Rules of the Road: They're Just Not That Into You

Unless you’re extraordinarily lucky, if you’ve played a live show before, you’ve had one of those shows where the crowd seems completely indifferent to your band, if not outright hostile.  It’s just a fact of playing live.  That doesn’t stop it from feeling lousy, though.  Like most things having to do with touring, what matters most is how you handle the situation, not necessarily that the situation happened.  So today, I thought I’d go over a few things related to this very topic.

• Don’t Take It Personally – Although it’s hard not to do so, the worst thing you can do is take a difficult audience personally.  As I said before, almost everyone experiences this from time to time.  Maybe they’re just not into your particular style.  Maybe you just have an audience of “watchers” versus “dancers and screamers”.  Maybe you’re an opening act and people just aren’t familiar enough with your material yet, so they’re just checking you out.  There are literally dozens of reasons an audience might be indifferent to you that have nothing to do with you personally.

• Don’t Insult the Audience – Just about the worst thing you can do in a situation like this is to insult the audience.  “You guys are fucking LAME!”  “This is the worst audience we’ve ever had!”  “Our genius is lost on you!”  Even if the audience is outright hostile, you don’t have to take the bait.  Be the bigger person and soldier on.  There are few things that look more pathetic than a band the crowd isn’t digging lashing out at the crowd.  Man up and build a thick skin or you’re not going to get far.

•  Don’t Apologize – This is sort of the polar opposite of the previous item.  “Sorry we suck so bad.”  Take some pride in what you’re doing, even if you’re a newbie.  Again, it just looks lame.

• Have a Sense of Humor About It – If you’re a naturally funny person and are quick on your feet, a little self-depreciating humor can go a long way.  If the audience sees you don’t take yourself overly seriously, they may very well warm up to you.

• Be Gracious – You don’t have to kiss the audience’s ass, but be polite and thank them every now and then throughout the set.  It’s a privilege to play in front of an audience.  No one owes you a thing.  Remember that and express it frequently.

• Do the Show for You – Playing music is supposed to be fun.  It can be easy to forget that if you feel slighted in some way by an audience.  So don’t worry about the audience.  Focus on making the music happen and have fun with your bandmates.  Look at it as a glorified practice section. Few things are more infectious than a band that is obviously having a blast onstage.  Even if the audience doesn’t dig what you’re doing musically, they’ll at least respect the passion with which you practice your craft.

Rules of the Road: For Your Health!

Fact: If you go on tour for a significant amount of time, you're going to get sick on the road.  You're shaking hands with fans, eating poorly, getting less sleep, you're traveling in a van/bus/plane with lots of other people breathing recirculated air, and you're often experiencing drastic changes in climates in short periods of time - all of this is a recipe for even the heartiest immune system to take a beating.  While there is no sure-fire way to avoid what I affectionately refer to as "the Tour Crud", there is a lot you can do to put the odds more in your favor.

• Wash Your Hands - This seems like common sense, but every time I use a public restroom, I am constantly grossed out by how few people wash their hands after using it.  Your hands are probably the number one body part for spreading germs.  Handle some money at the merch booth from someone with a cold, rub your nose, and boom.  You're sick.  So wash your hands as frequently as possible without going all Howard Hughes.  Keep some hand sanitizer with you and be conscious to use it when you've been in contact with a lot of people.

• Take Your Vitamins - While there is a lot of controversy about whether or not vitamin supplements are as effective as the vitamins you receive in food, it never hurts to give yourself a boost.  Just be sure to take them with food or you'll just urinate them out without them being absorbed properly.

• Keep An Eye on Your Diet - Unless you have reached the levels of stardom where you only eat in the finest restaurants or have a personal chef, chances are, you're going to be eating rather poorly when you're on tour - snacks from gas stations, fast food, questionable pizza, etc.  Even if you're trying, it can be tough to eat right when you're on tour.  But, if you make the effort, you can at least intersperse the culinary atrocities of the Circle K with the occasional salad, healthy snacks like seeds, nuts, and dried fruits, or even fresh fruits picked up at a quick trip to the supermarket.  Try and make sure you're getting enough fiber, too, as the changes to your diet you usually experience on the road can cause digestive... issues.

• Subdue Your Booze, Dude - I know no one wants to hear this one, but it's true.  Excessive alcohol consumption not only robs you of REM sleep, but it can compromise your immune system as well.  By all means, have fun and party like the rock star you aspire to be, but not every night.  Give your body a chance to heal itself.  Alcohol is rough on your voice, too, if you're a singer.  Take it easy unless you aspire to sound like Tom Waits.

