This is of the many teenage girls who I follow on Tumblr semi-ironically, only it turns out she’s pretty cool and has a sense of humor. With that said, she is still a 19 year-old girl so she still dreams of ‘doing something amazing with her life.’ In this case, that apparently means going on tour with a band. Also, she isn’t actually a Tumblrslut (more like just a Tumblrgirl) so please don’t be mean [in b4 white knighting accusations]
I already touched on the sad truth that being in a band is for losers, but let’s tell this girl exactly what touring is like. I have never been in a real band, but I’ve spent plenty of time traveling and hanging out with friends who are, and from what I can tell it’s about 22.5 hours a day of boredom punctuated with 30 minutes of fun while you are playing and 60 minutes of manual labor (hauling in, setting up, taking your gear down, etc). The rest of the time you are hungry, tired, hungover, hot/cold, and hanging out with sweaty dudes or annoying girls. This seems to be true whether you are playing basements or 1000-cap theaters.
This bish is apparently the merch girl for, uh.. ‘COOL’. Mirin the selection of traffic cones.
And in this case of this girl who isn’t actually in a band, it will probably be even less fun. She’ll have to be the merch girl, which means dealing with stupid kids who want to meet the band and dudes creeping on her all night for what amounts to less than minimum wage. She won’t be able to watch the other bands (which she will be sick of after two nights anyway), will be treated poorly by everybody, and spend most of her time twiddling her thumbs behind the merch table and making Tumblr posts about how she is in city X, is super bored, and people should come hang out with her (but they never will).
Is this an accurate picture of what ‘life on the road’ would be like for this girl?? Should she drop out of college to ‘pursue her dreams’? Is being on tour the 21st century equivalent of running away with the circus????
…”22.5 hours a day of boredom punctuated with 30 minutes of fun while you are playing and 60 minutes of manual labor (hauling in, setting up, taking your gear down, etc). The rest of the time you are hungry, tired, hungover, hot/cold, and hanging out with sweaty dudes or annoying girls”…
SO SPOT ON.
SO MUCH TRUTH
in a few years she’ll grow out of this, and will probably be embarrassed she even said any of that.
I might regret that picture but I’m damn proud of the fact that I found something I’m passionate about. Tour or no tour, I think I’m on the right track to at least do something with my life. I feel a lot better getting a college degree than dropping out to join a failing band and end up stocking the shelves every night at Stop n Shop, just saying.
Dont be mad, i just wanted you to avoid making the same stupid choices most of my friends and i did haha
thanks, big brother~~ haha it’s all good. Like I said, touring isn’t a career option, I just want to do it once or twice and then get a job that’ll pay my bills. AWWW YEAH PRODUCTIVE LIFESTYLE \m/
Wanting to tour for a lot of the kids I hear talk about it mostly means “I don’t want to work for a 55 year old pedophile at Wal-Mart and I want to maybe see another state before I die.”
Unless of course they think it is meaningful/cool, which lolololol.
“I don’t want to work for a 55 year old pedophile at Wal-Mart and I want to maybe see another state before I die.”
perfectly understandable, but that could be addressed by getting a real job that pays you to travel (pretty easy to do)
LOL, if there’s one thing that will forever kill any interest you might have in touring it’s a real job that pays for stuff like plane tickets and hotels.
Do you have any idea how terrified of/unprepared for the current generation of people is of real jobs? It’s pretty staggering.
She’s going to college, that’s a start.
Yeah, to be honest, I’m not too crazy about the “should she drop out of college” part, because I didn’t give admissions hell just to drop out and become a nobody sucking off dudes in the parking lot haha
I would love 22.5 hours of boredom, one hour of work, and 30 minutes of fun a day. Think of all the sleeping you could do!
Now I want to go on tour too!
Needs more emphasis on being broke and not eating forever.
“You must harbor a fierce love for 2/$2 QT hot dogs.”
Tour meal: bagette (they were cheap), carton of OJ (lasted for a couple of days).
Being the merchguy/gal is one of the worst jobs you can have in a touring band. I used to do this for my friend’s thrash band back home and I hate having to deal with socially awkward people that take forever to decide if they want sleeveless or sleeveless.
