Even If It Kills Me is presented by Manhead Merch.
Bring time.
The snow has melted,
the buds are blooming,
my allergies are killing me,
and the band is about to embark on an entirely new level of touring.
One we had never seen before.
This is,
at this point,
the biggest tour,
I would say,
that we'd have been on.
You were guaranteed a crowd every night,
even as an opener.
You know when you go out on stage,
there's going to be people there.
There was big crowds.
It was great venues.
It's like,
oh,
we're playing a House of Blues this night.
We're playing,
oh,
we're playing the Metro in Chicago.
Holy shit.
You're with your favorite bands.
I'm going to love all the music that's happening.
It was bands on our label.
The routing was good.
We're going to have a...
a good rider we have per diems also on top of a rider what the hell like that's crazy you were gonna sell at least some merch every night it was basically best case scenario for a band like us it kind of felt almost more important than you did before you got there but that was like the one
tour we did that was really like what you would picture being in a rock band on tour it just was it was a totally different world
I had trouble on tours that there was nothing happening,
you know,
and you were like,
oh,
maybe this show is going to get canceled when we get there.
But not that,
not those tours.
Those tours were great because you knew where you were going and you knew what to expect.
It might be an obvious thing,
but having peace of mind while on tour is kind of peaceful.
It was night and day.
Like things were organized.
We got like an itinerary with all sorts of stuff.
We got.
We got a schedule,
which was like,
whoa,
like there's actually like times on these things.
For Pete,
and honestly for everyone,
this new breed of tour was giving us a small whiff of hope that we might be on the right path.
And it was all starting with the rider.
Because for the first time,
we were able to add something more than just peanut butter and jelly,
chips and salsa.
Now what exactly is a rider?
A rider is simply a shopping list,
or a wish list for a band like us.
Having a rider might sound like a real bougie thing,
but you honestly don't have time to stop and shop to get yourself food.
You're driving all day.
When you make a rider,
you make a wish list because you know that they're going to cross out
99.999% of it and then get you the other stuff,
right?
So you will...
You'll be like,
let's get,
you know,
like one 12-pack domestic,
one 12-pack import.
We're going to need a deli tray,
a bunch of chips and dip.
We had a very big spread.
One of us put
Jack Daniels,
one bottle,
on the rider.
And for two nights,
it was actually there in the dressing room.
Along with beer.
We were idiot kids,
and we had like 24 beers and a bottle of Jack waiting for us every day at the venue when we arrived.
On night three,
when the tour stopped in Kentucky,
so did our Jack.
Mac thought it would be funny to go walk around the venue holding the empty bottle of Jack.
He just wanted to see what would happen.
And it like all roughly translated to me just being like a monster.
Before this night,
getting drunk to unruly levels was considered a successful night.
Watching Mac parade around the venue with our bottle of Jack that night,
it dawned on me that this was no longer fun.
This was me suddenly not doing my job.
And I wasn't the only one who noticed either.
Takumi,
the headliner's tour manager,
and honestly the one who was in charge of this entire show,
also noticed.
And no one was going to question him either,
since prior to working on this tour,
he had also worked with,
you know,
Guns N'Roses,
ACDC,
Bon Jovi,
Prince,
Prince.
Imagine working and dealing with the egos of Axl Rose,
Jon Bon Jovi,
Angus Young,
and Prince,
Prince,
and then seeing us.
Just...
Wandering around the venue after the show in Kentucky with the empty bottle of Jack and all the merch just trying to load up into the trailer like a bunch of baboons.
Let me tell you,
it was amateur hour.
I was talking to some girl.
And I ended up stealing her purse for fun,
like just like a lighthearted thing.
And I ran backstage with it,
which which I now know is wrong.
And so she chased after me.
And then immediately after that,
I was like,
this is weird.
Here's your purse.
I'm sorry.
Takumi was a true Jedi master,
and instead of making a scene that night,
he quietly watched it all unfold and simply took the bottle of whiskey off our rider.
Without trying to belittle us,
I think he kind of slapped a little,
you know,
a little reality into us.
This was a brilliant move that was most likely fine-tuned through trial and error during various attempts at stopping Prince from doing ridiculous things.
And we were all in awe of his,
like,
past.
The stakes felt different on this one.