• Get Some Damn Sleep - This can be the toughest one.  Oftentimes, you're getting back to the hotel at 3AM and have to get up again at 7 or 8 to get on the road again.  You're usually in noisy environments that make it tough to sleep, too.  What helps you get more and better sleep is probably pretty specific to you.  Try getting a white noise app for your phone to help filter out arguing hotel neighbors or snoring bandmates.  Jacked up on the adrenaline of performing and can't wind down?  Try natural supplements like Melatonin or Valerian Root to help you fall asleep faster.  Learn to take "power naps" - you'd be amazed how refreshing even a 15-20 minute nod off can be.  Also keep an eye on your caffeine consumption.  It doesn't effect everyone, but for some people, too much can mean a night of counting the cracks in your hotel ceiling (holy crap, did that one just MOVE?  Is that a centipede?!)

Looking back at this handful of suggestions, you might find it amusing that they are all things your mother has told you for years.  Who knew?  Moms are the original rock stars!

Rules of the Road: The Soundman - Til Death Do You Part

As I mentioned previously, I am on tour with my band at the moment, so I thought it might be valuable to share some tips on things I've learned over 16 years of doing live shows.  I thought I'd start out by talking about one of the most important rules of all: don't piss off the sound guy (or girl).  On the surface, this rule almost seems self-evident.  But anyone who has done a bit of touring knows that not all sound people are created equally.  Most will be great to work with, but sooner or later, you're going to have a bad experience.  How you handle that situation can make the difference between a good and a bad show.

Regardless of the skill or lack thereof your sound tech possesses, they have ultimate control over how you sound to the audience.  The first thing you should always do when you arrive at a venue is to introduce yourself to the sound guy and learn his name.  It sounds like a very small thing, but so few bands bother to do this, I think it really does at least show some respect.  Being a sound tech can be a soul-crushing job.  They generally aren't paid well, they have to work with tons of bands they probably can't stand the music of, and they get abused a lot.  Keep that in mind and afford your sound person some patience.

This doesn't mean you have to put up with everything.  If you're having legitimate problems working with a sound person, you are well within your rights to talk to the promoter or venue contact about said problems.  But take a second to ask yourself whether what you're up against is really a problem or if you're just being a dick.  Not every venue you play is going to be the Hollywood Bowl.  Chances are, a good deal of the venues you'll play in will be downright shitholes.  What matters here is not whether the venue is "worthy" of your brand of musical genius, but how you can get the best possible results for your audience with what the venue can deliver.  If that means a mono mix through the front of house, or less monitor mixes than you'd prefer, you can make it work.  Don't be a pussy.

Sooner or later, you'll encounter the Angry Sound Person.  This is usually someone called in at the last minute because the usual person called out sick.  They're pissed.  They're not happy to be there.  And, in their minds, YOUR shitty band is to blame.  Sometimes they are inconsolable.  No matter what you do, they're going to do a half-assed job and try their best to make you feel guilty for having the audacity to want to play a show.  But you'd be surprised what a difference it can make if you offer to do something as small as carrying the monitors to the stage.  Call your sound person by their name.  Be cool and collected.  Offer to help however you can.  Let them know, you're not stressed and will give them the time to do what they need to do.  This has turned around bad situations for my band more times than I can recall.  It takes virtually no effort, and it generally gets them on "your side" and wanting to do a good job for you.

Under no circumstances do you ever speak abusively or get aggressive with your sound person.  I don't care if they are King Asshole of Douchebag Mountain.  Even if you're having problems in the middle of a set, let them know what your problem is politely, and I guarantee you get better results than if you berate them in front of a crowd.  Abusing your sound staff also just makes you look like a prima donna.  Seriously.  No audience member has ever thought a band was cooler because they yelled at a sound guy.  Ever.  If you give a good performance, the audience will like it whether it's coming through a knackered set of speakers in a metal club or a pristine 5.1 surround system.  If your sound person is impossible to work with, talk calmly to the promoter or venue management. Sometimes alternate arrangements can be made.

At the end of the night, always make an effort to thank your sound guy for a job well done if you feel they've done so. Shake their hand.  Make them feel appreciated.  Again, it takes virtually no effort, but so few bands bother to do even this.  Your sound person is your lifeline to the crowd.  Remember that and appreciate it.

