How to Make a Baby Elephant

Early on in the process of doing this blog I started keeping a list of what I/we were learning. I don't claim this to be a definitive or authoritative list of tips for touring, just something to add to the discussion, things to think about before you head out, while you're out. I'll try and section it out below. I'll start with pre-tour details, then move to directions, electrical power and gear. Last, and maybe most important, is about getting along as people.

Before you hit the road:

#1 - Advance everything.

Leave as little to chance as you can. Not only payments, load-in and soundcheck times and stage plots. Advance the directions, lodging, parking. Accept you’ll be dealing with people who mean well but don’t understand that for the band, uncertainty accretes.

If every night entails a surprise of some sort, it accelerates the wear and tear of the road. If lodging is a hostel or hotel, check in before or immediately after load-in and soundcheck. Advancing the directions and parking is especially important if you’re playing in an old town, especially a preserved medieval town like Regensburg, with its narrow cobbled and winding and often one-way streets. Advance work is also very important if the club is in the center of town where parking will be tight and expensive. Know the dimensions of your car/van, ask if the underground garage they're suggesting will fit your vehicle.

Use map quest or google maps to print out directions from point-to-point. Make sure to print detail maps for tricky interchanges, and for the start and end points. I put together a tour binder, with advance details for each show and printed directions for each leg.

Bring maps. Make sure you know how to read a map. If you don’t, learn how to read a map. Smart phones and GPS are great, but if the signal’s weak or the maps are incorrect, or the phones get lost, stolen or break, you’re screwed. You never know when you’ll need to make rerouting decisions using a big map that gives you a broad view of the area you’re traversing.

Speaking of smartphones...

There are many different phone options…you can buy sim cards at the airport, but make sure they’ll work in different countries if the tour takes you across borders. Most US carriers offer international plans. Look into how much texts/data you use at home, and estimate upward from there. Smart phones are great tools for navigating unfamiliar terrain, you’ll use them more than you might think.

Make sure the phones charged *before* the driving begins. Don’t leave for a long drive with little or no juice. Charging in the car takes much longer than via a wall socket. And if there’s 3, 4 or 5 of you competing for the car charger, someone’s going to be left short of power, unless the drive is a long one.

Equipment:

If any part of the tour involves flying, you're going to have to deal with getting your gear back and forth in one piece. I asked around and the most common answer for guitars was the Mono case.

It was as good as advertised, worth the investment. My bass flew SFO-Frankfurt, Copenhagen-Frankfurt and Frankfurt-London-SFO. No scratches, dents, cracked head stock, neck...Mono cases are made by musicians for musicians. Even if I don't do another tour where I'll have to fly, it's worth it as a sturdy gig bag if I'll be loading the bass into a trunk or van with amps and other gear.

If you're touring outside the US/Canada you'll need to deal with differences in voltage from the US. In Europe that means 220 volts, twice the 110 we run here. This is not something you want to be ignorant about. Ignorance will mean a blown fuse, in more ways than one.

First, understand that you can run your US 110V pedal, keyboard, laptop, drum machine on Euro 220. But you need to know whether you'll require an adapter or converter. Look at the AC adapter or the appliance itself. You're looking for what it takes as an input. If you see something like "Input 100-240 V", all you need is an adapter so that the US-style plug will fit into a Euro-shaped socket.

If all you see is "100 V" (or 110 V) for input power, you'll need to buy a converter so that the 220 volts get ramped down to 110 and you don't fry your gear. Don't fry your gear.

Buy the adapters or converters in the US if you can. They'll likely be cheaper.

Other things to buy in the US before you go:

* Batteries - much cheaper here and good to have for pedals in case there are power issues. Just remember to take them out of your pedals after the show.

* A multi-USB power adapter. Good for charging multiple phones or iPads at the same time.

* Buy or bring a car charger. Voltage isn't an issue here, no adapter needed.

* Guitar strings, drum heads...you don't want to roll into town after shops close in need of these things. There's also no guarantee that you'll get the things you prefer to use.

Transportation & lodging:

Ok, you'll likely need a van. Unless you're a 2 or 3 piece and can backline everything. Then a car might be fine.

If not, a van it is. Do some research and get a sense of the size you'll need. try and fly into a central airport with a good rental car stock. It'll likely be Frankfurt. But here's the important part...

