The Inside Is Live – PRESHOW RITUALS

In this Preshow Rituals segment, the alternative rock band, The Inside Is Live, talks about what they do before every show. You can check out their rituals, after the break.

When you’re on tour, your pre-show ritual starts from the moment you wake up. We’re going to walk you through a normal day on tour with The Inside Is Live.

You open your eyes in a hotel room, to the sound of a soothing rainforest. It’s the band alarm. Will’s already been awake a few hours now (he’s an early riser). He’s got the coffee on the go, as the day begins with a caffeine fuelled rush to load the suitcases into the van, and get on the road. In between the rush, we’re all fighting for a turn in the shower – NEVER trust venue showers, they’re awful. You get the odd miraculously luxurious shower in one city or another, but don’t let that deceive you; you’ve got to get that out of the way before you leave.

The drive to the venue can be the worst part, so it’s important to keep yourself amused, because you can end up going absolutely stir crazy when driving for six hours every day for weeks, and that’ll put you in the wrong frame of mind for the show at night. We tend to keep distracted with music and games of ‘I Spy’, which gets pretty weird, especially late at night.

Arriving at the venue, you’re faced with the dreaded load-in. Our routine here is to get everyone involved; it goes so much faster when you’re working as a team to get everything ready for the show, and after sound check we’re usually left with 3 hours or so before our stage time. The first thing we do is head into whatever city we’re in and look for food, that’s one of our favourite things about touring. We try to be as adventurous as possible with the food, whilst keeping healthy. One of the most important things we’ve learnt is to eat healthily when you’re on the road. That usually involves loads of fruit, nuts and juice – no sweets or energy drinks (we’re not paid enough by an energy drink sponsor to tell you guys to drink that stuff yet). We’ve also learnt to never ever share drinks on tour, that’s the easiest way you’ll catch that nasty cold your tech has been harbouring for weeks!

Once the quest for nutrition is satisfied, we go into ‘pre-show chill mode’. This usually involves relaxing backstage, catching up with emails, phoning home, hanging out with friends on the tour, restringing the banjos and waxing the dijeridoo. We’ll usually do one interview per night in this time too (like the one we’re doing for you guys right now!). Michael tends to consume about 5 cups of green tea in this ‘purgatory’ zone between dinner and show time.

Then, when the clock hits 8pm, that’s the danger zone.This is where those scary nerves start to creep up on you. For the first ten minutes, all five of us will start by doing our stretches to Olivia Newton-John records (she has other songs apart from Let’s Get Physical, you know!). Once Olivia’s warmed us up, Will, Callum and Elliot will start their guitar exercises, whilst Michael will start doing those High School Musical warmups with our vocal coach (it’s magical to witness). In the danger zone, we don’t eat, or drink anything apart from water – you don’t want anything weighing you down when you’re sweating your heart out on stage. 15 minutes pre-show, and the countdown begins; strap on the guitars, the wireless packs, and you’re walking down the narrowest staircase you’ve ever seen in your life trying not to cause some limb breakages before hitting the stage. Before you know it, the intro track’s playing. This is where we huddle up for a quick embrace, and we’re ready to go.

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Did you enjoy this Preshow Rituals segment? Do you think any of these tips will be useful while touring? Let us know in the comments below!