You are a million percent correct about the hours. 90% of touring is just driving your ass from one gig to the next, setting up and soundcheck followed by eating shit food for whatever amount of time is left until showtime.
I want this girl to experience the horror of bottling your own piss Bear Grylls-style, sitting in a van packed with sweaty band members and their instruments/merch/etc., and then ask if she still wants to go on the road.
Ahem.
I was 21, not in college, a former foster kid with no parents, working a shitty job, and single. I had nothing to lose and nothing to hold me to my hometown of Los Angeles. I was tired of the ghetto and wanted change. Tour was the single greatest thing that happened to my life. I never expected it to be easy work. It was the dead of summer and I would have to learn how to live in and learn how to drive a 15 passanger van and a 15ft trailer. I knew there’s be dead hours sitting behind the merch table. So I took a couple good books and a journal. I would be sharing everything with 5 sweaty dudes with very distinct personalities for three months. But I’m hardly a pushover myself, and my merch girl position quickly blurred into a tour manager position. I found my calling in making sure my boys slept well, ate well, and were paid well. I hustled merch hard because without it we wouldn’t eat that night. And because I’m a girl it was much easier for me to talk groupie chicks into letting us crash at their house. I drove double shifts so the boys could sleep longer and would take off a few hours before doors to find them a laundry mat and wash their clothes. I earned every cent of my per diem. I finally found something I was good at in life. And the life lessons I learned on the road I couldn’t have learned anywhere else. There were times when I wanted to kill the band and fly home and desert them, but I stuck it out and it was worth it.
However it was the very reasons that pushed me to go out on the road that brought me home permanently. I wasn’t making enough money to pay my rent and bills. Being that I have no parents I had no one to depend on to take care of my stuff while I was out on tour, there was no way I could financially maintain a living situation and tour at the same time. Most of the guys in the bands I was touring with still lived at home with their parents. They had it easy. Regretfully I had to take a day job after my last run to support myself. In the year I took off the road my friends bands exploded, graduated into tour buses and suddenly needed much more pro tour managers. I was obsolete. My life dream of being a tour momma was destroyed. But it was the best memory of my entire life.
So to this young Tumblrgirl I say. DO IT HONEY. If you have the support system to back you up, take a year off college and tour. You will learn so much about yourself, and your limits, and what consitutues real friendship. It may not pay well financially but it will give you an experience that money could never buy.
HOWEVER Words of advice: If you can’t handle going 3 days without a shower, if you can’t avoid sleeping with one of the band members, and if you can’t lift over 50lbs then don’t do it.
I started out poor, on the streets. Everyday i would eat garbage, rotten vegetables, my own hair, old sandwiches, maybe even a dirty diaper if i got lucky. When i was 5 i decided it was time to get the fuck up and do something with my life. I was tired of living in the dirty rundown ghetto’s of Washington DC slanging crack to get by. So one day a few moshbroz asked if i would carry their orange amps and crab core boxes and sell their tank tops. All I could say was “FUCK YEAH MOTHERFUCKING HOMIE FUCK HELL YEAH”. SInce then i have toured with them and been to church shows all over the nation. We played in a church basement in Sylacauga, Alabama and almost 20 people came! :D Everynight we party really fucking hard, Smoke dank nugz and drink Vodka, NOT EVEN MIXED! tour lief is the bomb.com and if you’re not down with that you’re a fggt. So go for your dreams and go tour!!!
Honestly lol’d really hard, crabcore boxes lyfe.
i hope the position of ” crabcore box tech” exists on warped tour.
best thing ive read
hard lol, not even mixed!!
you should write for this site, if you can be consistently this awesome.
+1, email if interested!
one of the top 3 things ever written on this site
Oh my god, tears/10
I had sad violin music playing in my head while reading this post
I really like that “ahem.” It sets you up to sound like a prick.
Most of these comments remind me of my job, but touring seems more cushy.
Life is all about experience. It’s different for everyone. For someone so passionate about something, it might work out for her. It worked out for me.
Worst thing that happens is she hates it and returns home having seen the world and able to tell a few good stories.
