Life on the road: what it's really like

For some it's a calling. For some it's a necessary evil in their pursuit of a career in music. For me, life on the road was both beautiful and ugly.

The beautiful parts were, of course, the music and the people. I love to experience the sights and sounds of new places. I've always enjoyed making new acquaintances and friends. And with all the behind the scenes skulduggery we lived for the music while out on the road. That, plus the food, and comraderie.

The road can leave scars on an independent musician. You have to pretend it's glitz and glamour even when your last meal was a protein bar and a glass of water. Or when you only slept two hours on a rickety tour van. Or when the extra baggage fees ate up all the profit from the last stop. Or when you finally get paid at 2am, get back to the hotel and showered up by 3am, and lobby call for the next flight is at 7am, and you slept through breakfast. A whistle-stop tour is a grind. Sure you're play all of these cool venues in these cool places. Hopefully you'll have the energy reserves to at least see a few of them by daylight instead of sleeping the day away in a drab hotel room like some musical, new-age vampire!

But the people! The shows! Man, that's the juice! Music makes connections in places you'd have never imagined. The feeling of performing for an enthusiastic audience of folks that love your work thousands of miles from home...wouldn't trade it for the world! Life on the road is a blast! A beautiful, ugly, tedious, transcendent blast!!!