On Tour: The rhythm

I have been struggling to find the narrative thread for an entry about going on tour with Chris Barron, lead singer of the Spin Doctors, last week.

I think that is because there isn’t a single theme; there are four or five or six. Each is intertwined with the others. To weave them all into one entry would either be unwieldy or would make for a far longer read than anyone has the patience for here on Substack.

So, I’m going to chunk it out a bit across a few entries. Bear with me if you will. This is a bit like publishing a book chapter by chapter before having figured out the next. The alternative is to have written them all before posting but, frankly, I don’t have the patience for that nor do I think it is reasonable to go even longer between posts.

That said, let’s set off; shall we?

When we last left off, I had just handed a friend some cash and a jar of marijuana out in front of a nondescript hotel outside Philly and with that, I was “on tour”.

I was the first one to hit town, so I killed the afternoon in a Mexican place drinking Dos Equis and eating tacos. Dropped my stuff off at the hotel. Called myself a cab. And headed off to the venue.

The rest of the night followed a certain rhythm that would come to be familiar over the week. There is a certain cadence to the tour life of a singer-songwriter shoe-stringing it across states for shows in far-flung places.

When you work an “ordinary job,” your day is dominated by two simple dayparts: the workday and the evening. Those two are bracketed by commutes and whatever else you choose to fit into your day but for the most part, your 24-hour cycle is simple, structured and consistent. Your time at work is one big chunk. Your time off is also one big chunk.

A day on tour doesn’t work that way. It has but one immovable post: the show. Everything else is variable. Travel. Load-in. Soundcheck. Load-out. Sleep. Downtime. Each occupies its own little window which starts and ends at a different time each day.

The Show is the one fixed appointment and the rest of your life just accordions around it.

The first show was at a little place outside Philly. A quaint music hall with tables, a long bar, a nice drink list, and menu of modern pub fare. It was the kind of place you’d go with friends on a cold winter night when the air outside was cold and crisp and the room inside was warm and cozy with music and life.

Doors opened hours before the show and a crowd slowly trickled in until what had been an empty bar save for me and one superfan with a vinyl he was hoping to get signed was bustling with patrons.

In the meantime, Chris arrived from Pittsburgh with the friend he had enlisted to be his tour manager for the 11-show roll across 3,000 miles. Joe is exactly what you would want in a ride-along on this kind of trip. Laid-back but on top of things. Funny and easy-going. Encouraging and supportive. Good company. You’ll hear more about Joe but for now, suffice it to say, I like Joe and you would too.

First up on the pre-show routine was a simple “load-in” of dumping all the necessary gear and bags in the tiny room carved out of a corner of the kitchen to be a “green room” as it were. Like most of them, it was small and unfancy; comfortable but basic. A place with a little privacy, a small fridge, some snacks, and a bunch of stickers on the wall from prior acts.

(note: Chris doesn’t actually have one foot that is size 10 foot and another that belongs on a sasquatch. The wide-angle on my iPhone tends to distort things a little. I think it’s a cool effect TBH.)

After the load-in came a soundcheck. Guitars and ukuleles plugged in. Microphones tested. Sound levels checked and adjusted by the venue’s sound engineer.

For someone like Chris who has been doing this for his entire adult life, it’s a pretty routine process. Quick, simple, to the point. Twenty minutes maybe.

The more experienced the engineer, the less they fiddle with things during the show. The less experienced, the more they futz and fuss in real-time much to the chagrin of the person up on stage who woulda been just fine leaving things well enough alone after soundcheck.

Sometimes, it takes years of having done something to know when to do nothing.

The whole goal of soundcheck, after all, is to not have to fix the music during the music.

With that task dispensed with, there is a long window of downtime. Chris sleeps. Joe and I ate and milled about and met up with people and got ourselves set up for what else we had to do.

For me, that meant generally overthinking where and how I would shoot the show using my phone, camera, two tripods and a selfie stick.