It felt like people were watching.
I don't mean literal people at the shows.
I'm talking about money people.
Watching from afar,
from some office somewhere in Los Angeles.
The money people were watching.
And Takumi was their ceremony.
It only took three nights for us to understand all of this.
One drunk fuck-up of a night,
and three more to get over being scolded like children in front of everyone.
And then it finally clicked.
This was a job.
Sure,
it's one of the greatest jobs on this planet and possibly other planets.
But it was a job.
Our job.
When we got to the venue the next day,
Takumi approached me backstage.
You have to get a hold of your guys,
he said to me.
I know that you're all friends,
so it makes it that much harder.
But you have to tell them.
They've got to listen to you.
It was eye-opening.
Takumi approached the situation with such grace that it was impossible to do anything but accept the feedback and act on it immediately.
Like I said,
true Jedi Master.
Word had gotten back to the big boss.
That we may have been a little out of control.
And I'll say we,
because we were all enjoying ourselves being on this tour.
By the time I had the opportunity to talk to the guys,
they had already heard it from the big boss at the label,
so they didn't really want to hear it from me.
I got a call the next day from the label.
And they were like,
what the fuck are you guys doing?
And he was talking to John.
You know,
you could tell that it was a pretty serious phone call.
Get your shit together.
And he's like,
I don't give a fuck.
I don't want to get any more phone calls that you guys are doing dumb shit and pissing off their tour manager.
And next thing you know,
John was handing the phone to Mac.
You got it,
sir.
But you could just tell by both of their reactions that it was like getting yelled at by dad.
We were chastened.
Our hard liquor was removed.
The hilarious nature of the music industry,
of course,
didn't remove the beer.
I don't even think the conversation had ended in a like,
okay,
good talk,
see you out there.
I think the phone would just click.
They always say you have your entire life to write your first record,
and you don't have that luxury for any other record after that.
So taking that into account,
the band decided to start recording demos for the new album within the comfort of their own rehearsal space.
Which just so happened to be nestled inside of one of the most haunted buildings in western New York.
The Harvester Center.
Is very spooky.
You know,
we demoed the songs,
we sent it to the label.
They were like,
still not there.
Demo some more,
write some more songs,
send it.
And he's like,
yeah,
you're like one or two songs away.
Could have been the ghosts,
could have been the weather,
but the record label was not feeling it.
So after a month of back and forth,
the label finally gave the band the green light to spend money to make money.
I mean the green light to get into the studio to record the record.
We are so excited to finally get in the studio.
We really wanted to get into it and get this thing out as soon as possible.
They put everything they had into recording that second album.
It was crunch time.
Summer tour was quickly approaching and the sooner the band and the label could put the gold stamp on the album,
the sooner a release date could be set.
The band was still in New York City getting mixes by the time Pete called me in late May of 06.
They had just been given the go-ahead for me to join them on a three-month-long summer tour that was one of the largest touring festivals of its time.
All I had to do was get my ass to New York City in less than 48 hours.
When I got to New York City,
I found Pete and the rest of the band outside of the studio,
rummaging through boxes and boxes of supplies for the summer.
We went and bought a tent for merch.
We made stencils and we stenciled our name.
in spray paint on the tent,
like in the parking lot outside the studio.
We got like a bunch of merch sent to the studio and we got like a bunch of drumsticks and heads and strings and just stuff we were going to need for the summer when we loaded the trailer up.
And then it was like,
all right,
we're driving to Maryland.
I felt like our future was so bright at that point.
We had the new album done and it was in mixing and we kept getting mixes and we were like,
holy shit,
holy shit.
This tour was supposed to be.
The beginning of the beginning.
After the touring lessons from Takumi and the incredible experience of that spring tour,
all signs pointed to go and collect your $200 on the way there.
All signs were wrong.
That summer tour was the inevitable,
Mr.
Anderson.
It was the beginning of the end.
If we felt like we had leveled up on the last tour...
This one was a crazy level up.
This summer tour was a surreal,
sun-stroked,
diesel-fueled fever dream.
We came off of a tour that we were in love with.
We just recorded a record that we were happy with.
Now we're on one of the biggest tours that used to go out every summer and that we all went to since we were in eighth grade.
