October 16-22, 2003
11 Tips for Touring
Words of wisdom from our favorite semi-retired punk rocker.
by Adam "Atom" Goren
1. First and foremost, obtain a membership with the American Automobile Association. A AAA-plus subscription costs about $85 annually, and provides the member with free towing within 100 miles of the pick-up point. I've taken advantage of the convenience of the AAA-plus membership more than a few times on tour while driving automobiles varying in reliability, from a $700 piece-of-shit van to my parents' very generously lent, newish sport-utility vehicle. I unfortunately never had the opportunity to test the concept of setting up an entire United States tour where the shows are less than 100 miles apart, thus saving on gas by calling AAA and requesting that they tow you and your vehicle each day to the next destination, in the process playing in very strange, tiny towns in the middle of nowhere where music hasn¹t even been invented yet.
2. Bring earplugs. Most likely, the bands you play with will suck. I presume that since you're on tour, playing in a band, you must at least be remotely interested in listening to music. So, wear earplugs, and avoid not being able to listen to music later on in life because you ruined your hearing listening to bands you didn't even like.
3. Take advantage of friendly locals' advice about good, cheap places to eat. Most of the time, while traveling through this large country, one is limited to fast-food crap that lives at every exit on every highway.
4. Go on tour to weird parts of the country. Long drives are much more fun in the southwestern part of this country where it looks like you're on a different planet than in the flat, visually boring Midwest.
5. Make sure your companions are likable and low-maintenance. Traveling with people who whine about things like getting splinters from the kiwi fruit they're eating is not recommended. While high-maintenance folks like these are good inspiration for short movies starring you and this person -- where you are shown driving, pissed off, many hours to his house, ringing his doorbell, punching him in the stomach and then it cuts to a scene of you driving to California smiling, with sunglasses on -- this movie will actually never be made, so it is not worth enduring the tantrums of this bad traveling companion in far regions of the world. Of course, no one in particular comes to mind here.
6. Don't be a jackass and drink alcohol before you drive.
7. Do be careful to avoid hitting deer in the road and being hit by drunk drivers. Both can do major damage to your vehicle, and though it is unpleasant to put said deer out of its misery by hitting its suffering, mangled body over and over again with a big Maglite flashlight, it may be called for. On the other hand, though it may be fun to put said drunk driver out of his or her misery by beating him or her with a big Maglite flashlight, this is unfortunately illegal. It's also not fun watching this drunk driver sit in a coma for a few days and then, later, laugh at you in a courtroom while you impotently sue her for not having car insurance and totaling your vehicle for which she will never pay. Again, of course, no one in particular comes to mind.
8. Get very comfortable with shitting in weirdly laid-out bathrooms. I think the strangest restroom I came across in my travels was the one in the otherwise-comfortable club called The Bottleneck in Lawrence, Kan. The bathroom at The Bottleneck consists of one completely open, empty room except for two toilets with just a meter of space between them. There are no stalls, and for maximum awkwardness, there;s no lock on the door. I have pooped in plain view of and at the same time -- almost touching, knee-to-knee -- as a complete stranger. He indeed was pooping next to me. I imagine that this is the kind of thing that really will only happen on tour, or if you frequent shows at The Bottleneck and don't live within the 26-mile radius that most folks would gladly jog to avoid pooping while touching/watching a complete stranger pooping. Or if that's your thing.
9. Make sure the stereo in your vehicle works. On a recent trip, the car stereo employed its evil plan to drive me insane. Not only did the radio spontaneously shift the balance of whatever was playing -- so that it only played out of the right side of the car -- between 10 and 15 times an hour, but when I tried to switch the balance back to the center, it didn't change the balance, but the "bass" setting, leaving me with only the right channel of whatever I was listening to, sounding like a transistor radio. This is horrifying.
10. Route your tour through crappy cities like Spokane, Wash., Pensacola, Fla., Grand Rapids, Mich., and Kalamazoo, Mich. These places will make you glad that you live wherever you live. If you live in one of the aforementioned places, you may want to consider moving and/or suicide.
11. Play the "popular-to-porn" movie-title transformation game to pass time on long rides. Each player thinks of a popular movie title, and then must transform it into an analogous title for a porn flick loosely based on its plot. For example, excellent entries include: Turner and Cooch, Thighlander II: The Dickening and Spaceballs.
As Atom and His Package, Adam Goren often spent many months at a time touring the U.S., Europe and beyond. He and his wife, Jenn, are expecting their debut baby in December.