One final Tour Truism I would like to share is a bit on the flip-side of what I've been talking about here, but I swear it's true. The more the sound person drops names or talks about all the "big stars" they've worked with, the worse they are likely to be.  In my experience, the people who have the skills don't brag about it.  They let their results speak for themselves.  Only afterwards do I usually find out from other people that a sound person worked at Abbey Road or toured with Pink Floyd.

7 iPhone Apps to Make Your Touring Life Better

As you may be able to tell from the lack of a regular posting schedule and the constant plugs for my band's gigs in various cities around the US, I happen to be on tour right now. (We're actually just two dates from the end now, and after a much needed rest, things should get back to normal here at Waveformless again.)

I've never been a big cell phone person. Sometimes it's kind of nice to not be able to be reached. But in a touring situation, they can be invaluable, so shortly before our tour, I picked up an iPhone 3Gs figuring it would come in handy. Obviously, there are tons of different models of smartphones out there, but since I only have experience with the iPhone, I thought today I would share some apps that I've found really useful during the past 6 weeks of travel. Many of them are probably available on other platforms as well.

1. Inner Fence Credit Card Terminal (99¢)
This has been the best investment I've made on the whole tour outside of the iPhone itself. Quite simply, this lets you use your iPhone to accept credit cards at your merch table. You manually enter the credit card number, expiration date, amount, billing zip code, and the customer signs the virtual receipt on the screen using their finger. Payments are batch processed directly into your bank account and the customer receives a receipt via email. My band's merch sales have been through the roof this time around and a large part of that can be credited to our ability to accept credit cards. Note that this requires you to set up an account with Authorize.net and there is a somewhat convoluted sign-up/identity verification procedure before you can get started, but it's easy sailing after that. You pay a monthly fee to Authorize.net and they take a small percentage from each sale.

2. Siri, Inc. Siri Virtual Personal Assistant (FREE)
Touring entails a lot of showing up in unfamiliar cities and needing to find useful stuff. Whether it be restaurants, a place to get the oil in the tour van changed, a hotel, etc., there's a lot of stuff that can be a pain to find if you're not familiar with the area. Siri does all of this for you in a variety of ways, but it does a lot more, including grabbing location based weather forecasts, booking a taxi, checking flight statuses local events, etc. You can search for items by location, business type, business name, etc. Book tables at a restaurant, buy movie tickets, or send yourself reminders. This is a really helpful all-in-one app that makes finding what you need in an unfamiliar location and best of all it's free!

3. David J. Hinson's Cheap Gas! (FREE)
Fueling up your tour vehicle can be an expensive prospect. This handy app looks for gas stations near your current location and sorts them by price and the distance away from your current location. When you find a suitable station, you can locate it with the iPhone's built-in Map application and be on your way.

4. AllStays iExit ($2.99)
Touring the US involves a lot of travel on interstate highways. If you're looking for a hotel, a gas station, or a restaurant off the interstate, this app will make your life a whole lot easier. It finds your current location and lists all of the upcoming exits and what specific services and points of interest you'll find there. No more getting off at an exit and wasting your time only to find off there is nothing you need there. The only downside is that it occasionally doesn't think you're on an interstate when you are, but this is relatively rare.

5. TM Soft White Noise Lite (FREE)
Sleep is a rare commodity on tour, and many times, your surroundings aren't very cooperative when it comes to grabbing some shut-eye. White Noise Lite provides a handful of soothing sounds such as falling rain, chimes, background noise on an airplane, and plane old white noise that can mask the outside annoyances of loud hotel guests, snoring roommates, loud traffic, etc. A more full-featured paid version is also available that gives access to a much wider variety of sounds.

6. mint.com Mint (FREE)
Keeping track of your finances can be a challenge when on tour, but this app makes it a breeze. Simply sign up for a mint.com account, link the accounts you wish to track, and Mint does the rest, letting you keep tabs on your balances, how much your spending on what, and managing a budget. Very handy.

7. Expedia TripAssist (FREE)
Get discounted flights, hotel rooms, and vehicle rentals on the go.

Do you have any apps you've personally found useful when travelling? Share them in the comments!

Assemblage 23 Tour Diary #2: Eve of the Tour

Stop Thief!

6 or 7 years ago, my band and another band got together to do a small mini-tour of the Western part of the US. We played our first show in Vancouver and drove back to Seattle that same night. Exhausted, we decided not to unpack the trailer. After all, it was parked in a good neighborhood, and it was almost dawn, so surely it would be safe.

Yeah. Not so much.