I absolutely love shooting shows. It is hectic and hurried; stressful but not anxious. Each show is an opportunity to capture The Performer in a way that is true to them. And each is a chance to maybe capture a moment. A split-second of live action caught with all of its vitality.

Music is energy and passion and motion. Capturing that feeling is damn hard. I struggle with it. But when I pull it off well enough to be happy with an image, it is its own applause.

I like being on site early. I like meeting the security guards and bartenders and staff. And I like that window after soundcheck to just plan. I like thinking through where I should position myself to get basic shots and then what I want to climb over, around, and under to try to get something more interesting.

The window between soundcheck and show moves so slowly. It feels relaxed and unhurried. It is two or three hours of an energized calm. It’s a feeling that can’t be explained well as much as it must be felt. It is maybe my second favorite moment of a tour day. We’ll get to the first in a bit.

Eventually, the preshow window winds down and the opener comes on. Then the musician takes the stage, begins to play, and I whirl into motion snapping away with two cameras.

I struggle with the exact same things every time. Some are limits of my abilities. Some are shortcomings of my equipment (and my refusal to accept them).

So, I shoot and shoot and shoot - all while hoping that I will like at least a few of the hundreds of pictures I’m taking.

I take basic shots first. And then by the middle of the show, I’m standing on a stool behind the sound engineer with my phone on a selfie stick stretched to the ceiling to take a wide-angle of the whose scene.

After a while, I’ll slow down and say to myself “That’s enough. You got plenty. Go have a beer…” and then retire to the back of the room to relax and listen.

And then every single time, I drink half the beer and think “It would be cool to get a shot from [somewhere in the place].” I then go through an internal debate over whether I’m overdoing it or not - which results in me leaving the bar and heading off to try to get the shot.

And then, the show winds down and it’s all over.

The crowd erupts in applause and the musician leaves the stage.

On tours like these, most musicians come out to a merchandise table and meet fans for a while. It’s often perfunctory. A chore. A necessity to pay the bills and keep the tour solvent.

Chris truly appreciates every single person who comes out though and enjoys the interactions. He lingers to talk with every fan interested in meeting him. He takes pictures and signs things and talks.

And then the crowd thins to a few fans… and then none… and then the staff thins out too and the lights go down in “front of house” leaving only Chris, Joe, and me, to pack up and load out.

And that’s the window of a tour day I like the most. It is a moment of celebratory relief. There is work to do and a drive back to the hotel and it’s already late and getting later. But it is relaxed and joyful and happy. It is the last sugars of adrenaline distilling into happiness.

The last night of my ride-along, long after the last person had left the building and the place had fallen quiet, I sat on the edge of stage with my legs dangling off and ate cold pizza. It was delicious and felt like a reward. I hadn’t eaten since lunch and it was midnight and it was wonderful and perfect. I will remember it.

And then it’s off to a hotel that looks just like every other hotel and an hour or two of being wide awake because you’re still wired from a show and the energy of music and a crowd and then it’s off to sleep at 3 a.m. before waking up to drive off somewhere to do it all again.

That’s the rhythm. That’s the tour life.

A show - two hours of time - bracketed by a soundcheck and then downtime on one side and then a meet-and-greet and a pack-up in an empty venue on the other.

It is an exhausting grind. But it is also exhilarating and rewarding and addictive.

There are musicians who fall out of love with touring or who never really liked it all that much in the first place.

Chris is not one of them.

I can understand why.

You are driven either by your love of the immovable post (the show) or by how much you hate the unstoppable force (the grind).

Chris loves being a musician more than he could ever hate the grind. He will play as long as he is able. He will never stop loving being a musician. It is his nature. I’ve long known that. It was still a joy to see.

As for me, I didn’t sleep a lot. I missed a bunch of meals. I ate a lot of green room junk food. I was exhausted when I got home.

It was awesome. I can’t wait to go again.

That’s it. That’s the rhythm.

Next, we’ll talk about the melody, the lyrics.