The Tour Survival Guide — Part Two

Continuing the series discussed here, and the branch from here. This is basically a shorter version of my Con Survival Guide, but it's reprinted here for the sake of continuity.

Adrenaline alone will not sustain you — spend long enough on the road, and fatigue is inevitable. So how do you avoid it? To answer that, friend of the blog Jonathan Killstring has some tips from his time touring the Midwest with artists like Sworn Enemy, MC Chris, and Foxy Shazam; he’s made mistakes, so you don’t have to.¹

Follow the 3-2-1 Rule

This is a classic guideline — whether you’re going on vacation, tour, or a grand adventure to save the world, follow the 3-2-1 rule, and you’ll make it out ok.

The idea is simple. Every day, you should get a bare minimum of:

3 HOURS OF SLEEP

More is better, obviously, but this is your floor.

2 ACTUAL MEALS

With real food and everything. Cheetos don’t count. Gas station jerky doesn’t count. Your body will thank you.

1 SHOWER

Often tricky to manage, and requiring some forethought, planning, and willingness to shower super-quickly, this is nonetheless incredibly important. Not just because you’ll be sweating your butt off under hot lights every night, but because when hygine goes, sickness sets in. Nothing is worse than cancelling dates because you got a nasty cold; so use that hand sanitizer, and don’t neglect your hygine.

That goes double if you’re touring in a van with other people.

Hydrate Yourself

Water is your friend. Beer and soda don’t count. When you perform, you’re gonna sweat. Even if it’s the dead of winter, you pack people in a club, and hit the lights, you’re gonna sweat more than normal. And if you don’t hydrate properly, you’re going to wind up getting sick, or just not having the energy to perform. These people were good enough to see you out on tour; you owe it to them to make each show memorable, and you can’t do that if you’re parched.

A quick test to see if you’re dehydrated; grab a sports drink — Gatorade is the classic, but anything will do — and down it. If it tastes amazing, and you drink it in one gulp, congratulations; you are officially dehydrated.

You might want to repeat that last step a couple times.

Talc Up

Another thing to keep in mind with all that sweat, is that you’re going to get drenched. I heartily recommend preempting those problems with some talcum powder, like Gold Bond.

Laugh all you want, but you’d be surprised how many guitarists’ low stances were the product of nasty rashes. Make sure you can perform — both on-stage, and in the, ahem, after-parties — by powdering up at the beginning of your day, and maybe before you go on-stage.

A word of caution: don’t apply the highly-medicated stuff to anything resembling an open wound. There is a special sort of hell awaiting anyone so foolish.

Hydrate Yourself

Whether you're gearing up your summer tour schedule, or just prepping for an outdoor festival, you want to make it through to the end in one piece. And ideally, you want to make a good impression on people. In my travels, I haven't always managed both. Occasionally, I've managed neither.

Do better than I have done. Be the Superstar you were destined to become. Barring that, maybe just don't get sick.

~Killstring

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves².

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1 - Disclaimer: this is not actually why I made the mistakes in question.

2 - Because Killstring is our ghostwriter, but it's all good. I may have been getting a little testy about the whole "not getting paid" thing by this point. :)