I never went to summer camp.
Wasn't my thing.
I've never liked the idea of having so many scheduled activities during the day.
Especially on summer vacation.
Any chance I get to do nothing,
I end up doing nothing.
And the tour that summer was exactly like summer camp.
Just add a lot of beer and assorted drugs,
plus out-of-control ids and egos,
all traveling together through the US and Canada during the summer months,
following the heat waves from city to city with
24-hour non-stop noise,
and yeah.
The numbers needed to keep that summer tour going all those years blows my fucking mind.
If one band needs about six million dollars to pull off a stadium tour for eight weeks,
I mean multiply six by a lot,
I mean that's...
I don't even know.
I mean it was a full moving festival,
hundreds of bands.
One thing to know before you start counting them is that not every band that
plays on this summer tour has a tour bus but we did not every band that has a tour bus gets one for free but we did and not every band that plays on this tour gets a sponsorship from major league baseball but
we did it sounds like a whole lot of everything in its right place
It took a dramatic amount of time for the epicenter of Summer Tour to reveal itself on day one.
You show up at the tour and it's like,
oh my god,
here's my fucking bus.
This is my bus driver.
Like,
hey,
we have a tour manager.
We have a guitar tech.
Are you kidding me?
We were the new kids at camp.
And it was nearly impossible to keep that a secret.
Holy shit,
did we stick out.
It was like...
The lap of luxury compared to what we had been through for the last couple of years.
Everything was looking very good from my perspective.
Got your bus,
you're squared away.
It's basically like day one at camp where you got to get your passes.
You're going to do a little meeting later.
You're going to run around,
say hi to everyone you know.
All the bands and artists were well rested and unburnt by the sun,
full of energy.
First on the agenda was checking in.
Gotta let somebody know you're there.
It can't just take attendance,
but you do have to say present.
I remember the getting the badges and then like the first taste of Hanson.
The first night of like
Hanson juice beverages.
And they had like those like three different flavors of fruit juice that you could get every night when we had food.
It wasn't all Hansons and tour buses.
Shit was getting real.
The first day when we showed up in Maryland to start the tour,
there was a bus driver there.
And he had never done it before.
He had never like done like a like a tour before with a with a band.
He drove that first night after the first show.
And then by the next day,
he was gone.
Yeah,
this tour is not a normal tour.
It is no place for a first time bus driver.
The label called us and they're like,
OK,
you can either have a hundred dollars a night and drive yourself or you can have a bus.
From what I understand.
Bands that drive themselves,
that's like how you break up your band.
There's undeniably an aspect of proving...
that you're worthy you know even like the the barbecue band and all that stuff right let me tell you about the barbecue band every night once the gates closed and if the tour didn't have an overnight drive there would be a barbecue where the bands and the crew would congregate and get wasted and eat hot dogs now
this band this barbecue band would be the ones that actually cooked every night now i know what you're thinking was there an advantage to being the barbecue band
Well,
yeah,
you're the barbecue band.
It's like a hazing thing,
right?
You're supposed to just suffer through that process in order to kind of validate that you,
you know,
that you tried hard enough to be able to be a band as opposed to like,
you know,
throwing any other career options away and focusing on playing music 365 days a year and working horrible jobs and.
Waiting forever to finally get a record deal like that stuff wasn't enough you also have to like cook burgers for everybody
Survive being the barbecue band and all the other bands will think you're so friggin sweet
I mean in what's money and sanity and record sales when you have friends it Sort of friends for at least one summer.
We were like the the calm
bus.
We somehow lucked out and got the most normal band as our bus mates because it seemed like every other bus that where bands were sharing was,
it was like two crazy bands,
two drunk bands,
and then the two quiet bands.
Thank God we were with the band that we were with because there would have been some real unhappy people in our band.
We also had a bus full of like
cool people.
You didn't have to worry about going in your bunk and somebody fucking with you in the middle of the night.
Our bus mates were also part of that spring tour.
You know,
the one where we had the bottle of Jack and the rider and the whatnot and the whole thing.
They didn't care.
They had played our hometown before.
They knew us.
They knew what we were about.
We weren't just some buffoons out there on the road.
We liked the quiet times,
too.
Everybody else would be raging,
and there'd be blood,
and there'd be nudity,
and there'd be,
you know,
just craziness.
