Perks and Pitfalls

On the tour, there are many rules to follow, many rules to break, and benefits for both. One of the great benefits of the tour is catered breakfast, lunch, and dinner on show days. This is not your run of the mill sandwich meat and day old macaroni folks. Friday night the menu consisted of grilled pork chops, orange roughy, Thai curry vegetables and many side dishes.

Breakfast yesterday, I found out was ham and eggs, grits, bagels, crossaints, etc. Of course, I couldn’t find breakfast because it was located outside in a tent at this venue. Inside, I suffered stale donuts and the worst coffee ever made. Lunch was hamburgers, salad, veggies, fruit, chips, sandwiches, cookies, brownies, pretty much everything the body needs to carry on the most in your face classic rock jam show there has ever been.

Some of the pitfalls are being in the way at any point during set up and take down on stage. This can not only be dangerous to your person, but also to your self-esteem. Big Earl (monitor engineer) and Michael Jackson (FOH assistant) will not hesitate to send you off to recording world (basically anything on a stage is “x” world such as guitar world, monitor world, etc) with a tongue lashing over the loudspeakers. You can get around such a dismissal by volunteering to help which is both tiring and fun. The characters you meet, both local and traveling, are always entertaining.

After each show, you have a choice: either chug some Redbull and start driving behind the tour buses and equipment trucks and sleep when you get there (we arrived at the destination at 5:30am yesterday) or crash and wake up at 5am to arrive for the 9am load in every morning. This is just the tip of the iceberg. I’ve only been with the group for 48 hours afterall. There’s plenty more to come.

Quite possibly the biggest pitfall will occur tonight. I am officially behind the wheel as it were in 7 hours. Wish me luck, I'll need it.

And, as promised, last night's set list:

Done Somebody Wrong
Southbound
Ain't Wastin' Time No More
Hot 'Lanta
Woman Across the River
Melissa
Nobody Left to Run With
Dreams
Stoned Me (with Steve Kimock)
Leave My Blues Alone plus JaBuMa
Jessica

Encore:
Don't Want You No More
One Way Out