Oh Malô – TOUR TIPS

In this Tour Tips segment, Brandon Hafetz and Jordan Lagana, of the indie rock band, Oh Malô, give you their tips for being on tour. You can check out the feature, after the break.

1. Bring New Music | It’s easy for a playlist to get stale if you exclusively use your Spotify or Apple Music catalogs, so we break the mold by bringing old tapes on tour. This leads to some classic music education for the more… contemporary listeners in the band and also teaches some rules of thumb; for instance, that if you find a tape by a big-ticket artist in the relic section of a Goodwill, it’s nearly guaranteed to be one of their worst records.

2. Classic Entertainment | Bring some forms of portable, non-digital entertainment (i.e. books) because you never know when you’ll be away from a power source for an extended period of time, or maybe you simply crave that carefree detachment from your laptop. Books are your best friend although, on a long tour, they can take up loads of space, so E-readers are a solid alternative.

3. Kill Time With Your Common Ground | If your band is like ours, member interests greatly vary, so finding ways to occupy your down time can be tricky. We’ve landed on some go-to activities depending on which city we’re in, including antique stores, used book stores, highest altitude points in the city, notable food joints and vintage music shops. Think outside the box like we did with our visit to the Idaho Potato Museum. Any sizeable city will have most of these, and the smaller cities and towns tend to only have one but it’ll be quirky, so happy hunting!

4. Revel In the Little Moments | Once you first start touring, you’re going to have small crowds, and when I say small, I mean SMALL. These instances were discouraging at first until we realized the potential connection we could make with each person in the room. Some of our smallest shows were our absolute favorites. You never know who is in the room, so never “turn off”. Play as though you’re playing a sold out show in your favorite venue, full of the most supportive fans you could imagine. It pays off.

5. Work Hard, Play Hard | Once you do this for awhile, you realize that the lives of touring musicians are romanticized. This is hard work — plain and simple. You have to put in the many, many hours, both in the rehearsal room and at your day job, in order to be able to go out on the road for several weeks and truly make it count. We focus before each show to prepare for whatever comes our way the moment we set foot on stage. After shows and especially on our days off, we find it equally important to enjoy ourselves and decompress so we maintain a healthy balance while on the road. There’s nothing quite as rewarding as playing a great show on tour and then having a great night with friends and family afterward. It makes this all worth it!

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