You go out the door,
and it's like apocalypse,
fires,
boobs,
just anything you can imagine.
And then you'd come to our bus,
and you'd open the door,
and you'd look in,
and it'd be all of us sitting there like a family watching Lost.
The tour bus was nothing short of bliss.
The home away from home on wheels with satellite TV and a bunk to sleep in that kind of felt like a coffin but was oddly comforting.
It was your own little cave like you could just if you wanted to get away from people you just crawled in there and shut your curtain.
They were the most perfect little cocoon for me.
I am the kind of guy who falls asleep in cars all the time.
They lull me to sleep.
the engine rumbling whatever like i have a hard time fighting that so man you put me in a bus bunk and you got the engine just chugging away at night and idling in the morning and i don't even care that you're moving and sliding back and forth a little bit there was air conditioning televisions it
was glorious i didn't give a shit i slept so good every night and i would do it again as an adult
Front lounge was for hanging out,
drinking,
being loud,
being ridiculous,
watching Lost.
The back lounge was for Xbox and totally not smoking weed.
I'm going to repeat,
the back lounge,
not for smoking weed.
That's not where you go to smoke weed.
Totally.
That was like the cool thing about the tour is you could kind of get in your own little routine if you wanted to.
I guess it didn't really matter as long as you were on the bus at the right time.
You made it to the stage on time.
You know,
everything else was all taken care of,
which was unlike any other tour we were ever on.
A day on,
it went something like this.
John and Mac were usually the first ones off the bus.
They would load up the merch boxes,
the easy up tent,
camping chairs,
and follow the rest of the half asleep hungover masses.
Also pushing hand trucks across terrain that they were not designed for until they found our spot for the day.
We would get up probably around five or six.
Generally by then the buses were idling in a new city and you're just like,
oh my god,
where am I?
Early morning you would battle for tent space.
And the longer you'd wait to set it up,
the shittier the spot you'd get.
After the merch tent was set up,
John and Mac would typically make their way to catering for breakfast before returning to the bus.
Mac and I just have a common love of early mornings and breakfasts.
So we get the tent set up.
That's it.
Go get some breakfast.
There's like three,
three squares a day with those.
The only only fruit we had was in the
Hanson fruit juices.
It's like all I remember is the juice.
The meals were good and the fruit juice was exceptional.
The thing I've learned is that crew guys,
they want some good goddamn food.
And if you don't give it to them,
they'll revolt.
That summer on,
we ate like fucking kings.
Yes,
it's salmon and mango salsa night tonight.
It was impressive.
You have so many happy people who are so psyched about this food and it should be terrible.
So it's just common sense and smart.
business making to make some good food.
Everyone just wants a hot meal.
They get real pissed when they don't get it.
Ever been overwhelmed by the logistics of merch on tour?
I remember a chaotic night trying to keep everything organized while the crowd was surrounding the merch table.
As I scrambled to find the right size t-shirts for everyone,
I realized we were completely sold out of all of our most popular shirts.
Okay,
now imagine you're managing merch for an arena show.
How do you make that leap?
Manhead Merch is the powerhouse behind some of the biggest names in the industry.
They offer a full suite of services.
Boring,
e-commerce,
retail,
licensing.
Tailored for top-tier tailoring.
They take care of everything,
from design and manufacturing to seamless order fulfillment.
Ensuring your merch game is as polished as your performance.
Manhead Merch transforms chaos into streamlined success.
They manage every aspect of merchandising so you don't have to.
If I would have had Manhead merch back then,
they would have handled the logistics,
and I could have handled that crowd.
Ready to take your band's merch to the next level?
Visit manheadmerch.com.
It kind of all came together in a weird way where it's like the biggest tour we've ever been on,
and all of a sudden there's this TV show that's like the first show,
you know,
besides like The Wire that everyone's like,
you gotta just watch every episode of this thing,
it's so amazing,
and like getting just completely hooked on it.
Our bus was obsessed with Lost.
And this is what it sounded like straight from the tour bus.
Just in return.
This was still the time of very limited DVR space,
and
Netflix was still shipping you episodes of shows in small chunks.
The binge watch was still in its infancy,
and tech was once again changing our daily routines right before our twinkling little eyes.