Do not, do not, do not rent from Thrifty and their affiliates if at all possible. In Frankfurt, maybe all of Germany for all I know, they subcontract to a company named Buchbinder, who are borderline horrible. They'll upsell you on everything, coerce you into unneeded insurance by saying the insurance you might have on a US credit card is invalid . Spend the extra $$ up front and get from Hertz or Avis. And figure out what kind of van you'll likely get so you know the dimensions. For parking garages, ferries and other instances it'll help to know this.

Also, you'll need an international driving permit. Get it from AAA. Thirty dollars, inclusive of the passport photo they take. Fifteen for just the permit if you bring your own passport photos. Easy process. Get maps while you're there.

As for lodging, if the promoters or club can hook you up, great. Or maybe you'll crash on couches. If hostels aren't an option, AirBnB is a good option ahead of time or on the fly, so have an account or two set up. But whatever you do, advance this as much as possible. Know where you're going to sleep. It'll save some stress.

The human element:

You may be great friends before you head out. You may be casual friends. You might be a hired gun...friend of a friend of a friend who had a couple weeks off and filled in for the drummer who just moved to LA to be a studio musician.

Regardless of what your relationships were before you left, what you don't want to be is at each other's throats on the road, or leave as mortal enemies. So you'll have to get along together.

Accept that your band mates are human and dealing with whatever life situations they brought with them on the road. Jobs, relationships, other life concerns...you may be 9 time zones away, but those things don't get left at the airport.

Day after day of close quarters, late nights, long drives, being out of your comfort spaces…this can fray the nerves. You'll see each other at your best and your less flattering behaviors and personality quirks will come out. Try not to take your moods out on your mates, and try not to take it personally when that’s done to you. Make sure to get some time away, even for short spells for a walk, finding a cafe or park to sit, or even a nap in the van. If something flares up, try and deal with it right away, or as soon as makes sense. Above all, communicate clearly and effectively, Don’t be afraid to express your needs and desires, just do it with respect and be respectful when your band mate is telling you what she needs. The tour should be fun, a great adventure. You're in it together, so make sure you take care of each other as well as taking care of yourself.

That's enough for now. If I've left anything out, feel free to leave a comment.

Conversation 16

“So how was the tour?” she asked as they settled in with their drinks at the table out back. The fog never really hits this part of the Mission, but still there was a chill in the air. The kind you get in July in San Francisco, even with the sun shining brightly.

“Well…”, then he paused. “It was great. Tiring at times. It was essentially work. But it was a ton of fun. I mean, we did it just about on our own. Got lots of advice and help booking a couple of shows via promoters we met. But it was a real indie operation.

Yeah, it was hard at times…10 shows in 16 days. The last stretch of 7 shows we did in 9 days. But to get to work at your craft like that, in so concentrated a time. I mean, I’ve prepared for albums with intense periods of rehearsal, but I got to sleep in my own bed and didn’t have to get up the next day and drive 500 kilometers. But that kind of sustained playing…I mean, we started playing well, in that professional sense. We knew the songs, we’re good at our instruments. But over the course of the tour we got good. “

“Tight?”, she asked? “Yeah, tight. Funny about that…in college, freshman year. I had a professor who used that word to describe a band. It was from some student comment card or something. We were asked to submit comment cards or whatever after lectures. He read it aloud. I forget the name of the band he associated it with, but I’ll never forget the way he said the word. Straight at first, then sort of, uh…incredulous. Or wondering how in the hell you can describe a band as tight. But I understood immediately, even though my own musical education was still in its infancy.

So yeah…we got tight.”

“Are you sad it’s over?”

“Yes. I mean, it was great to get home, back to my own bed, my friends. A routine that didn’t involve packing a van, driving for 3 hours, loading equipment into a club and staying up until 2am. That’s the romantic version of touring, and it is fun when you’re in the thick of it. But...and maybe this is because we're all working adults who've gotten used to creature comforts of home, not under-employed 20-somethings...you need a break from it. You need to sleep well and eat a bit healthier. Have a couple fewer drinks per day.

The funny thing is, by Copenhagen we were all tired. Relieved in a way that it was the last night of the tour, looking forward to life again. Scott would be traveling around Europe for a few more weeks with his wife. Geoff and Jules heading to New York for the summer. That was Saturday night. We hung out again Sunday, heading up to see the Louisiana Museum, then Kronborg Castle. But we didn’t talk too much of the tour, as we had a few other folks with us.

