Premier Rock Forum

I won't derive nearly as much enjoyment out of the money fire.

Definitely going to toss an atlas in the car for the next road trip; the GPS did indeed send us to a few wrong addresses. Probably a nice way to come to the end of our luck when we're playing house shows.

Get a truckers atlas. Yeah I know you have a GPS, trust me, there will be times when the GPS will straight up be wrong. A truckers atlas may be outdated, but it is rarely fully wrong.

A lot of good advice here- Allow me to add/backup a bit.-Don't drive overnight-Do drive after shows to get out of cities- you'll save on hotels-you're going to lose money- think of it as a vacation-don't worry about the driving, just drive like a careful human being.-2 people awake at all times-drive the smallest vehicle you can be comfortable in-load heavy things further forward, keep weight ahead of the rear axle as best you can-take backups-treat people well-don't be an entitled piece of garbage-mind your p's and q's when you're in unfamiliar areas- easy to run afoul of a redneck weirdo at a gas station and end up embroiled in hassle you don't want.-take your shit into wherever you're staying...an extra 5 minutes tops.-put your most sensible person in charge of the logistics and listen to them when they tell you what day you're gonna do laundry, etc.

jimmy two hands wrote:Tom wrote:jimmy two hands wrote:Luckily the border guards were in a good mood or decided to take pity on us and let us go on without dealing with the problem. Those guys would have let a fully armed convoy flying ISIS and NAZI flags in. They had absolutely no concerns about anything. Do you recall we were in the short bus with the vegetable oil conversion kit on it. Weird tanks and tubing and all sorts of shit that looked like a bomb on the back. No problem.We should have written those goobers names down. Using them makes touring in Canada a non-issue.Now that I think about it we could have done damn near anything that day. There was also a bottle full of piss sitting on the dashboard and an elephant man mask made of spray foam insulation and barber hair stuffed into one of the compartments, looked like a serial killer art project of some form. Just waved us through and pointed us toward Tim Horton's.I have known of a Canadian border guard who had a broad palette of musical tastes, was familiar with the nature of indie rock touring subculture, and would have sized you guys up pretty fast. We encountered the U.S. version on one crossing to Seattle many years ago. There's probably more than a few out there.

If you are going to try playing shows in a different country, get yourself very, very, very educated about their work visa/tax/etc laws or prepare to have your shit confiscated. We did a lot of Canadian shows where we drove up for the weekend without gear (except pedals and so on) and borrowed guitars & amps from friends, always had a good time but always had a story for the border agents about just hanging out for the weekend. Later on for a tour, our route had us cross through Canada from Detroit for a few shows and out through Niagara, so the gear sharing deal was a no-go. We did our research and thought we had everything completely covered legal-wise but forgot about the merch, apparently there was some form of tax complication where we would have to pre-pay the taxes on all of our merch for potential sales before entering the country. Luckily the border guards were in a good mood or decided to take pity on us and let us go on without dealing with the problem. But I have heard a lot of horror stories of people being detained, having everything impounded on some form of customs deal, being turned back, fined, what have you.

Tom wrote:jimmy two hands wrote:Luckily the border guards were in a good mood or decided to take pity on us and let us go on without dealing with the problem. Those guys would have let a fully armed convoy flying ISIS and NAZI flags in. They had absolutely no concerns about anything. Do you recall we were in the short bus with the vegetable oil conversion kit on it. Weird tanks and tubing and all sorts of shit that looked like a bomb on the back. No problem.We should have written those goobers names down. Using them makes touring in Canada a non-issue.Now that I think about it we could have done damn near anything that day. There was also a bottle full of piss sitting on the dashboard and an elephant man mask made of spray foam insulation and barber hair stuffed into one of the compartments, looked like a serial killer art project of some form. Just waved us through and pointed us toward Tim Horton's.

I'm a big fan of day sheets.they have the same info for each venue on each sheet plus a hard copy map to the venue from the previous city.e.g.Venue:Address:Phone:Website:Day of Show Contact:D.O.S. Contact Phone:Load-in time:Sound check time:Other bands:Set time:Other set times:Pay:guest list spots:food buyout:map:e.t.a. to next city:etc.:It's been a long time since I was out on the road or sent anyone else out, but I like having every show have the same info across the board. When booking, you can set a checklist of things you need from the promoter/booker venue side, and make sure you have all the info. Takes a lot of thinking out of it to have a solid book of day sheets. Did these for 2-3 day tourettes as well.hth!Faiz