tour and playing music professionally

the title of this rant makes me laugh. playing music professionally. i guess it depends on your definition of professional. according to my definition of it im a professional at being broke and poor, and feeling lost and uncomfortable all the time.

if i never go on tour again i wouldnt care at all. its a miserable hollow existence and has destroyed the spirit of music and hardcore for me.

wanna know what tour is like? ok here we go...

you spend months preparing for tour, which consists of trying to get as my hours in at work as you can before you go crazy cause lets face it, youre in a band so you dont have a very good job and it makes you nuts just going there everyday, but you have to make money for tour. you dont though. you never make enough money to pay off all your bills and have money for the road.

why do you need money for the road?

cause you dont make any on the road. you make enough to put gas in the tank to get to the next city, but just barely. so how are you supposed to eat? thats the tricky part. if youre not into stealinng from gas stations like im not, then you starve, or you try to get some money before tour so you can have food money. i never have food money. i pay for the van insurance and van payments so that we can tour cause im in a band with musicians.

heres an interesting FACT for you. musicians are irresponsible, miserable assholes who dont ever have the financial aspect of the band in mind, so its usually up to one guy to take care of it all or everything buckles. thats me.

so you somehow fill your gas tank on day one, and drive for 6 hours to the show, then you get out and load all your gear into the venue and meet the bands that you are going to be touring with. ive never been good at first introductions so it takes me a few days to warm up and get comfortable with the strangers that seem to want to talk to me and get to know me because we are forced to be in the same place everyday with each other for months at a time.

the first show is always the worst because you've just driven, or ridden in my case, for 6 hours and your not adjusted to tour life yet. honestly, it doesnt get much better you just stop caring. so after the show youre tired from playing and loading equipment, and then you have to load it all out again and put it back in the trailer, then you gotta drive again if no one offers you a place to stay in town.

this repeats EVERY SINGLE DAY. its always the same, so you try to do things to break up the monotony. some people drink, some people do drugs. i do neither, so i go CRAZY.

i go for long walks around the venue as far as i can without losing direction and getting lost which ive done quite often cause i have a horrible sense of direction. i usually listen to my ipod and try to forget that theres another month of this bullshit. unfortunately at the same time im alienating myself from my other band members and rest of the people on tour. they tend to take offense to this.

so tour is basically counting the days until you can go home and forget this ever happened, all to wait to do it all over again cause as soon as you get home theres another tour booked. meanwhile, youre still on tour and your back is killing you from not sleeping well. we usually sleep in the van and i sleep up on a loft we built out of wood with carpeting over it. so i pretty much sleep on a plank of wood, and im tall so its not big enough for me to stretch out, so im constantly curled up. i always feel like shit. im always sore, im always tired, and always miserable on tour.

ITS NOT WORTH IT.

kids at shows usually do nothing but stare at you blankly and not show any sign of whether they like it or hate it, and if you freak out like me on stage to try to relieve some of the pressure of being cooped up in a van, then you usually freak a lot of people out, and they dont want to talk to you after the show.

its lonely and depressing. you'd think "hey youre with your best friends so shouldnt that be company enough?" No. tour brings out the worst in people and your so called best friends turn into the worst assholes you've ever known in your life and you cant even talk to them about how crappy you feel because they also feel crappy and they dont want to be reminded of it.

when its finally fucking over you get home after driving another 6 hours, and usually you cant sleep cause you cant stop thinking about finally going home, so you get home tired and exhausted after dropping off all the other assholes in your band that you dont want to see every again, and you have to drop them off first cause you own the fucking van, so you get to go home last.

the walk to the front door of your house is surreal. it doesnt seem real. you walk into your house and its foreign feeling. usually you come home at like 10 in the morning, and your not used to seeing your house at this angle at 10 in the morning. you drop all your shit cause you dont care about it anymore and fall on your bed, but you dont feel it. youre sound asleep before your body even hits the bed.

its time for a career change. metal and hardcore is dead. its an oversaturated, flooded market and there are too many bands out there to let any of the ones who actually give a shit even do anything or make it anywhere. its going the way of 80s metal and rock and roll before it. its dead and dying. what we are hearing now is the death rattle. im gonna start doing things that make me happy. ive proved my point, ive accomplished my goals with music and its time to move on.
fuck it.