But a couple of days later, Tuesday…after we hadn’t all four been together by then for a day and a half. We sat at this bar, watching the US play Belgium in the World Cup. And we all agreed, after Geoff or Jules said it, that we wished a second leg of the tour was going to start soon. Maybe in Amsterdam, or Paris. Or Spain or Italy. Somewhere…we wanted to keep playing. A few days of rest, showers, laundry, the same bed for more than a night…we were ready to get back at it.”

“You missed it already?”

“Yup. It’s easy to see why it’s addictive. The endorphins or whatever is released in those 30-45 minutes on stage each night. And the anticipation beforehand. Especially as you feel yourself getting better. As our drone outros became more than just parts that we were trying to make fit in, but parts that fit in because we were listening to each other, playing off the repetition and variation. All that. We wanted more. “

“Are you going to do it again?”

“We’ve laid out ideas for more touring. Maybe some US dates in late spring. Festival and other dates back in Europe in the summer. We’ll see…I hope it comes together. I’d love to see what we can do with some more time playing, knowing what we know about how to take care of ourselves and how to pace a tour.

Yeah, I’d love to get back out there."

Golden Ball

Now that the World Cup is over, Germany having beaten Argentina 1-0, this is as good a time as any to write a bit about how the tournament was a constant presence on the tour.

I'm probably the biggest futbol fan of the group, with Geoff a close second. For me the World Cup is a big deal. Has been since before ESPN was providing comprehensive coverage, when outdoor viewing screens in major US cities wasn't a thing. I knew going in that I'd probably watch less of the tournament than if I were at home.


To watch any matches would require some planning and some random luck, given we were often either soundchecking or playing during matches that mostly started at 6p, 9p and midnight Central Euro time. We ended up watching games in a variety of settings in 5 countries...from small hot dog restaurants to large outdoor beer gardens to our rooms in Bruhl.

Our time in the van commenced with the first match of the tournament. We landed on June 12, the day of the opening match between Brazil and Croatia. Our plan all along was to get from Frankfurt to Leipzig in time to watch, and we succeeded, even with the slight detour to see a castle.

We were in Berlin when Germany played their first match against Portugal. Whenever Germany scored loud cheers came from all over the city. I bounced from a small bistro near the apartment where I stayed to meeting the rest of the band in an outdoor space in Friedrishain that not only had a big screen for watching tv, but a rock-climbing wall in the same space. Good combo that...beer and rock climbing.

The US v Ghana match didn't kick-off until midnight, and as I mentioned, I watched it sitting outside a corner store where the owner had put a tv in the window.

A memorable night came in Regensburg. After a fantastic show at Mono Bar, the staff lowered a big screen, fired up a projector and showed the US v Portugal match. Another match not starting until midnight Central Europe Time, it made for a late but incredibly fun night. Portugal's last second goal to tie wasn't all that much of a downer, all things considered. We had a blast watching the match in what seemed like a clubhouse with an open bar and fun people.


Even when there was no tv, as at Chmury in Warsaw, we made do to watch US v Germany with my laptop and the on-line stream from Polish tv.

The Germans were definitely most into the tournament. Fußball is by far the most popular sport in Germany and it showed...every bar, restaurant, corner store and coffee shop had a tv tuned to whatever match was showing. When Germany played, outdoor spaces all over the country drew hundreds of thousands of people.

In fact, one of the reasons we ended up in Strasbourg France for the June 21 show was because no German club wanted to book us. Why? Germany played Ghana that night. We were told nobody would come out, and most bars would be showing the game anyway, and didn't want to risk people not coming in if they saw the match wasn't on but we were.

And what about Strasbourg France? I had trouble finding a spot to watch Argentina v Iran. Might have been the neighborhood surrounding the place we played, but even the one sports bar type place I found had horse racing on, no soccer.

The Danes were fairly lukewarm to the World Cup. Our team (yes, our...remember, I was born there...I root for Denmark first, US next) didn't make the final 32, having been bounced in qualifying. Also I was told the national tv networks made it a bit expensive for bars and restaurants to show matches. So we had to work a bit to find places to watch Germany v Algeria and the US v Belgium.

The night of the US-Belgium match was also the last night the four of us would be together for the rest of the summer. Prior to the match we had a wrap-up meeting, then were joined by my sister and a bunch of friends. Gathering for a World Cup match was a fitting end for a tour where the biggest tournament in football loomed in the shadows during the biggest thing any of us had done in our music lives.