Oh and your headline is totally uncalled for, even if you tried to make up for it in the article.
strong white knighting, brah
Good story = “he gave me THIS many roofies”
Hi guys. That’s me up there in the article. I’m not a tumblrslut, I just don’t like pants sometimes, and I do have other aspirations in my life besides touring. I don’t think I can [or want to] make a career out of it, anyway, I just want to have the life experience [thank you Cal] and to just do it once and have fun [thank you Miss Silver for the advice]. I know there are pros and cons but, like I said, I just want to do it once for the sake of doing it and then see where I go in my life. I want to be in the music industry, but living in a van for 5 months at a time probably isn’t to pay my bills, just saying.
PS Sarge actually messaged me out of the blue regarding tour, so this is actually kind of funny to see all of these random people’s responses.
Would you bang Cal?
How else would any band take me seriously if I didn’t spread my underage legs for them?
most awkward boner award goes to .. me
I bet going on tour would be fun with an “actual, successful” touring band. We’re all just grizzled old balls who play in/ used to play in mid to lowest level touring bands.
When you’re staying ath the Marriott everynight and having afterparties at actual clubs/bars thrown in your honor on a nightly basis, touring sounds pretty rad.
Hardcore bands will never experience this level of success. That is a fact.
You’ve seen “This Is Spinal Tap”, right? That’s like the only old/classic movie I like because it’s so accurate. There’s your top level successful band tour life.
Wait, the “30 minutes of fun” is while you’re playing?!? After the first few weeks this is def NOT the case. When your knees hurt so much that you have to play guitar sitting in a chair, when you’re having to drain blood blisters every day and the drum sticks are rubbing on totally raw skin, when the singer has absolutely no voice and is coughing blood the shows become 30 minutes of depressing torture. Touring with the right dudes can be incredible- but one bad apple will spoil the whole bunch, and after weeks and months of being attached at the hip, everyone just takes turns being the “bad apple”.
And a special word of advice to Ashley- everyone involved has less fun when there’s a girl on a tour and that’s a fact.
I’ve done merch for a bunch of bands. everything you guys are saying is pretty much spot on, shit is boring and depressing, and I’ve only toured with bands that played big venues/had real tour buss’s/catering/hotels etc. i can’t imagine doing a van tour, it must be hell.
basically you get to travel all over, but usually only see the inside of the venue. you gotta deal with all the annoying people (ala a retail job), douchy band members, annoying girls who sucked enough cock to become tour managers. also if you do anything that has to do with the UK, music that in the US is only listened to by little kids is actually liked by adults, so prepare to deal with the most annoying drunk assholes ever.
you can hook up with allot of girls but you usually don’t have anywhere to bring them so you end up trying to get bjs in the backs of cars. the bands that have groupies are ones that appeal to little kids so its pointless since they are all 15, and “mature indie bands” have no groupies at all. most dudes in bands are also miserable and just talk to their girlfriends on the phone all night, if you do tour with a band into partying and getting chicks on the bus- etc, you will realize that the standards are pretty low, especially the further away you get from the coasts, I’ve thought to myself many times “man, i wouldn’t even hit that, and I’m just the merch guy”
but, if you tour with a band that appeals to little girls, they love to bake like cookies and cupcakes and shit for the band and leave them by the tour bus or give them to the mercy guy, never do this because they are ALWAYS eaten by the crew and the band never sees it. once in a while you get to do something cool like where the label rents out a whole strip club for you and its like a motley crue video, but for a girl i dunno what the appeal will be, if you are hot and you really wanna be “in the industry” you can defiantly do that by touring and dating the right dudes who can hook you up with jobs, 90% of tour managers are girls like this, and if you tour with big bands you CAN make very good money,but yea
DONT BE A FOOL STAY IN SCHOOL
Phase 1: Spend tons of money renting gear
Phase 2: Spend tons of money renting a van
Phase 3: Spend tons of money on food, drinks, gas, ect.
Phase 4: Play shitty venues for $30 and a free beer each
Phase 5: ???
Phase 6: Uh… Profit?
