Sharks In The Deep End – TOUR TIPS

In this Tour Tips segment, the indie rock band, Sharks In The Deep End, give you some advice for being on the road. You can check out the feature, after the break.

This is our first tour together as a band but we have all collectively toured for years in other projects, allowing us to have a decent amount of wisdom when preparing to hit the road. We’ve tried to consolidate our list into four categories to avoid pitching a grocery list of to-dos to other bands who are just going to do whatever they want anyway…

1. Van Essentials
The first obvious van essential is pack your favorite music for the road. Actually, firstly you should tune up your vehicle and make sure your AC works, especially if you’re touring in the South. Also, podcasts help to break up the pace so you can actually learn a thing or two while driving across country to play a new room every night to who knows what kind of crowd. Here’s a few of our favorites: Tuesday’s With Stories, The Tim Ferriss Podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, Radiolab, How Stuff Works, and the Ari Shaffir Podcast.

If you’re using an app for navigation be sure to download the Google Maps App because Apple Maps is only good for Nascar drivers. A huge safety must for us is having a boot with key lock for our trailer. There are so many horror stories of bands getting their trailers or vans or both stolen while on the road—you can find them for under $100 and taking an extra 45 seconds to attach it is totally worth not ruining your entire year when your shit gets stolen. Also, bring two sets of van keys and assign the responsibility to the same two band members—locking yourself out of the van post after-party is less than ideal. If you have the room in your vehicle or trailer for this they are fucking great—IKEA single sleeper pads. We bring our own sleeping bags, pillows & blankets to help with sleeping situations but we have two of these sleeper pads and they make sleeping on the floor incredibly bearable. Plus, they fit perfectly in a van bench seat to turn it into a much better bed while driving. Go to your local thrift store and find a few Snuggies, they are ridiculous to wear but actually fucking amazing to use—trust us. Always have a pocket knife handy, freshly sharpened, for all of the things. And a flask and cheap whiskey will transform the back seat of a van a tiny party.

2. Health & Hygiene
At times, this is the most important list to be aware of, other times, fuck it, you’re in a rock n’ roll band so suck it up.

Seven dudes sharing one bathroom gets pretty gnarly at times so try to bring your own towel, eat as healthy as possible and try to get all of the fiber you can because being seventh in line for the toilet shouldn’t be seven hours away from the first guy. Also, buy a bulk pack of flushable wet wipes, because everybody should be cleaning their nasty asses with these anyway, plus they are equivalent to grandma’s homemade pie versus an old gas station honey-bun. For avoiding constant body cramps and aches it’s a good idea to get a memory foam neck pillow ($10-15 most truck stops) and a mesh lumbar support ($10 Bed Bath & Beyond). There’s only one guy in our band who does this but he’s also the only one who’s not complaining about his sitting situation in the van. Other essentials, for obvious reasons, are deodorant, fingernail clippers, Emergen-C & ibuprofen for the day after, and sunscreen for the fair skinned on day off adventures. Also, Lactaid & Gas-X because even those lactose intolerant dudes sometimes need a slice of cheese pizza.

3. Etiquette
No matter how old you are or what kind of band you’re playing in, hopefully, you’ve learned some manners by now and know to always respect your sound engineer and how to tip your bartender correctly, this should go without saying but we’re saying it anyway. Golden rule suckas! Another golden rule is CONDOMS! It’s only polite that you don’t knock somebody up before you drive to the next state in the morning—add this one to hygiene as well because nobody likes an itchy crotch. When you’re with the same group of people for weeks on end it’s a good idea to remember to take some time for yourself so you don’t go all Darth Vadar on the rest of us. But also be sure to let everyone know where you are at all times so we don’t have to waste time searching for the lone wolf.

4. Performance & Show Tips
These are highly classified pieces of information that have been systematically crafted by the greatest artists in history and are kept in a vault buried seven miles underground somewhere in rural Connecticut. If you’d like a meeting with one of our consultants you’ll have to greet us at our next show with a shot of whiskey and a smile—a fucking huge smile.

In conclusion, be on time to the gig, don’t be a bag of dicks, and don’t let one guy in the band handle the copy so he doesn’t write whatever he wants muahahaha!

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