Publication:
MaximumRockNRoll

Author:
Felix Von Havoc

MRR #245-tour checklist
I wrote a column a while back about selecting a tour van. I’ve also written about setting up and booking tours. This month as I get ready to head out on the road with Damage Deposit I thought it would be a good idea to share sort a pre tour checklist of what to bring and do before you leave.

I calculated that I’ve spent just short of two full years on the road since 1990, albeit a few weeks or months at a time. I won’t claim to be the most experienced in these matters, someone like Richard the Roadie makes me look like an amateur, but I have learned a few things over the years.

The last few years of setting up shows here in Minneapolis we had a lot of cancellations. Most of these are due to vehicle breakdowns, some due to personnel problems and some due to just poor planning. The more you prepare in advance before you leave the less hassle, crisis and stress you are going to have on the road. The most minor problems on the road can turn into big ordeals when there are long drives ahead and a tight schedule to keep. Being in unfamiliar territory and not having the option of shopping around, plus being in a time crunch means you might have to pay too much for too little.

Below is a tour checklist of stuff you should bring or do. While there is something romantically stupid about just throwing your gear in the van and hitting the road, a little planning and preparation might spare you hours or days of being stranded in the middle of nowhere or scrambling to find strings an hour after you are supposed to be at a show. Remember, when you miss a show you not only shoot yourself in the foot, but you also let down all the people who set up shows for you and the kids who wanted to see you.

Don’t underestimate the personnel side of touring. Before you go on some massive 9 week tour, play lots of weekend shows and do a short tour or two. Make sure you can get along with the people in your band. Touring kills a lot of bands as disparate personalities rub up against one another in close quarters. Don’t bring anyone’s girlfriend ( or boyfriend) or an entourage. This is just going to cause friction, think and act as a team and stay focused, hang out with your friends and shit after the tour. Having 20 of your friends follow you around might seem cool, but it will massively burden the people who are feeding you and putting you up and lead to lots of delays. Each extra person adds more “special needs” mouths to feed and delays that hinder the efficient operation of your tour. I once went on a three band tour with 14 people. Even the most simple stop to get gas and piss would turn into an hour long ordeal. Save this kind of stuff for going on a road trip to a fest or something.

Before you tour, get the best van you can possibly afford (see my column about tour vans) and do all the regular preventative maintenance. Change the oil, flush the transmission, check the fluids. Take it to a good mechanic and have it tuned up, check the brakes, tires, front end, belts and hoses, gearboxes and all other wear parts. Fix this stuff now and save a lot of time and money later.

Get a note book or folder and put together directions and contact info for all your shows on the tour. Get a good road atlas and check everything. Don’t just blindly follow mapquest type computer directions, cross reference everything with an actual map. Get contact numbers for all the promoters and places you are playing so you can call if you are late or lost. Make a copy of this and leave it at home or upload it to your bands site so you can replace it if it’s lost or damaged.

Put all your tour dates and show locations on your band/labels website. I’m stunned how few bands bother to do this. Even if you think computers are total shite, you have to realize that there are thousands of young people today whose ONLY source of information is the internet. A lot of kids were totally confused about the last tragedy tour because there wasn’t much info on the web. An add in MRR is awesome, but today you should back it up with some info on the web as well.

Bring lots of shirts, buttons, stickers, records, cds, tapes, whatever to sell. Get local labels to give you stuff to sell on consignment. Bring your old Star Wars comics, anything you can peddle on the road will augment the meager pay you will get when you play with four other out of town bands for 10 people on a Monday night. Go into record stores and try to trade them your stuff. See if you can sell or trade your records to distros who are set up at shows. You are the best sales force for your own music. Don’t rely on your label to promote and sell your record for you.

Here’s some stuff you should bring:

A flashlight-preferably a big mag-lite because you can also use it as a weapon.

Lots of Duct Tape-this should be self explanatory.

Make a key to the van for every band member. This way you will never be locked out and won’t be trying to find your drummer so you can unlock the van to get your guitar.

A good tool kit-for fixing both your van and your gear. A socket set, pliers, screwdrivers, channel locks etc. A soldering iron, wire strippers, zip ties, electrical tape. Lots of instruments today use metric hex head screws so bring a set of allen wrenches for those.

I’ve talked about how important it is to bring lots of merch before, but you should also think about bringing a cheap clamp light or drop light for dark clubs and basements so people can see your stuff.

An extension cord and power strip. I’ve seen a lot of shows grind to a halt over these two items being absent.

A basic first aid kit-band aids, gauze, tape, antibiotic ointment maybe some aspirin.

Jumper cables.

Fuses-for your amps, or the PA that’s going to blow, I’ve seen more than one show grind to a halt for want of a 25 cent fuse.

Towing insurance/roadside assistance. You can probably get this very cheaply through your auto insurance company or cell phone plan. A few bucks a month might save your ass when you need to get towed or pulled out a ditch.

A cell phone-OK even if you think these are stupid, buy a cheap one just for tour. Having a phone on the road has saved my ass more than once. Being able to call and get better directions, tell someone you are going to be late, etc. can make all the difference.

Bring lots of strings and drum sticks. It’s hard to find a music store to begin with and even harder late at night and on weekends.

Bring batteries and film and stuff like that. I’ve wasted so much time driving around looking for some dumb film for some dumb camera because someone in a band I was driving needed it.

