Heartsick - TOUR TIPS (Top 5) Ep. 978

What is up digital tour bus? It is I again, Alfonso from Heartsick. Glad to be talking to you guys again. Today we're going to talk about tour tips. If you're in a band, your goal usually is to play shows and once you get a taste of shows you sort of get the itch to tour. I would say that if you want to know if your band is going to be able to stand the test of time, go on a tour. It is quickly going to show all of the weaknesses, the flaws, as well as the strengths of your band and your individual members. Touring is hard. It is not easy at all. It requires a lot of patience. It requires a lot of energy. It requires a lot of ingenuity in some senses. So I would say tour tip number one would be and this seems so it seems really dumb but at the same time it is so important. Communication. Make sure that you establish a good way to communicate between each other as a band. Being on tour can really test your limits as a unit because there's so much external stuff going on that you need to learn how to handle those external situations and communicate them properly. What I mean by that if you're stressed, if you're annoyed, if you're sad, if you're happy, if you're angry, communicate that in a healthy way. It's hard. It's hard to be in a band for eight hours, six hours, four hours every single day going to a new place and maintaining this zen within yourself. So if you're having a bad day, it's best to say, hey guys, I'm just not having a really good day. I want to make sure that you guys know that if I kind of lash out, it's nothing personal. It's just I'm not really feeling today. I'm tired. I'm hungry, et cetera, et cetera, so on. And really communicate those feelings because it goes a long way. It really does and it helps keep the flow of each band member better and cohesive as well as it lets people know that you are a human being and that you also are able to really articulate what's going on so that everybody understands a little bit better. My tour tip number two for you would be to just make sure that you bring enough money to do collective groceries. And that seems really dumb too, but it's a lot easier to be, to kind of put everything together at once than to sort of make everybody kind of fend for themselves. When you make people fend for themselves, sure, that can work, but that can create, I would say, some form of maybe some animosity or some resentment if certain band members aren't in a better financial state than others. Everybody has their own sort of financial situation. And as a unit, you want to be able to, again, communicate what that is and sort of do a community groceries. And you want to do your groceries on dry foods, canned foods, and packaged foods because those are the easiest to get done. So ramen noodles, Chef Boyardee, anything that can be put in a microwave because you're probably going to be stopping a lot. You can stop at a gas station. You can use their microwave for free. You can use the hot water for free. So all those things go a long way and they're super, super cheap. You can get a package of 12 ramen noodles for like less than four bucks, right? You can get a bunch of Chef Boyardee's, you know, like 10 for 10. Things like that are really important. Chips, anything that has a lot of protein that can give you a lot of energy, but at the same time that kind of fill your stomach, it's really hard to eat good on tour. So those are things that are really going to help. If you want to take it a step further, I would tell you in that same vein to get yourself a miniature George Foreman grill and a panini grill, and I'm not kidding, and also bring probably, I would say, with that like paper cups, paper plates, all that good stuff. So you can sort of eat in a more humane way than like stubbing, shoving ---- in your hands and kind of just throwing it all over the place, right? So that would be tip number two. Number three would be, again, these all seem so dumb, but you'd be surprised how easily they get overlooked. Bring a cooler. Not only bring one cooler, but I would say bring four coolers. And the reason why I say bring four coolers is for this. You want one cooler for dry food. So all of your ramen noodles, all of your canned goods, all that stuff, put in one cooler. Cooler number two should be for your plates, cups, utensils, all that, because that becomes really helpful. And that can be a smaller cooler, but you can pull from that napkins, paper towels, all that stuff can go in there. Cooler number three, obviously, should be all your drinks. If you get Gatorades, if you get Red Bulls, all that good stuff, get that and put it in there. And cooler number four has to be for the beer and the alcohol. Why? Because you don't want your alcohol to be in the same spot that you have your Gatorade, because drunk people tend to mix their drinks together and you're all going to fight because somebody's going to take somebody else's Coca-Cola and put it in their ******* rum. So make sure you take care of that. Four coolers is going to be a really, really big deal. Another tour tip, this one I think is really important. We've discovered later in our touring history, someone in the band should have a Costco membership. And I mean that wholeheartedly. And you should all sort of pull your money together and pay for that membership monthly or for the year or whatever it is. You know, it's 60 bucks for a Costco membership. And between four people, five people, that's like almost nothing. But the reason why that's important is because you can buy a lot of bulk ---- for cheaper. So you can get all those ramen noodles for way cheaper. You can get a bunch of prepared food for way cheaper. You can get all your snacks for way cheaper. There's tons of stuff that you can get in there, as well as they have a lot of toiletries and things that you can use while you're on the road. So make sure you get yourself a Costco membership. Another tour tip I have, two people in the band or depending on your band, if you have four members, two members should have it. If you have three members, if you have five members, three members should have it. So on and so forth, right? Get yourself a Planet Fitness membership with a black card. And that is super important because you want morale to be up and nothing sucks more than finishing a show and not being able to shower or shave or just to feel like a normal functioning human being. You're going to be sleeping in a van, maybe in a car, whatever it is. And you're going to stink and you don't want to stink. If you get yourself a black card from Planet Fitness, hopefully after all this COVID stuff, you're able to go to any Planet Fitness all over the United States with your black card, take showers and bring a band member in and bring a friend in. You can work out, stay healthy. That brings up morale as well. A lot of this stuff isn't so much to, you know, get, you know, get sustenance and eat and all this other stuff. Obviously it is, but it's also for band morale. Morale is so, so, so, so, so important. And you would not believe how much it helps to just have a shower, to just be able to brush your teeth in a nice space, to just be able to get a nice little workout in a tan, a massage, something. All these things really, really help. So I would say, make sure you get yourself a black card from Planet Fitness because that is going to go a very, very, very long way. Another tour tip is if you have a van, make sure you have four trash cans, three trash cans for each individual bench seat that you have, and those should be smaller. And then one big trash can, about 13 gallons and put in the front of the van in between the driver and the passenger. That is going to help you so much to keep your space clean. Again, it helps with morale to keep trash and having to clean your van and destroy it when you've made that investment. So make sure you take care of that and make sure you get yourself trash cans. And I would say my last tour tip, if I have to think about it really, really hard, I would say, make sure that you bring enough pillows and blankets for each individual member. And for your roadie or whatever road crew you have, because again, that goes a long way. It's nice to be able to have that as a thing that you have. People are going to forget their blankets, they're going to forget their pillows, they're going to forget that stuff. So for you, it's really important to sort of have extra. So in case someone gets left out, they're really not left out. And again, it helps with morale. So those are my tour tips from HeartSick, stuff that we use every single day. Hopefully that helps you. Make sure to check us out anywhere you want, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, HeartSick Official on YouTube, HeartSick Band, Instagram, Facebook, all that good stuff. Thanks for watching.