Newton Faulkner – TOUR TIPS

In this Tour Tips segment, the singer-songwriter, Newton Faulkner, recommends advice for being a musician on the road. You can check out the tips, after the break.

1. You do not have to eat and drink everything on the rider.
Your rider is the food and drinks they put in the dressing room. I say food and drink but I have also known them to contain shines to David Hasselhoff. The first thing to remember is you pay for it, it is not free. Second, if you drink a bottle of whiskey and a small mountain of cheese every night, you will end a tour less physically attractive than when you started it.

2. Staying healthy
Touring is not a healthy pursuit. Venues and buses or vans are not sterile, clean environments to sleep and work so you have to do what you need to not get ill. Also, the lack of sleep and general exhaustion play a huge part in this. Touring is so much fun and doesn’t even really feel like work if you are healthy. If not, it can be unbelievable hard or the brain and the body. Exercise, even if it’s just walking around the town. Get some fresh air at some point in the day. Try and eat healthily when you can. It’s not easy. Sometime’s there is no choice but what you can find on the side on the road at 2am, but when there is a choice, find a vegetable. Multivitamins won’t do any harm either.

3. Look after your instruments
It seems obvious, but if you lose a guitar or your voice, you are in pretty serious trouble. If you are a drummer or a singer then your job is incredibly physically demanding so this includes your entire body. Whatever it is you use, be it vocal cords, fingers or shin muscles, take good care of them.

4. Make the most it
In the music industry, there are zero guarantees. Make the most of the good times because you never how long they’re going to last…

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