A lot of bands these days keep their merch in those dumb plastic tubs. I think those things are goofy and waste a lot of space in your van. I built sturdy wooden boxes for my record distro so I wouldn’t have any warped or bent up records at shows. Ditch the plastic tub for the shirts and get a big hockey type duffel bag instead. This is easier to cram into spaces between amps and gets smaller as you sell more shirts freeing up space in the van. It’s also a good idea to roll up all your shirts really tight and tape them up with masking tape and write the size on the tape. This makes it so much easier to find the right size and design of shirt in conditions of poor lighting and keeps the shirts from getting all tangled up with eachother. It also makes it very fast and easy to restock your duffel bag as shirts sell out.

Make sure you have your license, registration, insurance etc straight and paperwork for all of it. Small town cops love to fuck with out of towners and they will demand all of this shit. I recently spaced putting the insurance card in the van when a band was using it and got a 75$ ticket for failure to show proof of insurance.

Put a tape deck in your van so you can rock out and sing along to Judas Priest while driving through the desert in the middle of the night. That stretch of wasteland between Dallas and Phoenix just calls out for ZZ Top, AC DC, and Megadeth karaoke echoing across the desert. Seriously, no matter how core you are, playing and being around hardcore all day every day might start to grate on you. This is why you should bring some T Rex and Black Sabbath tapes to unwind with so you don’t get totally burned out.

It’s also a good idea to put all your records in plastic sleeves so they don’t get ring wear just from bumping up and down in the van. I know the last tragedy record and the last Vitamin X lp both had covers that wore off very easily. Without plastic sleeves these records look like shit after a week bouncing around in the van.

Always think about the worst case scenario and have a back up plan. Try to think ahead and assume anything that can go wrong will.


Alright lets shift gears here. I pay attention to fanzines because I run a record label and getting my stuff reviewed is important to me. There are a handful of really good zines, true fanzines, done by fans who are totally into the music they cover and don’t fuck around with most bullshit. Game of The Arseholes is my favorite, Town of Hardcore also comes to mind. These guys only interview or review bands that fit their focus and interest and just ignore the rest. I look at a lot of the bigger zines that come in the mail and I realize that I’m REALLY out of touch with what people call punk these days. I don’t know who the vast majority of the bands featured in bigger “punk” zines are. I guess it’s the same bands who play the warped tour and stuff, but that shit all goes right over my head. What I do know is that your record has a snowballs chance in hell of getting reviewed these days unless you are buying an ad. When my label first started I sent out maybe 5 review copies of each release, MRR, Heart Attack, Slug and Lettuce, Profane Existence, and one or two others. As my label has grown I’ve consistently tried to expand my promotional network to get more reviews and exposure. Constantly hoping that I’m going to get a work in edgewise for DIY hardcore in the mainstream of punk. However, now that I mail out like 60 or 70 promo copies of each release I’m still lucky to get reviews in 10 zines. Most of my stuff winds up at used record stores or in the trash. So why bother? For a small label without much advertising budget a review is all the publicity you can hope for, and a good review might turn on some people to your band/label who ordinarily wouldn’t check it out. So it’s a shot in the dark, crossing your fingers you get your stuff reviewed. I’m even happy to get bad reviews, Heart Attack once shit canned one of my releases in two words “Bad Punk” But hey, at least someone with an opinion listened to it and printed that. Bad publicity is still some publicity and we all got a kick out of that review. I still chuckle at the trashing given to Aus Rotten’s first 7” in Heart Attack, a 7” that went on to sell over 20,000 copies. But if your record never gets reviewed you lose even a bad review to laugh about. And most zines don’t review or cover bands unless the labels advertise heavily in them. Or they only review the stuff that labels with big promotional budgets mail to them for free. This has lead to massive homogenization of the music press on par with that in the mainstream. Every zine features the same handful of bands, on the same handful of labels and is full of ads for those bands releases on those record labels. This reminds of me of the top 40 shit where they play the same crappy song so many times that people actually start to think it’s good and go buy the CD. Really mediocre bands with slick CDs, posters, lots of half page zine ads, banner ads on the web, radio promo and a lot of uncritical fawning in the press become really successful mediocre bands. It’s harder then ever for a label without a big promotional budget to get a word in edgewise so the scum rises and the truly great bands stay unheard.

Which brings me to my next point. At the moment in the US there is a sudden fascination with Japanse Hardcore. I’ve been listening to Japanese HC for quite some time and there are a few generalizations you can make regarding it’s popularity. The bar is set much higher in Japan as far as quality and musicianship. Sound and image and taken seriously and bands generally don’t play out or record until they have a coherent, tight sound and often image as well. This should be a given, but I think it stands in contrast to a lot of American punk and hardcore right now. I think the popularity of Japanese HC is like a back handed comment on the low quality of much of the American scene at the moment. The mainstream stuff is about the most mediocre it could be and the DIY stuff which should be an alternative is so half assed and premature that it just cowers in fear in the face of really tight, powerful, well rehearsed and thought out and well produced hardcore from Japan. I’m not trying to stir up some US vs. Japan core war here, just giving out an opinion. We could be doing a better job with DIY hardcore in America.

Last item, I’ve been heavily into metal influenced stuff lately, English Dogs, Broken Bones, Crumbsuckers, Accused, Cryptic Slaughter etc. I got started on this kick from hearing bands like Holier Than Thou and DFA bringing back the thrash/metal/hardcore crossover and I forgot how rad some of that 1986-87 metallized HC was. For all the damage done to hardcore during the metal crossover years, it did breed some wicked bands. Now, off to crank some Excel.

Publication Date:
January 1, 2003

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