April 27^th, Denver, CO. I wake up in the afternoon sweating in a steaming hot van. I look around with no idea where I am or what time it is. Half of my band is missing and my bass player is snoring softly in the row behind me. My surroundings appear to be a neighborhood, nothing like the setting that I’m accustomed to seeing our venues located. I message the guys asking where they are. No answer.  It’s been maybe a minute but it feels like an eternity. I can’t bear the overwhelming stuffiness of the van any longer. Our one set of van keys is nowhere in sight so I can’t start the car to get some A/C, drop the windows, or even unlock the doors. Eventually my stirring wakes up Vini. I need to get out. I know that opening the doors from the inside will likely set off the alarm but I’ve stopped caring. I unlock it and open the door. The alarm roars and the fresh air cools my skin. “Why’d you do that?!” Vini yells from the backseat, wiping the sleep from his eyes and understandably upset. I’m overcome by pent up emotion from the last several days. “I can’t do this anymore,” I respond as I storm off to be as far away from my bandmates as I can.

Tour life is often perceived as a glamorous, debaucherous, and never-ending party. While it surely can be a blast (after all, I did just spend a whole column last month talking at length about how great a time I’d had), there’s a lot that goes on behind that scenes that people don’t realize. Touring is hard work. I’ve often heard professionals say that they “play on stage every day for free.” Playing onstage is a joy almost every time. The real “job” is all the hours spent in between playing. THAT is what you get paid for on tour. When you’re in a young band, you simply can’t afford to tour in luxury. In fact, you can barely afford to tour in comfort! Even many accomplished acts are unable to afford a bus with bunks or hotel rooms every night. Since this is the longest tour we’ve ever done to date, I learned the most about the ugly side of touring.

The single worst part of this tour was not sleeping. Everyone goes through the struggle of slogging through a day after one night of poor sleep. No, multiply that by 30 nights. On previous tours, I was used to not having a consistent sleep schedule because of my former job. This time around though, I was used to the Maple Street Guitars schedule (which happens to work quite well for me). Going on tour creates a totally different schedule. Sometimes you have to drive several hours overnight to insure that you’ll get to the next venue on time. Sometimes you have a hotel room down the street and only have to drive 3 hours the next day.  Eventually, you do get used to having a messed up sleep schedule and non-existent R.E.M. cycles. You stop feeling “tired” even though you only got 3 hours of sleep. Your body, however, never quite gets used to it. It starts to take its toll on you physically and mentally. I caught a cold early on in the tour that lasted over two weeks because I was never able to get adequate rest.

The effect that the lack of sleep had on my mental health was most profound. I’ve always been an optimistic, happy-go-lucky kind of guy and I’m very fortunate in that I’ve gone through most of my life without having to combat any mental health issues. It turns out that it’s a lot tougher to spend 24 hours a day for a month with the same 3 people, much of it in the confines of a 12 passenger sized van, than most would imagine. Additionally, I had only been living in Atlanta for a few months at this point and homesickness kicked in real quick. About a quarter of the way through the tour, I thought that I’d never want to do it again because the mountain of a full MONTH on the road seemed so insurmountable. 

I felt a return to some of those negative feelings that I dealt with in the long distance relationship days that my fiancée and I suffered through. Though I was pretty excited to celebrate my birthday in Portland, I also found myself a bit distant as I realized that I hadn’t celebrated my birthday with my fiancé in 4 years. I missed her and our cats just as much, if not more, than when I lived 600 miles away and could only visit every 5-8 weeks. And despite technically being on “vacation,” I missed my new friends and family at Maple Street Guitars, too.

Spending so much time with the other guys also brings out everyone’s worst qualities. You’re forced to live together in small confines and you notice the bad habits that everyone has fostered. My drummer took offense with my chewing when we’d go to eat. One of my bandmates has perpetually smelly feet. Everyone snores. Testosterone builds up and then eventually an argument over something stupid erupts. My bandmates and I are all pretty chill guys but even we were susceptible.

It’s very difficult to maintain good hygiene unless you truly keep up with it. Numerous times I forgot to brush my teeth because I’d be so tired after a show or in the mornings where I would just pass out again as soon as the drive would start. When I did remember, I usually ended up brushing in some parking lot, spitting the water I’d gotten from a water bottle onto the pavement. It’s not pretty or something I’m particularly proud of. And of course, fitting in showers is no easy feat either. I’m not a particularly sweaty guy, but my hair can get greasy and no amount of dry shampoo helps with being self-conscious of that when you haven’t showered in 3+ days!

I’ve gone on about the personal aspects that go wrong on tour, but one of the most obvious things that can go wrong on tour are the shows themselves!! Fortunately, the majority of the tour yielded excited crowds that cheered and bought merch, but there were a few shows that didn’t go as hoped. One show had a sizeable crowd but it seemed like no one was into the music at all, I relied on one or two enthusiastic people to help me stay motivated throughout the performance. Another show featured a huge, but poorly laid out stage which split us in two (making onstage communication near impossible) and also one of the weakest turnouts of the tour. Even our show in Toronto, which was one of our favorites, was almost spoiled by a combative sound guy who very begrudgingly followed our instructions to take the direct signals from our Helix units instead of micing our amps. “I need you to take the direct signal because sometimes my amp cuts out,” I told him. “Then you need to get a better amp,” he replied. I use a Vox AC30, one of the all time great electric guitar amplifiers. My rage was palpable.

But the weakest show of tour was easily our time in Nashville. We all hold Nashville dear to our hearts so it was extra disappointing that our time playing there was less than pleasant. The sound guy at this particular show was one whom I was actually familiar with. I had met him several years ago while recording guitar parts for my band’s first album, Thalassas. He was a nice guy that was there to learn some tips and tricks from our producer. He was one of the “Backroom Bros,” the term of endearment we coined for the guys that work at Backroom Studios. Addionally, the walls were adorned with logos of all of the huge acts that had played there. One that immediately caught my eye was The Police, a band that I often express my love for with customers of the store. So it goes without saying that we had high hopes for this one. Wrong.

Each band had a challenging time getting through their soundchecks. Monitor mixes went from non-existent to blast-your-face-off loud. I tried to chalk it up to equipment malfunctions. By the time the show started, I realized my optimism was misplaced. The sound guy spent much of his time outside of the soundbooth by indulging in some Cheech and Chong-approved activities. I couldn’t hear anything on stage. The music was like a jumbled cloud of cacophony reverberating through the air. We made our way through the set (sometimes a little anger goes a long way towards ramping up our already active stage presence) and luckily people seemed to have a good time. A friend of ours from home came all the way from New Jersey to surprise us at this show and though we were thrilled to see him, we couldn’t help but wish it had been any other show. 

Overall, the tour really was a blast and a highlight of my life. But it was also one of the most demanding months I’ve ever worked through. I hope to get the opportunity again at some point in the future but I’m not particularly in a rush to hit the road right away. I’ve tried my best to not come off like I’m complaining unnecessarily. But when you’ve driven in a van for 8 hours in the rain with 3 other guys that haven’t showered in a couple days to play a show in New Orleans to 12 people, then you’ll know what it’s like!
Chris Capitanio, 2019