Made a few drives on tour in excess of 12 hours, usually driving home at the end of a tour or to do a one off in NYC or something, but the most brutal drive we ever had to make a show on the next night was Calgary to Vancouver through a snowstorm. That drive is brutal enough without the sleet and snow and trucks (who are presumably used to it, or don't care if they live or die).
Had a Minneapolis to Spokane once as well, which would have won, but we had a day off in between. That was still a coupla 10 hour drives in row.

i think the longest i've ever done is columbus to new york (or vice-versa). seems like we've done that one a few times. the worst was when we did it as a two-car caravan. that's a 9-hour drive that realistically takes 10 with gas, bathroom, smoke and food breaks, but this time it took, no shit, 13 goddamned fucking hours.

we're planning a tour this november and i told the booker that there was no fucking way i was going to be part of it if we had more than two 8-hour drives per week. unfortunately, i'm probably going to have to cave on this because we're going to texas and back. lots of wide open spaces out that way...

The Bismarck *averaged* 500+ miles per day on our 2007 tour. I think this year we averaged 450 miles per day. We routinely do a Missoula/Bozeman/whatever to Bismarck/Fargo/Minot haul, which on the order of 12-13 hours. We've done "oh, shit" overnighters such as Salt Lake City to Seattle, Billings to Seattle, etc.

In short, we are complete morons. The best way to keep the drives realistic is to not let Chris Jury or me book your shows. We've never even approached the Silkworm cross-country record (we've never crossed the country, for that matter), though. We tend to just have 8 hour drive after 8 hour drive after 8 hour drive, etc.

When I was a spry, young man, I would routinely drive from Moscow, Idaho to Bismarck, North Dakota in one stretch (~22-23 hours). I don't think I could pull that off these days.

Dan

thedishonestdon wrote:i think the longest i've ever done is columbus to new york (or vice-versa). seems like we've done that one a few times. the worst was when we did it as a two-car caravan. that's a 9-hour drive that realistically takes 10 with gas, bathroom, smoke and food breaks, but this time it took, no shit, 13 goddamned fucking hours.

we're planning a tour this november and i told the booker that there was no fucking way i was going to be part of it if we had more than two 8-hour drives per week. unfortunately, i'm probably going to have to cave on this because we're going to texas and back. lots of wide open spaces out that way...

What band are you in?

The only time I've ever toured interstate it's always been a 9-10ish hour drive.

Bloody Australia.

i've only ever "toured" once, and the only long drives were the way out from Chicago to the east coast and the way home, both of which were probably 14 hours or so. It was only like 5 shows, so it wasn't brutal. Plus, I kinda love driving in general.

The longest drive I've ever done solo was DC to Louisville and back with about one hour break in Louisville. It was like 22 hours or something. I also did Tucson to Chicago in four days, roughly 12 hours a day by myself. Listened to a books-on-tape version of Stephen King's "Dreamcatcher" for pretty much the whole trip, which was great.

The longest I would *want* to drive between shows on tour right now would be about 8 hours a day every day. But I'd be willing to do more, 12 or 14 hours, but I doubt that's gonna happen with this band. We got a guy that's kinda fussy about being a passenger (rather than driver) in a car in general. As it stands, the longest we've got on the horizon would be Chicago to Minneapolis or the other way around. We're not planning on heading out for more than a weekend anytime soon; we're looking at a handful of weekends out of town this fall. So we'll probably be doing mostly 5 or 6 hour drives as part of 2 or 3 day "tours", which sounds pretty great to me.

I envy people who can go on tour for a month or three. If I ever win the lottery, I will certainly do it.

two one-nighters:
Chicago to detroit to chicago 10+ (not worth it)
Chicago to Iowa City to Chicago 10+ (worth it)

epic cross country:
Vigo to Barcelona 13+ (so worth it)

these two were on the same 4 day tour:
Chicago to Ithaca 12+ (worth it)
Montreal home to Chicago 16+ (ouch/worth it)

not bad for some bad drives.

Is anyone else disappointed that this thread wasn't about a band called "distances" going on tour?
That is a good band name.

better than your last band name, I'll give you that.

kerble wrote:better than your last band name, I'll give you that.

At least I can afford chairs that don't have speakers built into them.