Here’s a thing I’ve learned from being a rocknroll tour manager: some of the streets in Austin are so narrow and twisty that you’re guaranteed to mess up the paint job of the band van you’ve rented for South by Southwest if you don’t take them slow, and yet you barrel down them anyway if there’s a good chance you might get to meet girls. If it isn’t girls, it’s because you snagged a guest spot at an incredible showcase or a swanky party across town. And sometimes, as was the case when Walt Lafty and I were careening over hilltops and around tightly-wound corners in the middle of the night, it is because you desperately need to find the 24-hour Whattaburger.
This is one of the many experiences I’ve had in my career as a rocknroll employee. Here’s another: I’m in a bright red double-decker bus, the standard issue British kind with the steering wheel on the wrong side, and I’m traveling with over a dozen passengers including two bands from England and Scotland, some crew, some stragglers, the driver, and a couple of support folks. Only, we aren’t traversing any of the UK’s famous highways or busy London streets - we’re driving over the George Washington Bridge into New York City in a vehicle that may not be legal for American roads. I wasn’t shocked when the cops eventually pulled us over…that was bound to happen. But it was real surprising that they never gave us a ticket, even after we opened the door - also on the wrong side of the bus - and hundreds of empty and full beer cans spilled out all over the roadway. When you’re in the business of taking care of the talent, you tend to hold your breath quite often.
In my time, I’ve popped trailer tires in the Deep South. I’ve jumped off twenty foot stages in Los Angeles. And one time, a drum riser fell over and cut a pedal-cabbie’s leg open and I instantly began readying myself for the deposition. I’ve pulled muscles lugging gear in and out of Nashville. Managed an impromptu private party at a mansion full of secret passageways in Milwaukee. And once, I walked backwards through a mile of San Franciscan street-car madness filming Perry Farrell as he serenaded the public with some classic Jane’s Addiction. When it’s come to music, I’ve never held on to caution long enough to ever throw it to the wind.
Instead, I raced into it - it was where I wanted to be. I still remember the electric excitement of the first time I was backstage as a writer. I still feel that excitement whenever I climb those same old wooden steps behind the sound board at the TLA in Philadelphia. A lot of blood and sweat went into those venues, those gigs, and those bands. I wore out a lot of shoes. I’ve rented a lot of vans.
I’m struggling right now with a recent decision I made to not go back out on the road this June with Nick Perri & The Underground Thieves. Some of my reasons were smart and healthy, while others were born simply of the toxic American ideology that a good and steady job is the proper choice for a man in his late 30s. I’m not complaining about my job or taking it for granted. I am insanely grateful to have reliable employment, especially after a year-and-a-half that utterly decimated the lives and finances of so many. My day job is challenging and complex, and I’m often called to focus my energy on making a global company a better place for more people. I’m grateful to do interesting work in interesting times, but it doesn’t exactly drip with the taste of adrenaline that covers a slice of pizza after your band plays a really great encore.
I don’t think I had any expectations when I found myself climbing those old wooden steps behind the sound board for that first interview. I blinked, and just a few years later I was filming short videos backstage, or hunkering down for an embedded stay creating content at the studio for a week. I blinked again and I was designing projection systems for backdrops, and plotting out gear placement in the trailer, and hitting the road for summers at a time. I blinked again and I was doing fly dates, and putting rock stars on guest lists, and meeting fans all over the world.
I spent fifteen years working in the music business, getting ready to be called up to the show, and as soon as the call came in, I told the music business that it couldn’t afford me. It wasn’t my most rocknroll decision, and I regretted it almost immediately. And yet, in the sudden absence of it from my life, I have been forced to reevaluate why I fell in love with the business of music in the first place. It ain’t the screaming fans or the intense pressure. It ain’t the long hours or the dehydration. It ain’t even really the music. It’s the people.
The beauty of touring is that you’re living and working with your friends. Everything hurts, everyone smells, every joke starts to grate, and just when you can’t take it anymore, you have an incredible show and it re-energizes the whole operation and suddenly you’re screaming “GET IN THE VAN” at strangers as you whiz past them on the road to South By. You experience these things together, and it bonds you together with densely bundled nerve endings. It crosses continents and ignores international borders. You become family, and it happens unexpectedly.
Facing this moment of watching some of my family get in a van they rented and drive off without me for the first time in nearly 15 years has been tough for me to process. Like family though, I know I’m never going to be out of it, and new opportunities will come again. The door will remain open. The song will remain the same, even if this time I will be humming it from pretty far away.