We all slept in the next morning, and in broad daylight, some vehicle pulled up next to ours, unhitched the trailer from our van and on to theirs, and drove off with it. Chances are if you're reading this, I don't have to tell you how pissed off we were. I'm a pretty mellow guy, but had we ever found out who took our stuff, I would've had no qualms about 'paying them a visit' if you catch my drift. One thing you just don't mess with is a musician's instruments. But, not everyone follows the same rule book as you and I, so it's a reality that if you aren't careful (and obviously, the best advice is to be fanatically careful with your gear, as we are now), sooner or later, someone might make off with your stuff. So what do you do?

A reader of this blog named Mike sent me a link to a company that has one possible solution from a company called STOP. The way it works is you affix a metal 'security plate' to the bottom of your gear that has a unique bar code on it. This code, along with the make, model, and serial number of your gear is registered with the company, and a phone number is included, so if someone finds your gear for sale, in a pawn shop, at a swap meet, etc., they can call to ensure it is returned to its rightful owner. Even if the thieves succeed in prying the metal plate off, it leaves behind a 'tattoo' on the equipment identifying it as stolen property and again including the phone number.

Not a bad idea, but I think the main problem with this is that it counts on people to do the right thing. I have no doubt that it works a lot of the time, but relying on human nature seems a bit risky to me. Still, I guess it's better to take that chance than to have no means of protection at all. So until they invent LoJack for synths, this might be a good option.

The Tour Bible

When my band tours Europe, we hire a tour booker and manager, mainly due to the language barrier that can sometimes be an issue. But when we tour the United States, we book and manage our own tours. This is obviously a lot of work, but it saves money, and at the end of the day, if something goes wrong, we know it was due to our own screw-ups and not someone else's.

A large part of what makes for a successful tour is organization. The more information you have at your fingertips, the less likely it is you'll find yourself in a stressful situation. To this end, every time my band tours, we bring along what we call our 'tour bible'. This is simply a huge 3-ring binder containing all the info relevant to the tour. I can't stress enough how helpful this is. What info yours contains is up to you, but here is how we set up ours... (The binder is divided up by each city, using dividers to keep everything organized.)

• Copies of each of the contracts. You do have contracts, right?

• A master phone list with the names and phone numbers of each promoter and venue. Other helpful phone numbers include any rental companies you used for vehicles or trailers, friends in each city, your insurance company, your merchandising or record companies, and AAA's number if you have it (well worth it!)

• Mapquest directions from hotel to hotel (most hotels offer booklets with listings for all their branches in each state so you can find one ahead of time), and from the hotel to the venue. It's a good idea to have either a dedicated GPS navigator or one on your cell phone, as sometimes online directions are inaccurate, or you might encounter construction that makes the suggested online route impossible, but having Mapquest directions is a helpful backup if you are in areas where there is no cell reception. (And where this is might surprise you. Downtown NYC can be a nightmare given all the tall buildings...)

• We usually don't bother making reservations for our hotel rooms (we prefer to book our own instead of having the promoter do it), but in large cities, it is always a good idea to make reservations, so in these cases, printouts of our reservation confirmations are included.

• A merch sheet for each city with sections for each merch item (with the price listed next to each). This way the merch person can simply make a mark in the appropriate section each time an item sells. This makes it easy to double check that the merch sold matches the amount of cash onhand, and if you use a program like QuickBooks (highly recommended), you can easily keep track of inventory, so you will know at an instant how much of each item is onhand, and when you might need to reorder.

• On a related note, we print out tons of price labels to display on the merch itself. Travel takes its toll on stuff like this, so having back-ups is important.

• If you have band members or crew members who need to fly in to or out of the starting/ending location of the tour, it's not a bad idea to have copies of their reservations.

What you include in your own tour bible is up to you, but the more info it contains, the easier life will be on tour. Even if something seems excessive, include it anyway. You'll never regret having too much info, but having too little can really put a damper on things. One final note... the name 'tour bible' is no coincidence. Treat it as if it was sacred. Make sure it is in a safe place at all times, and always confirm you have it with you. It's not a bad idea to have all the info in the tour bible backed up on an FTP server so you can retrieve it if you lose the real deal, but this should be a last resort only.

5 Things to Make Your Touring Life Easier

Touring can be a lot of fun, but it is also undoubtedly a lot of hard work. If you're smart about it, however, you can save yourself a lot of trouble by making sure to have a few extra things with you to make your life easier. Obviously, your mileage may vary, but here are a number of things I've found useful when we do one of our DIY tours of the US.

