When you are in a bus, it becomes a traveling cocoon. People like to be safe and comfortable in all understandable things everything is there: cell phone, fridge, toilet, and band members begin to magnetize to it. When you are in a van, you need people to stay with. You’ll find those people by staying in the club longer, interacting harder, being more alert, smelling better, and not drooling. Yes, free accommodations also come with obligations, but it’s these social obligations that interlock and weave their way through the fragile endeavor of “Breaking America.”
There is an unwritten underground contract that strangers in a city honor when they trust and open their hearts, homes, showers, beds, washing machines, and high-speed DSL lines to a beat-down band on the road. To deny that contract, to deny that 5 a.m. conversation, to deny their ability to make a massive difference with a bed, a blanket, a bagel, and a bath is to deny the bond that will reverberate for years afterwards. Maybe part of touring in a band has nothing to do with the music. Maybe it has more to do with meeting people, seeing differences across the country, and discovering their changing attitudes. All you see inside the bus is the changing landscape, the mold growing inside the refrigerator, and the bass player’s growing porn collection.
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Excerpt from Tour:Smart (via Kevin Kelly’s Cool Tools)
Have you ever put up a band at your house? I’ve put CJ Boyd’s Sexxtet up for 2 nights :)
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