Forty Fathoms of Highway

In a frenzy of pre-tour chaos, I am attempting to keep my head. I am the kind of person who attempts to organize my way out of any conceivable difficulty ahead of time. This is actually a pretty good quality when it comes right down to it; I always have a flashlight when the power goes out, or money for the bus, but tour is a bigger monster than your average daily chaos. It's like a road trip with tentacles, and it likes to rear its head from time to time.

The main difficulty is that booking a tour is like weaving a spiderweb of human integrity. You have to put your faith in a bunch of human beings who you've likely never met before and hope for the best, and anyone who's bumped along this path for a bit knows that this is not exactly an industry of trust and reliability. While there are amazing show promoters out there who give their heart and soul to touring bands and help make shows fantastic experiences, there are also an equal number of show promoters who could give a shit if you even showed up let alone be bothered to put up a poster even at the venue you are playing. In either case, you need to spend lot of time making sure that that web of human integrity remains at least intact enough to give you some actual semblance of a tour.

It's a lot like playing dominoes. If all the little bits and pieces line up things tend to go really well. But, based on experience, the dominoes never line up exactly, so the most you can do is promote things to the best of your abilities take a deep breath and leap.

Time is a fleeting thing. No matter how far in advance you start planning, there are never quite enough days, minutes or seconds left to get it all done. No matter how many phone calls and emails you make, there will be some sort of chaos. Bits and pieces fall over in the wrong direction and you have to stand them up again. Sometimes CDs don't show up until the day before you leave for tour. Sometimes they just don't show up. No matter what, you have to make it work, and there is always one more thing you could do to make things work a little better. Right now is the moment that I stop, take my breath and attack that tentacled monster for all it's worth and hope that the web I've woven holds together. Only time will tell.