1.) Gridwall - It's safe to assume that if you are in a touring band, part of the point of your tour is to sell merchandise. Given the tight schedule bands are sometimes under, however, setting up the merchandise display night after night can be a real pain. Obviously, it takes time to do this, but also different venues have different policies as to whether you are allowed to tape, staple, or hang your t-shirts on their walls. Even if you can, sometimes it doesn't always want to stay hanging on the wall. Gridwall provides a great solution to this and makes setting up easy regardless of the environment. Gridwall, as the name suggests, is simply a panel of metal framework usually used for displaying garments in stores. With a couple of these, all you have to do is lean it against the wall, put your shirts on hangers, hang those off the gridwall, and you're done. You can find these fairly easily with a little internet searching. They're not always cheap, but they are usually built like tanks and will last many tours.

2.) Hand Truck - Of course, displaying the merch is only half the battle. Night after night, you have to load in and load out box after box of shirts and CDs, sometimes up or down stairs and other obstacles. Having your own hand truck can greatly decrease your load in and load out time and is really useful for loading in your equipment as well. Look for a model with large tires, which makes transporting it up and down stairs much easier. Some models are 'convertible' too and allow you to transform the hand truck into a rolling cart, which allows you to load even more at one time. These should be available at most hardware or building supply stores. Be sure to mark your hand truck with your band's logo, too, so there are no mix ups at the venue as to who it belongs to.

3.) Vehicle Diagnostic Code Reader - If you're touring extensively, sooner or later, you are going to have problems with your tour van. Most of the time, this happens far away from home and your trusted mechanic, thus putting you at the mercy of whatever is available locally. Mechanics can smell desperation, and to them it smells an awful lot like money. The good news is, you can go into the situation better informed, and thus, less likely to get ripped off. All recent vehicles have diagnostic computers on board. What you may not know is that you can buy a code reader that interfaces with this computer and tells you precisely what is wrong with your vehicle. On most vehicles, there is a small port under the steering wheel. You hook the code reader up to this, turn on your vehicle, and the code reader displays one or multiple diagnostic codes. You can reference these in a book or online and walk into the auto repair facility able to tell the mechanic right off the bat what is wrong. If they know you've read the codes yourself, you are less likely to fall victim to expensive, unnecessary repairs at the hands of unscrupulous mechanics. These are available in most auto supply stores, or even from places like Amazon.

4.) GPS - Touring involves a lot of driving around in places you might not be very familiar with. In the past, this meant dealing with road atlases, or, more recently, directions from services like MapQuest. While these are great, they can also fall prey to human error. It can be easy to miss turns, and there is no guarantee that the maps you have are even current. GPS Navigators can be a godsend for tours. Not only will they give you turn by turn directions, they can instantly reroute you if you miss a turn, or if the preferred route is closed due to construction. Better still, many can find the nearest gas stations, hotels, restaurants, and other points of interest all based on your current position. These units aren't perfect (for example, tall buildings can sometimes interfere with the signal...), but you will be amazed at how helpful having one of these in your vehicle is. Dedicated units can still be somewhat pricey, but check with your cell phone service provider, as many of them now offer this service directly on your cell phone for a very reasonable price.

5.) Ear plugs - The most obvious use for these is to protect your hearing in loud venues, but where they can be even more valuable is in letting you get some rest. Sleep deprivation is pretty much an accepted part of touring, and oftentimes, you have to grab sleep whenever and wherever you can. Unfortunately, your surroundings might not always cooperate. Hotels can be filled with loud guests, the driver of your tour van might need to listen to some music to help stay alert on long drives, and the less said about the conditions in the backstage, the better. A good set of ear plugs can help block out the environment and allow you to grab some much needed on-the-run shut eye. By the same token, a sleeping mask can be helpful in blocking out light, but if you get one of these, expect rampant abuse from your fellow bandmates.

Obviously, there are many other things that can be really useful on tour, but the ones listed above are a good start and can really go a long way towards making your touring experience easier and more pleasant.

See You In A Week!

My band, Assemblage 23, is headed off to Europe for a series of festival dates, so there won't be any updates until the middle of next week. If you're going to be in Sweden, the UK, or Germany, come check us out! The dates are as follows:

• July 4th - Arvika Festival, Arvika, Sweden on the Andromeda Stage
• July 5th - London, UK - The Slimelight
• July 6th - Blackfield Festival - The Amphitheater located within the Nordstern Park in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.

See you when we get back and recover from the inevitable jet lag (so, probably mid-November). Just kidding. I hope.