Visionary Road Maps

The Talkhouse has quickly become a favorite read for me...their tagline is "musicians talk music" and that's indeed what it is. This post, wherein Shearwater's Jonathan Meiburg talk about life on the road, gets at the tone/voice I was shooting for...but then he's a better writer and has a better bunch of stories from which to chose and does a good job of putting them into readable snippets. The stories are culled from the liner notes to Shearwater's Fellow Travelers album.

Mushroom Cloud of Hiss

Warsaw, June 26

Our last show in the old eastern bloc..Lepzig, Berlin (we played in what was East Berlin), Prague, Ponznan and now Warsaw…

This show had us buzzing for a long time after the last notes of glorious and crazy noise finally quieted from the speakers. The spirit and energy at Chmury, the space we played in Warsaw, is vibrant, unpretentious, and varied. The Facebook page describes it as a clubhouse - an apt description.


Good coffee, great beer selection, an incredible vegan hot dog…the coffee-shop front half of the space is a good place to spend an afternoon. The bartender/barista for the evening rolled up to the club dressed in all black, dark shades and black scarf, hair dyed a greenish white…she looked like a goth Audrey Hepburn heading to a funeral. But like everyone there was incredibly nice.

The back room performance area features a good-sized stage and a very good sound system run by a guy who really knows what he’s doing. Knows the equipment, knows the room. Sound engineers like that make a touring band’s life so much better.

It’s set back in a cobble-stoned courtyard in the Nowy Praga (New Prague) part of town. Chmury shares the courtyard with a bigger club, theater space, a bar that looks like it’s right out of the Paris Left Bank circa early 1900s…cool art on the building walls…when we rolled up we knew it was going to be a good night…the vibe was spot on right away.


This was our 3rd and last show with Evvolves, a band Geoff and Jules found in the course of booking the tour. A bit noisier and low-fi than us, they have a compelling sound and look. Two women, two men…Bibi plays keys, Maciek Mat on bass (which he plays on guitar, using effect pedals to change the sound), Magda plays electronic drums, but live…doesn’t just call up pre-programmed patterns, actually plays the keypads live as the band plays. Her boyfriend Pawel Gie is on guitar. Pawel and Magda strolled up to the club hand-in-hand, she dressed up hipster smart, he looking a bit scruffy…like I imagine Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon must have looked walking up to CBGB’s in the early days of Sonic Youth. We bonded well with them…they’re a blast to be around. It was Julie’s birthday, so during Evvolves set they got the audience to sing the Polish happy birthday song. They seem to be part of a very cool indie scene, centered around the club.

All of this combined for an amazing show. We were in good form, this being our 3rd show in 3 nights, the second 3-in-3 we pulled a 7-day span.

At a pre-soundcheck meeting we discussed the idea to use the Illuminate outtro to fold in a couple of minutes of the Joy Division song Transmission. Jules had the song in her head since at least Regensburg, singing it aloud as we walked along that town’s streets. With no real rehearsal, just a brief pass at soundcheck, we pulled it off. Geoff got the guitar line, I was able to pull that bass riff from memory…it worked in the way it’s going to work when you’ve been playing a bunch of shows or rehearsing a lot in a concentrated stretch of time.

We invited Pawel and Maciek up on stage with us to make noise on guitars, Bibi and Magda sang a bit. Once the crowd caught onto what we were doing they were all in, singing along to the “dance, dance, dance to the radio” line. Maciek and Pawel stirred up some great noise..they were the last to leave the stage.

We were spent…our most energetic set in a great space, great crowd…I’ve already written that Copenhagen was an incredible set, an amazing end to the tour. Before the Copenhagen set we weren’t sure it would be able to match the spirit of the Warsaw show.

That’s how good Warsaw was for us.

Warsaw set list:
Black and White
Mountain
Day for Night
Duck and Cover
Slowboat
Illuminate (w/ Transmission in outtro)

Wow and Flutter

Copenhagen show, June 28 at the Artists Collective.

Going a bit out of order because this night was so special...

Getting to Copenhagen from Warsaw is a long day, so Friday went on and on.

The ferry was a nice respite from the 7.5 hours of monotonous 140km/hr hum of the the A2 and autobahn….driving from Gedser to Copenhagen was a mostly pretty ride past rolling farmland and small towns.