You guys would have your,
um...
Lost watching parties in the front of the bus while that was going on I was normally in the back lounge of the bus taking bong hits
One of the other guys on the bus had all of season one on his computer It probably took up most of his hard drive
We ran a VGA cable from his computer to the TV in my front lounge
It worked a lot and near flawlessly every to little little big John lock
What episode of Lost?
We're watching Collision.
We don't know where we were.
I'll go get him.
Wrangling ten people together,
even in the confined space of a moving tour bus,
is damn near impossible.
We're waiting for you!
Yep.
Ready?
Do it!
That's you,
Jack.
Once we burned through season one,
we were stuck.
Like,
2006 stuck.
We were out of hard drive space,
and our only other option was to somehow find blank DVDs.
Which meant getting to a store.
Which...
is not an easy task when you're on this massive moving festival behind hundreds of buses and tractor trailers and,
I don't know,
20,
30,000 people every single day.
Oh,
and streaming internet's not a thing yet.
Maybe we would have.
uh you know been a little bit more reckless if it hadn't have been for the fact that this new thing of like hey let's watch as many of this tv show episodes as we can before we all fall asleep and
it became like this control mechanism that reigned us all in uh and i imagine it probably helped pete you know to have like this like very domestic
Normal thing.
Ah,
yes.
Domestication.
Three square meals a day,
four walls,
a roof over your head,
and a nice,
clean place to take a shit.
Like,
that was usually my priority when you'd first get to a venue,
or like when you'd first wake up in the morning,
it's like,
all right,
where am I going to go to the bathroom?
And you'd try to go and find an untouched,
pristine,
clean porta potty.
You had to get up in the morning so that you could get the porta potty before it had been destroyed or heated up to 250 degrees.
Every day I was the guy looking to find the one.
And I mean,
sometimes you can find a really nice porta potty that wasn't destroyed,
but it was like hundreds of degrees in there.
It was so hot in the porta potty,
even if you found a nice one.
As you would do in a public bathroom setting.
make a little nest of tp on the bowl to protect yourself right you're a musician and you've got this whole mystique in this thing but then you're also an animal you play your set and you're the guy in the band but then you still have to shit and shower and eat food and all of that happens in front of an insane crowd tour
someone in the band had to point out to me that i had totally
paper sticking out of the back of my pants like in an audience public setting.
You just don't even realize it.
Like,
it normally just falls off,
right?
Or it certainly doesn't bond.
You just got to poop before a gate.
There was one day,
however,
that things did not go as meticulously as Ryan had planned.
I had to go.
And there was no good porta potties.
And I knew there was like a structural building on the hill that had a bunch of bathrooms.
It was like a,
there was a men's bathroom on one side and a girl's bathroom on the other side.
It was a big building and there was a line.
But when you get in there,
you'd have a stall.
You'd have your own stall.
I'm waiting with all the,
you know,
the fans,
the people who are there for the day.
It's their day.
They don't know me.
They have no idea they're going to see me just melting faces later,
but I'm standing in line with them.
The line goes out the door and you get in the door and you're still waiting in line.
And then somebody comes out of one of the stalls and you say,
OK,
this is it.
So you go into the stall and shut the door,
you know,
click it,
latch it,
build a nest and start about my business.
And it's loud in there and it's like,
it's all swampy,
like the floor is wet.
This was a pretty worn out building also.
And I know that the dividers in the stalls and the doors and everything was very loose.
I sit down and I'm starting to get after it.
And I'm noticing on either side of me,
anytime somebody comes in or goes out of a stall and slams a door or swings it open or whatever,
the whole thing starts kind of swaying.
So I'm sitting there and I'm just like,
wow.
That's not good.
All of a sudden,
the one guy next to the stall next to me just slams the door and slams it hard enough.
The whole thing sways.
All the walls around me kind of sway just enough to gap the door in my latch.
And my latch comes undone.
And my door just goes slowly,
slowly.
And it's just a line of people just standing there watching me sitting there.
And I mean,
and it's not just guys,
you know,
we're in the guy's room,
but I mean,
it was free for all.
So everybody's trying to use the bathroom and it was,
there's girls in line,
there's guys in line,
they're just standing there and nobody's there.
