for a complimentary travel size
mouthwash and a toothbrush
and use it to clean your sweet,
personal mic; then keep the
whole cleaning kit in the little
pouch that the mic comes in.
When I first started gigging in clubs, we
didn’t even have monitors so I toughed it
out, listened for my voice in the mains, and
dreamed of a day where I’d be on a pro-
fessional, big stage with a great-sounding
monitor system. After nearly two decades
of big tours with professional monitor
rigs, I’ve learned that if one needs a perfect
monitor rig in order to perform—quit now.
If you’re a mega-star, you’re still going to
be disappointed now and then. If you are a
sideman or an up-and-comer—expect little.
Here are some tips for coping with this
hard truth.
£Only ask for necessities in your monitor: your voice, your instrument, maybe some high-hat. The more you put in your mix, the less well you will be able to hear
what’s really important—you.
£Wearing earplugs on a loud stage not only protects your hearing, but also can help balance an overly loud, omnipresent bass or ripping snare.
9Get a Dedicated Drunk Mic
If you have drunken jammers
who jump onstage regularly,
have a dedicated “drunk jam-mer” mic line run. This will
keep them from passing their
bacterium to you. As an added
bonus, if they are terrible singers, your soundman can cut
them off and you can take over
vocals at any time without prying the offending mic from
their drunken clutches.
£If you are in the middle of a show and your monitor is torturing you, unplug it rather than trying to fix it on the fly. It will never get right.
£Place your left foot on your monitor to emphasize your epic awesomeness.
me to the gig, a sleep machine
app drowns out hotel noise,
a toilet finder helps on long
walks through foreign cities, a
translator app helps me communicate when overseas or in
Los Angeles, and a flashlight
app lights my way through
dark stages. I have apps from
my favorite airlines for booking flights, checking in and
keeping track of my miles.
iParking helps me find my
car. My bank has an app so I
can transfer money and know
when checks arrive back home.
All this as well as a great metronome and tuner, what else
could you want?
punk pioneers would be out of
their collective minds. Much to
his surprise, The Misfits spent
all of their time working out
and drinking bottle after endless
bottle of water. That discipline
(along with the deal they cut
with Satan) is probably responsible for the group’s incredible
longevity. Limiting your booze
intake, particularly during hot
August festivals, can save your
life. Mix a few drinks with
intense heat and you might not
make it through the show. Have
lots of drinks on a hot stage and
you may be in the emergency
room when the rest of the band
goes on for an encore.
Though climate controlled,
club tours are even more dan-
gerous because club owners
aren’t selling music, they are
selling booze, and they want
you to help. When club own-
ers send drinks to the stage,
their hope is the audience will
watch you shoot it down and
be inspired to match you drink
for drink. The club doesn’t care
about how this affects your
health—they’re just looking for
big sales. Don’t feel obligated
to chug everything that’s sent
your way. Raise the glass in
a toast and toss it over your
shoulder if you must.
7Easy on the Booze, Pound the H2O
A guy I know played a summer
punk festival tour that included
The Misfits in its cavalcade of
semi-stars. He imagined these
8Don’t Use a House Mic
Germs. Those ubiquitous, nasty
microbes can shut your tour
down. Let’s try to keep our bad
funk to ourselves. If you sing,
don’t share a microphone—it’s
a bit like sharing a toothbrush.
Buy your own damn mic, write
your name on it, and carry it
with you (in my case it’s an old
Shure SM57 I’ve lugged around
in my gig bag for years). Ask
the front desk at your hotel
10 Get Some Rest
It’s easy to fall into the vampire
schedule: Up all night, sleep
all day. In reality you seldom
get to sleep all day because on
tour you’re traveling, doing
promotion, or whatever other
duty calls during the day. Stay
up all night and there’s a good
chance you won’t ever get
caught up. Sleep deprivation
becomes accumulative. Miss a
few sleeps and everything goes
to hell. People get grumpy
and your perception of meter,
tonality, and everything in general becomes inaccurate. When
fatigue really sets in, your body
can quit altogether and you get
sick. As tempting as it is to let
the party onstage roll on until
morning, this will quickly turn
you into an irritable, sickly,
bag-eyed dope.
By all rights, musicians
should not be allowed to take
vacations because musicians
never really work. That being
the case, let’s milk this scam
for all we can and turn the
summer tour into a fabulous
play-cation. These principles
can go a long way to making
the most of it.