Ended up being a late night after dinner, but for me it was great to be back in Copenhagen…I was born here, lived in Denmark until I was 5 years old and still have family here, including my father and sister. It’s isn’t home for me, but it feels like it could be.

The show was at the Artists Collective, a 4th floor warren of artists studios located in a former city hospital across the street from the backside of Tivoli. Jules & Geoff have known Michael, one of the collective's founders, for a few years.

He's long wanted to arrange a show with us where short films made by Collective artists would screen behind us as we played, and this tour was in part built around this show.

It was possible that this show would be sort of a denouement after the electricity, great vibe and end-of-set mayhem of the Warsaw show. Indeed we all seemed a bit hung-over from Warsaw...not in the alcohol sense, but in the adrenaline come down and knowing we were at the end of the tour.

The adrenaline surged again from the first notes. Once again we played a fantastic set in a small space. We've dialed in our sound to make small rooms work, maybe even better than larger spaces. Here we had the crowd of about 50 people right on top of us, and the films were projected to a screen behind the drum kit.

At my request, Race to Mars was the starter before we ramped up the pace. Only Repeater slowed things down later, but the crowd stayed with us on everything we did. Of course it helped to have a roomful of friends and supporters, but even my friends who didn't know much of the band came away impressed.

It was our 10th show in 16 days, 4th show in 5 days. We were playing the last notes of the tour in the city of my birth, a city the rest of the band came to love right away in a space that was perfect for our sensibilities...the night was all adrenaline and emotion combined with the musical cohesion that comes from playing night after night. I'm pretty sure it exceeded all of our expectations, and we couldn't have had a better end to the tour.


photo by Rachel Znerold using my camera

Copenhagen set list:
Race to Mars
Duck and Cover
Mountain
Black and White
Repeater
Day for Night
Slowboat

For the 1st time on the tour we got a raucous request for an encore, so we obliged with Illuminate with the Transmission outro, with Geoff handing off his guitar to a guy in the crowd (who turned out to be a good friend of two of my friends) while the rest of us banged and clashed and created a wall of feedback and noise. We went off loudly into a very good night.

If there was a denouement, it was the late-night döner that Geoff, Julie and I had with Michael. Standing out front of the main railway station in the cool night air we were able to breathe and relax a little bit, share good company, good doner, and let our emotions settle.

Provincial towns you jog 'round

Strasbourg-Regensburg, June 22

One day beyond the autobahn and we’re were right back on it for a 4-hour ride to Regensburg, north and slightly west of Munich, in the heart of Bavaria.

Regensburg is a lovely medieval town on the banks of the Danube as the river flows eastward out of Germany and into Austria. Dating back when the Romans ruled the area, the town grew rapidly from the 6th century on. It was an important city in the Holy Roman Empire from the mid-17th to early 19th centuries. It’s the living embodiment of preserved medieval charm. It’s filled with students and stylish vacationers.

It’s also a got-damned pain in the ass place to be driving a van.

Narrow, curved streets, most of them going one-way then leaving you with no outlet. Clearly designed to confuse and repel marauding forces and rock bands in vans.

Parking issues aside, we had a blast. The folks promoting the show did a great job getting people out, and the crowd were fabulous and enthusiastic. They took wonderful care of us. After the our show they kept the bar open so we could watch the US v Portugal World Cup match. And they put us up in a hostel just down the street. The Mono Bar staff were incredibly cool and gracious.

The space is super-small, we barely fit. Knowing that we had to keep volume down, and this being the 3rd show in 3 nights, plus the vibe of the people and the room, we had a great show.

We opened with a dreamy Race to Mars and then kept a nice pace going for the next 40 minutes and 7 songs. By now we’re hitting the changes and tempos. The drones are getting more interesting. I found a space where I could focus on changing rhythmic patterns ever-so-slightly every 12-16 bars. I found new ways to move through the long drones and add to what the others were playing, filling in spaces, supporting when needed…when things click like they did in Regensburg it does produce a certain euphoria. It’s easy to give yourself over to the moment of playing, knowing you’re locked into what’s happening all around. A sublime show, our favorite yet of the tour.

Regensburg set list:
Race to Mars
Duck and Cover
Mountain
Wired
Illuminate
Black and White
Day for Night
Slowboat