I mean,
just push the thing back shut.
Like it's,
and that's another thing too,
is it went out,
it didn't come in.
So it's like,
you're standing out there.
Just,
could you be some courtesy here?
And
Shut the door for me,
please.
I'm not done yet.
That was not great.
Speaking of things not really going your way,
let's check in with the record label,
see how that release date's coming.
Hey,
record label,
you got a release date?
No?
All right,
I guess we'll keep talking about Summer Tour.
The stage the band played on never changed.
It was...
one of a dozen being set up and torn down every day.
When the band played,
always fluctuated.
Every band,
at least once,
is the band that plays as doors open.
And I think we definitely did that at least once,
if not once or twice.
If you play that shift,
you're done for the day,
which is wild.
The majority of the time,
however,
they played in the dead heat of the afternoon.
The whole thing about...
That tour is while one band's playing,
there's always another band setting up.
So it can just be music,
music,
nonstop.
We'd be setting up on one side where there was a band playing at the same time.
And then when they'd be done,
we'd be ready to go.
And every day we would start setting up and I'd be like,
this is the day.
Everyone's going to stick around,
man.
The band next to us would finish up and we would be frantically setting up and doing the thing.
And then people would be leaving.
So day after day,
that crowd would slowly wander away and dwindle down almost nothing by the time they started playing.
This was the scenario of John's reoccurring nightmare.
In the dream,
there is a split stage like we were playing that summer.
I would be setting up with the guys,
plugging in amps,
turning shit on and tuning guitars.
It was like we were in a race against the clock because there was an audience who was there.
And they were starting to slowly filter out because no one was playing anything.
So it was basically me running around the stage screaming at everyone.
I would go to my guitar and then I realize it's made out of plush material and it's stuffed like a kid's toy.
And I start freaking out like,
how the fuck am I supposed to play this?
And then generally after I rant and rave,
I wake up.
It still continues to this day.
I still have it.
The only difference is now.
I could be like,
oh,
crowd's leaving.
Who fucking cares?
The honeymoon of summer tour ended so quickly.
It was barely a honeymoon at all and more of like a long weekend.
It was...
So good,
and we had it so good that my morale didn't start plummeting until the very end when I think it was like,
okay,
well,
this is as good as it gets.
We have a bus,
we have a meal plan,
we have techs,
we have a tour manager,
we have a stage manager,
and no one's watching us play.
It's just like,
how do you get excited to play for zero people,
even when you're in the most beautiful venue,
on a bus?
and playing with all your friends.
The daily grind began to weigh on us like never before.
The reality of being an unknown band had never been exposed to us like this.
It was a fucking harsh reality.
Everything about it was incredible except for the performances.
And that's sad because that's what we're there for.
That's the saddest part,
is that I feel like those shows did nothing for us.
We're a band and we have some songs.
And we're going to go back to our bus and wash lost and good night.
A dozen stages at once.
120 plus bands.
Kids wandering with attention spans smaller than their hot topic tees.
Add it all up and what do you get?
It was constantly a reminder that you weren't working.
And I don't mean that like in like the productive sense.
I mean like.
You plus the tour is not equal happiness for the people in the audience.
It was just an exercise of us playing every day.
We had our usual cities where we always did well in and it was awesome.
But those were few and far between.
And,
you know,
we would sometimes play in amphitheaters for
15 people,
which is insane.
Amphitheater after amphitheater,
city after city,
the band.
Crowds never reached that of Spring Tour,
and the band was officially stuck inside the fame gap.
Either they keep going into the feedback loop,
or pull the ripcord.
After the tour ended,
the routing of the bus driver's return trip back home took us directly past the exit off of the interstate that took you directly into our hometown.
Besides the driver,
we were the last five people on the bus when we were dropped off in the parking lot of the one and only hotel in our hometown.
We spent a few minutes making sure we hadn't left anything on board.
We checked our bunks one last time.
Grabbed our luggage and that was that,
Mattress Man.
Summer tour was done.
And we were right back where it had all started.
Even If It Kills Me is a Fang Workshop production.
Written and narrated by me,
Aaron Joy.
Produced by John Lulo and Brendan Walter.
Featuring original music by Alex Dozen and original theme song by Matt McKinley.