Let’s be honest. Phase 6 is not “profit” but “smash groupies”.
I really wanted to go on tour until I talked to this dude from Oceano (the bassist, I think) who said they made about dick dollars an hour and lived in a van. Even with the satisfaction of playing onstage, no gracias.
the music industry, like all industries is totally corrupt and a scam, i toured with a band that was selling out 3’00+ venues and they LOST money on their tour. their tour manager made like 200 gs tho.
bands need to make money on merch, and hipsters don’t buy merch, so if you start a band make sure it appeals to little kids.
i meant 3000+
article is spot on, touring is a fucking miserable experience unless you are comfortable with stinking and sleeping in vans. however, the real highlight of this piece is that “cool the band” is making me giggle unnecessarily hard right now.
You should have included living off the dollar menus of fast food resturaunts.
Not gonna lie, I’ll put like a dollar or two in the tip jar if it’s a hot merch girl and she is nice. Actually she doesn’t have to be hot, just nice to me. I think I might have given a $5 tip one time.
I mean if you drop like $60 at a merch table you obviously have enough for a tip. To not would just be un-classy.
I do wanna go on tour, just once. My friends here went from our hometown to Asunciom – Paraguay just for one show, because it’s only a 4 hours drive. So I thought “man, this is going to be cool, seeing a new city, hanging out there and having a good time”. Fuck, I was so wrong! It took us 7 hours to get there, because every 30min the van would stop so all the members could take a piss, cuz they were drinking. then we get there and it was this: hauling in, setting up, taking your gear down, etc. so yeah, I hardly got to see that city. We didnt eat for like 10 or 11 hours, and when we did it was a regular hot-dog. Plus, if someone in the band is an asshole by nature, prepare to have a hard time dealing with this individual. I still wanna go on tour with bands that actually lots of people know and not just local, but i’m pretty sure it would be one time only.
it’s true, going on tour is stupid. It seems like a much more important thing for hardcore and punk bands, who seem to tour off demos (as opposed to say, indie bands and metal bands who only go on tour after like 3 albums and a pitchfork review, and their “tour” is just a 3-day major city weekend jaunt).
Also, touring in a van is not always dumb. I’ve done shows for grindcore bands who make money on tour, and they’re not that well-known or anything, just really budgeted and bare-bones, and have a good scene network. Or you could be like Dillinger Escape Plan and live year-round in a nice bus, but spend all your money maintaining it.
if you do tour: bring a cooler (for sandwiches and when you find cheap food at a grocery store or something) and take nights off from partying. But yeah, there’s no money in music anyway so I really don’t know why so many people try to tour these days. Even if you get famous you’ll be broke, so it makes more sense to just play fun shows in your own city and if buzz happens, it happens, and if not, who gives a fuck at all.
In other words, as Sarge and other have said, the people who really like touring and the whole underground scene around it usually are crusty people who enjoy being dirty and grose and having no future except health problems
“Even if you get famous you’ll be broke, so it makes more sense to just play fun shows in your own city and if buzz happens, it happens, and if not, who gives a fuck at all.”
great advice, srs.
I would sooooo smash that “cool” merch girl. That is all. Continue.
If shes going to school at SU she might be better off on tour rather than accumulating tons of college debt and ending up without a job “sucking off dudes in the parking lot haha.” If shes in a sorrority shes probably doing that already tho…
Nope. I’m in an entrepreneurial learning community, though. Getting free dinner every Monday and already have an internship with a local company. But, I mean, I COULD always rush for a trashy sorority and throw away any hope of graduating, u kno~~~
In spite of the fact that what you said is true, being on tour still beats the hell out of working a job.
Plus, chillin in the van listening to music all day rules.
Also, you left out petty theft for food, since you spent whatever money you made from your in between job on rent.
I can’t argue with this or the “being in a band is for losers” article either. They’re both very true, but I was in a band for a little more than a year before we broke-up and I have to say, we got pretty popular throughout our city, and had man offers to go on tour, but I still made good grades in school and never used “being in a band” as a solid plan for life.
Tl;dr- Being in a band is great fun if you’re up for it, just understand it’s a hobby and probably won’t get you far.