After touring an album, you have this strange void that follows it, where you feel slightly displaced, like you’ve just finished with the circus and you’ve got to find a new job. You think, OK, what shall we do next.
I’m still learning how to be comfortable touring. I haven’t found that balance yet.
The period of time between when you’re done with a record and when you start touring is the worst period of a time in a musician’s life.
I’m most proud of my career as a touring comedian and musician. I love doing television, I love selling records, but when I’m at these venues with hundreds of people, and they’re all sitting listening to my music and my jokes, I feel like I could die that day, and I would be happy.
Touring is what you make it. I like to organise as much as possible myself.
We didn’t realize there were that many boy bands until we started touring in Europe. I don’t think we were ever affected by it since a lot of the groups in Europe didn’t really sing live, but we did and would perform a cappella as well.
Towards the end of touring ‘The North Borders’ I had a lot of personal stuff going on – family members who had died – and I was feeling displaced.
The juxtaposition between fishing and touring couldn’t be greater.
You know, when you really connect with the instrument and everything just comes out on an emotional level very naturally through your playing. That’s, you know, a great night. And I think the reason I love touring so much is you’re chasing that high around all the time, trying to have another good night.
Then we’re going to take a lot of time off because in the last three years we’ve been touring continuously.
I’m not the kind of person that can do the same thing over and over and over, so that’s why touring, playing in a different venue every night, in front of a different audience, is so rewarding, you know, because it always feels fresh.
The equipment you’ve got really dictates what you’re going to do. When I started touring, there were no monitors, so I had to take the sound from the hall, and of course it was on a delay, so I would sing, and then I would hear it back, but later. It was very weird.
Touring takes a lot of work, a lot of preparation.
When I’m not touring, I hardly ever leave my house. Part of it is I get to do what I’m most passionate about, which is work on music and make new songs.
I went to the University of Michigan for two years, and I auditioned for ‘Bring It On’ during my sophomore year, so I got to finish my sophomore year, and then I joined the cast – the touring cast.
My reality was feeling lonely while touring to predominately white countries where I sing to fans who don’t see me, don’t hear me, don’t cheer me on.
The first thing that comes to the mind when you are touring South Africa is bouncy wickets. But that is no surety of what kind of pitch you would get in the game.
The first time I went on stage as an adult was touring with the Johnny Cash Show. I’d sang as a child. But my grown-up initiation was as part of that band.
I was required by Capital to release one every six months and the fastest I could do with all my touring was every nine months, and it would spook me every time because I never had what I needed and I really didn’t want to do covers.
There hasn’t been one highlight that stands out… but touring and performing has been great.
In the crazy world of touring, if something gets stuck at customs, I can do a show with just my amp!
I always loved touring in Pentatonix; really the only reason it was tough was the pace and no breaks.
Touring is always important to me. It’s like a big IOU to my fans, because I know they are the reason I exist.
My life could have easily gone another way. But I had this one teacher who gave me direction and got me into performing. She got me into touring with an educational play called ‘The Inner Circle’ along with Pedro Zamora from MTV’s ‘The Real World.’
After touring the first album, we went into the studio and started making music that was influenced by all the freaky folk music we’d been listening to. Lots of Canterbury scene stuff from the 1960s and ’70s. Robert Wyatt, Soft Machine, Caravan, Gong.
I love touring. I can’t wait. Everything is just normal when you’re finally on tour. I think, for me, it’s my happiest thing; I love moving around, and I have friends and family all over the place. It’s kind of my time. It’s almost like home. It’s when I get to see everybody.
Touring is hard. It’s really hard on the singer, especially, because your body is your instrument and you have to be so good, it’s like boot camp out there; I can’t do anything – just sleep, sing and be very healthy.
We are literally touring the world, and people are listening to my music.
I’ve had this terrible stomach problem for years, and that has made touring difficult. People would see me sitting in the corner by myself looking sick and gloomy. The reason is that I was trying to fight against the stomach pain, trying to hold my food down. People looked me and assumed I was some kind of addict.
I am planning my one woman show. It will be a showcase of my life. It starts at the beginning and ends where I am today. It will have every single inch of my life – as much as you can get into an hour. I will be touring everywhere.
My folks met at the University of Oklahoma, in the theater department in the 1940s. They were married touring the country in ‘Cinderella’ and ‘Snow White.’ My mother was married in Cinderella’s costume; the dwarves were the best men.
Touring is not easy, as you always have a certain yearning for home no matter how beautiful the location you are in, but I have pushed myself to the limits and am certainly more aware of myself as a result.
Touring is an incredibly isolated situation. I don’t know how people tour for years on end. You find a lot of people who can’t stop touring, and it’s because they don’t know how to come back into life. It’s sort of unreal.
I’m just saying that at least for the foreseeable future there won’t be any more touring.
My favorite part of touring is when I see girls that I’ve been talking to on my site and then meeting them in person. I can’t believe how well the fans get along together. Everyone just seems to be really cool.
For me, this band and the music that I write and this touring thing that I do and playing in front of people, singing, and making a lot of noise on guitar – all that was more important than a lot of other things.
We’ll have these people hang out with us while we’re doing our touring, and talk to them and let them speak their piece to the world.
Mostly I’ve just been stealing little moments for myself in order to write – in the bathroom at a hotel, or just slipping away for a half an hour. Amidst all of the touring, life has been happening.
We toured that record for a year, which turned out to be the culmination of ten years of being constantly on the road. We were sick to death of touring.
I enjoyed the two years I was with Clannad. I enjoyed touring. We toured a lot in Europe.
After the 2009 ‘Cult Of Static’ touring cycle ended, I felt that, as a band, Static-X had accomplished everything we set out to accomplish, and now I could finally take the time to do my own thing and make a record that is completely my vision without compromising for anyone or anything.
That’s part and parcel of touring England. You have to be very street smart and on your game. If you’re not, the media and the ECB will have a field day with you.
A touring comic’s typical day roughly amounts to an hour of being laughed at and 20 minutes of being photographed. The other 22 hours and 40 minutes are spent in silence.
When I’m touring, I have to think of workouts that don’t require a gym.
Broadway is another monster. I’ve been touring since I was 12 years old and I love being on the road – one day you’re here, next day it’s snowing, and the next you are in a desert and it’s 110 degrees. So I guess I’m kind of used to the madness physically that you go to when you are an entertainer. But it’s been great.
A touring band is a family and a workplace at the same time, and you’re living with people you didn’t necessarily choose every day for up to a year.
I live in L.A. so I don’t get to see much theatre anymore. They have a lot of touring shows but it’s not like New York – I lived in New York for 15 years and you can walk out on the street and there’s something to see.
I knew from a very young age that I wanted to be in that world. But I also understood that being a touring musician meant that you’d be gone a lot and that was going to make other things a lot harder, like having a family.
I like touring extensively because I think the more hours you spend onstage, the more you know who you are onstage.
When touring I get to travel around with my best friends, do a show I love and I’m confident people will enjoy, and have all the adrenalin that comes with performing.
My favorite thing about touring is the new towns and new faces every day.
As children, my brother Baba and I would be taken to mushairas when my mother Shaukat Kaifi was touring with Prithvi Theatres, because we couldn’t afford a maid.
I claimed identity as Jewish musicians for political reasons, because most of us were touring in Germany and, at this time, twelve years ago, there was a strong resurgence of Nazism in the places we were touring and part of that was on the music scene.
