, don’t get lunch at McDonald’s, try something new.

Engaging with the local culture will help to keep things fresh and give each place a distinct flavor (get it? Not literal flavor. Well, sometimes, maybe a literal flavor, but you know what I mean) and help you out in your quest to make the best of it. It will be overwhelming, overstimulating, and far too brief to enjoy to the fullest, so instead, enjoy it in as many small ways as you can.

Manage your mental state.

You love your band, and they love you, too, but a month trapped in a van under extreme pressure and continually difficult circumstances will put a strain on your relationships. I doubt you can spend 100% of your time with anybody and not hate them after a while. The way that they breathe, they eat with their mouth open, or their outlandish and odious smells. You will be driven insane. It is important to take some you time in any way that you can, even if it is as small as going for a walk around the block before showtime, taking extra long in the bathroom, or putting on headphones on a long drive. 

This is more to do with maintaining good relationships with those around you, because without them, you won’t be able to overcome the obstacles and anxieties that will come up along the way, and there will surely be many. Nothing will ever go the way that you thought it would, and nothing will be as easy as it sounded. You thought you’d just pull up to the hotel? They lost your reservation. You thought the venue would have your backline? You were supposed to bring it. You thought the drive would take two hours? How about in a blizzard? Your mental health is as important as physical health, so in the same way that you’d take some vitamins and a mushroom blend, take some you time wherever you can, protect the relationships that got you here, and tend to yourself as often as possible.

‘Have a strategy in place for dealing with the problems that come up, because there will be a lot, and make sure the everyone in the band feels comfortable communicating so that no one has any built up anger’ - Sam Slocum, Been Stellar.

‘The best advice I ever got was to do anything you can to stay present even if it’s just playing a game on your phone and now I play this really stupid game on my phone.’ - Rachel Brown, Water From Your Eyes.

‘Individual hotel rooms as soon as you can afford it.’ - Halle Gaines, Automatic.

‘When you get the chance, take time to yourself. Eat some fruit.’ - Dougal Gorman, tour photographer.

Rest.

Very strangely, assuming you play a show and everyone doesn’t hate you, your host will often see you play an entire show after having woken up at six in the morning and driving for ten hours and think, ‘oh, they probably want to stay up and party all night, I’ll throw them a party.’ You don’t want to party. You want to go to sleep. You are happy to be there playing in Balboa or Idaho or Nagoya or whatever, but tomorrow you have to go and do it all over again. Very sweetly, the host only sees you once a year and maybe you’re their hero, so for them this is a huge deal, but for you it’s just Wednesday. In moments like this, it’ll feel awkward, but you need to put your foot down and assign yourself time to get adequate rest. 

This isn’t to say that you can never cut loose, more so that you shouldn’t be loose every time the opportunity to become loose should arise, because it will rise, often, and if you’re always loose, how will you know if you’re ever not? How can you know if you’re drunk if you’re never sober? Think about that for a while, and then consider the fact that young bands with enormous promise burning themselves out on the road before they fulfilled their potential is such a common occurrence that it has become a trope in shitty summer films. You don’t want to be a trope. Go to sleep. There will be beers and a new city and an excited host tomorrow, too.

It’s a marathon.

As Nic said, it’s a marathon. It is an absolute onslaught of non-stop movement and fluidity, punctuated by thirty-minute intervals or bliss and excitement, but is mostly driving, sitting, thinking, driving, waiting, talking, thinking, driving, eating, and sleeping. It is important to remember that. The first week of tour - even the first few days - are extremely exciting and will usually set the tone for the rest, so make them count by keeping morale up, setting a standard for self-care, and treating yourself the way you’d like to be treated if you were a long distance runner. Would you stand on the sidelines of a marathon and hand the runner a pack of cigarettes and an ice cream cone and a shot of whiskey? Probably not, nor would you want that at that moment. You’d like some water and a bit of hummus and probably a nap, so take those things as often as you can. 

Additional tips and tricks:

• They don’t sell Pepto in Europe, pack a lot.

• No one ever regrets bringing extra socks and underwear.

• Have a night bag ready with all of your bed time essentials so that you don’t have to lug a big suitcase around every night.

• Synchronize your coffee intake so that you all pee at the same time on long travel days.

• What you listen to in the van is not a democracy, it is the driver’s call.

• Being rude to the sound guy is the definition of ‘fuck around and find out’.

• Put semi-healthy things that you will actually eat on the rider, not just Doritos and beer.

• Bring your own towel. Good for a shower, good for wrapping around your neck as a pillow on long drives.

• Wash your clothes in the shower rather than let them be disgusting.

• If your band mates are telling you that something is a bad idea, even if it’s a good idea, listen to them.