My Name Is Steve

      My name is Steve. I'm a freelance tour manager and sound engineer. I was offered the job when I was living in Boston, MA.  I had recently finished my degree from Berklee College of Music. While working as a guitar teacher, my friends The Click Five, needed someone wiling and able to help them on tour.  They had landed spot opening for Ashlee Simpson and the first date was rapidly approaching.  They asked, I agreed, and we rode off into the sunset – quite literally - for our first engagement.

       Allow a brief aside.  Now and in the future, I will  use the pronouns  “us”, “our”and “we” in reference to live performances -  “Our first engagement” and so on – Do not take to mean that I was in fact a member of the band, but rather I was, or am, a member of the family that crops around the band.

      Any who...

      I'm often asked to explain not just the day to day mechanics but the feeling of being on tour.  From what common experience should I draw a comparison?  Plucked from a comfortable, familiar life, then quite literally overnight, dropped into an  environment that is as harsh as it is unfamiliar.  Hopefully you will see merit in the following analogy.

      Take the brain train backwards.  Disembark at the stop marked “Summer Camp”.  What feelings are stirred as you stand on the platform?  The ache in the pit of your stomach while your parents drop you off?  Gathering your wits, while at  the same time wanting to run to the waiting arms of your mom?  Knowing not to show fear as it would be sniffed out faster than you can say “write on my sleeping face with a permanent marker”?  After you give your mother her last hug and kiss, you turn to face to your peers.  They are engaged in similar departure rituals.   Soon the pecking order will be established. 

      Okay – so, this is the day on tour.  Bands meeting bands.  The emotions are more grown up, the people all grown up, no parents – of course – but the feeling is the same.  Leaving your familiar surroundings for the first time.  Alot of kids look like they have been at the game for years... Some are as green as you.  To a certain, but much more subtle degree, there are “cool people” everyone wants to hang out with.   How will you get on?  Into what group will you fit?   

      At camp, in the events hall you are “oriented”.  The counselors put on an opening night skit,  a faux vaudevillian comedy with warnings of poison ivy, smoking, and breaking curfew.  Afterwards, settling into your cabin, your worst fears are realized as a vulture of a human ascends the bunk atop yours!  Is it possible? Are you the most unlucky creature on on god's green earth?   He smells like New York city garbage.  He inhales as if a kazoo is lodged in his nose. He exhales through the mouth gargling like Homer Simpson in remembrance of donuts past.    

      On tour it's your first night trying to sleep in a van, bus, or hotel room.  I had such a hard time falling asleep the first night.  I made up the “vulture human” for dramatic purposes, but, the anticipation – the thought of his possible existence is the same!  I was actually in Ethan's (TC5 bass player) basement. The lives of my friends, this band, their money, and their career was under my unseasoned jurisdiction.  The stress of the responsibility!  Who was I?  I had seen a little more life than them – but that was it.  Those thoughts were enough to keep my eyes open half the night. 

      At camp you take your meals in the “Great Hall”.  A place sure to have been the canteen of some old army barracks.   You slide your sweaty tray down the rails. The slop on your plate is described to you as Beef Stroganov. 

      When the concerts are held in Arenas or out door “sheds”,  bands and crews are fed by a catering company.  Yes, it is VERY reminiscent of summer camp cuisine.  Smaller tours are not catered. The venue gives you a “Buy out”.  Ten bucks or so for you to spend as you wish.  Other times you get nothing.

      At camp you lay in bed with the vulture perched in his nest above you. Your mind wanders home.  Green grass, and red Kool Aid. Buttery summer air and the pool next door.  To Walter and Mark.  Best friends. You'd be having a sleep over right now.  Tomorrow .. yes tomorrow you will call. You will call, Mom will answer,  and she will take you home.  

      Of course you never call.  Having had the most affirming of all experiences, and achieving high honors in marksmanship, archery, pottery , rock climbing and survival skills (climb a tree, eat a sausage), you vow to never fall out of touch with your new comrades!  You will call and write everyday!  As soon as the fates allow,  you will  visit your new sweetheart on Long Island because you love her and you only live in Connecticut which is not far.  Your life is changed for the better.  

      The tour comes to an end. Everyday has been a chorus of perfect chaos:  Unloading and setting up equipment,  eating when you can, sound check, interviews in person and on the phone, radio stations at 7:00am that seem like a dream to you now, coordinated meals and bed times, there was work to be done and odds to overcome, love, lust, happiness and pain, insane fans, posters with your name on them, gifts, loneliness, no one and everyone to talk to all at once, brotherhood, highway eyes, stiff necks, no showers,  no time alone, too much time alone,  “Remember Tulsa?”  “Oh yeah.”  “When we...” “And then you...” “She was so...” “I was way too...”  “we were!”. 

A postscript...

One thing I didn't mention - Never experienced at camp or in normal life - driving.  Half  your time on tour is spent this way.  Imagine a road trip you went on.  Ten hours nonstop to visit a friend in college or something.  Now imagine doing that road trip EVERY DAY.  In order for the hours to melt away, you fall into a trance that compresses spacetime  - a sort of waking dream.  Your mind takes refuge in its self.  The side effect is walking around like a Zombie after you've been in the van.  It always takes a while for time's rubber band to stretch out again.