Ohtis – TOUR TIPS

In this Tour Tips segment, the indie folk band, Ohtis, gives you their tips for being on the road. You can check out their advice, after the break.

1. Don’t quit community college and buy a van and live in it between tours. You are guaranteed to start smelling bad and smoking a ton of pot. Also, band vans loaded down with marshal stacks are large, heavy, dangerous weapons at the hands of a drunk, high, smelly band dudes, especially if you’re pulling a trailer without knowing how to, driving on unfamiliar city streets. You can’t get into Canada with a DUI.

2. Don’t light up a cigarette while deplaning in Berlin. You will be yelled at in German by angry Germans. Similarly, don’t think the smoking ban doesn’t apply to you in the basement of the Canopy Club at Pygmalion Festival in Champaign. That is an asshole move and Seth Fein won’t book you again. This only applies if you’re old enough to remember a time when people smoked inside.

3. Don’t think that because you’re a band dude who wrote a few songs and booked a string of shows across the midwest and made a few drunk people gawk at you for a while that you’ve actually achieved anything. Everyone knows the cool band dude persona is a facade beneath which lies a confused, sad little dude who smells bad and lives in his van and is susceptible to conspiracy theories, they just have nothing better to do that night.

4. Don’t pick fights with other band dudes because you thought their band sucked. Chances are both your bands suck and you will just end up having one of their girlfriends spit in your face while you’re loading up your gear, which you can’t do anything about except drive away and talk about how you should’ve punched that other band dude, and maybe you should drive back there and do it, but you won’t.

5. Don’t play a show in Nashville on a Wednesday night and then demand money from the barkeep when no one came to your show and you didn’t make them any money. You might feel empowered to act like a tough guy and get something for all your “hard work”. What will end up happening is the barkeep will hand you a twenty and tell you to fuck off and never come back, your band is banned from that venue forever. (hopefully, they forgot about that by now).

6. Final tip: don’t wait for experience to teach you that these are all valid tips. By that time it will be too late, you might’ve induced PTSD in those who’ve come in contact with you, and you will be doomed to a life of band dudism because you will have no other life skills and nothing to fall back on. GOOD LUCK!

Keep up with the band on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.