A blessing and a curse: The dual reality of touring musicians.

Ed Sheeran has broken the record for touring previously held by U2. His ‘Divide’ tour has lasted from March 2017 — August 2019, and will count its final show at 255, compared with U2’s 100 dates on their 360 Tour.

If you’ve been following Sheeran on social media, he seems to be faring well and enjoying life on tour through it all. As merely the audience, however, we don’t always have a proper understanding concerning the world of touring musicians. From a distance, it appeared to be laced with euphoria from doting, screaming fans. Remember those tell-all books about Led Zep which had a segment about them on tour? Wild party central. Yet, on the other hand, not all that glitters is gold as demonstrated when Katy Perry had a depressive breakdown in the middle of her tour. What does it truly entail for musicians on tour?

While the levels of comfort, income, size of accompanying crew, attentiveness of managers and hard-working roadies vary greatly, what remains constant with traveling musicians is the unwavering burden of being on the road and the exhaustive routine that accompanies it. Staying more than one night city is only feasible if multiple gigs are booked, and seriously, just how comfortable are these road-side hotels? Sometimes the traveling is so hard to deal with, it brings about anxiety due to being stuck in a moving vehicle for hours on end with barely any breaks.

We spoke with Charles Danek from the first part of our Working Musicians series, who had toured as a guest with a well-known band (he does not wish to disclose which one). He reminiscences, “From my perspective, it looked like life on a submarine. Guys all sleeping on bunks stacked above each other, as the bus would roll through the night.” Once they arrive at their destination, another reality sets in. Danek says, “We’d check into a hotel, two people per room, and the guys would rest a bit, read, watch TV, take showers. These were called ‘day rooms’ because we never spent the night in them. At around 3pm, some of the guys would head to the radio station to do some promoting. We’d all then rendezvous at the venue at about 5pm for sound checks.” And then it’s show time!

Post show time is usually followed by the after-party backstage. Participants usually consists of local promoters, radio station people, friends and fans of the band. While some level of shenanigans could take place backstage, according to Danek the cliché of backstage craziness as often depicted in popular media, is an exception and not the rule. That is not to say that all is calm and quiet, as “the band can be a bunch of dudes with egos who don’t always get along, who are trapped on the same submarine together.”

Before you know it, 1am comes around and it’s time to pack up. Lather, rinse and repeat. Good luck squeezing in proper rest without interruption before the next day’s show or departure for another location. Musicians are obligated to deliver on their performance at show time, and therefore need to stay well and healthy. Should they fall sick and become unable to perform, it equates to lost income from the missed dates. Sometimes the show must go on, broken leg or not.

Given the intense schedule, waking up in different time zones, dealing with changing climates and the lack of access to well-balanced meals, combatting travel fatigue requires a great deal of discipline. Steve Aoki, the most-traveled musician in the world according to the Guinness Book of World Records, swears off alcohol, red meat and is dedicated to working out, no matter where he may be. We don’t know how Aoki feels about coming back home after a long tour, but there are those that aren’t so lucky.

When musicians are on tour, they can be extremely disconnected from the reality of a day-to-day routine. What is normally uncharacteristic, such as sleeping in different cities or even countries every week, becomes predictable. After a period of time, they start to normalize this eccentricity, and eventually it becomes hard to let go of. Once accustomed to this lifestyle it’s suddenly nearly impossible to relate to ‘ordinary routine’ when it’s time to come home.

The psychological impacts of touring are not only challenging and demanding to the ones who had to leave home to earn a living, but also those they leave behind. We hear about the breakdown of relationships, caused by a myriad of things: infidelity, irreconcilable differences, or the classic drug and alcohol abuse. What’s worth noting here is that many great bands themselves have broken up and restructured during tours, resulting in cancellation of dates, a member leaving, or the tragic loss of life.

If touring is so emotionally taxing, why do musicians still do it other than contractual obligations? Those eventually run out and renewing it is a choice and not a necessity. On this subject, Danek shares with us the following, “Over the years, some of my peers have become very famous, but in reality, the trappings of fame are the total opposite of freedom. I once heard a famous rock star refer to his most famous song as an albatross that he’d have to wear around his neck forever. A lot of the famous people I know feel tremendous pressure to show up to work every day, because if they don’t, nobody in the pyramid beneath them gets paid. From label presidents and managers all the way down to the guy who changes your guitar strings and the guy selling six-dollar sodas at the venue, everyone is depending on you to keep doing ‘that you thing you do’ so that the whole thing can keep going.”

At the very least, the last thing a working and touring musician should have to worry about is whether or not they are receiving what they are entitled to, whether it’s performance or streaming royalty checks. At Utopia, we are trying to make this happen for them.

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