Touring Struggles Quotes

I recall us selling out L.A.'s 5,000-capacity Gibson Amphitheatre and flying straight to Germany to play a 300-capacity room where we'd only sold 120 tickets. This was when 'City Of Evil' was really taking off in the U.S., but it seemed like Europe was less interested.

I'm like, 'Why aren't artists owning their masters? Why are labels robbing artists dry, and they have to spend all this time on tour to even break even?' Like, what happened? Why are they promoting things that aren't either socially conscious or elevating the human consciousness?

People see you onstage and the glamorous side, but they don't see you traveling 600 miles a night, eating truck stop food and spending by yourself staring at walls.

I think touring is hard.

I've been on the road since I was 15, in one way or another - on a bus, in a 15-passenger van, pulling a U-haul - so I would be lying if I said sometimes the miles and the road didn't get long. But it's always rewarding, that hour and a half every night you get to stand up there and see it all pay off and feel the love from that crowd.

I toured for 13 years, and it was very lonely, and it was hard work.

I wish I could teleport and cut out the travelling in between gigs. I want the luxury of the shows without the painful bits stuck on a tour bus.

I love my bandmates, and they're my friends, and even though we had fun and got to tour and I got to play the drums a lot, which I'll always appreciate, we had a really rough time. We toured and tried to get people to come to our shows and put out records, and we really struggled.

I'm living on coffee, cigarettes and hospitality food. My bags and things are all over this hotel room in Dallas, but the scene could easily be in London, Paris, New York of LA. My eyes are burning, my knees hurt and I hate to say it, but a certain and vital part of my nether region is beginning to smell like peanut butter. Welcome to life on tour.

I'm lucky that I've been able to do things in my career that is affording us the luxury of not having to travel in a van to tour.

I would love to do a reunion tour if it only involved basements across the U.S.

I've played in some pretty weird settings; busking puts you in all kinds of situations. I can tell you the most depressing gig I've played was in the North of England. At that time, I was playing with a band. We drove 7 or 8 hours to Carlisle to play a 600 - 700 capacity venue - 9 people showed up.

I joined Count Basie's band to make a little money and to see the world. For two years I didn't see anything but the inside of a Blue Goose bus, and I never got to send home a quarter.

The part you don't expect when you start out is all the people who come into your life wanting a piece of you, not caring about your wellbeing. The insane schedule is very difficult. Touring looks very glamourous but it's hard and gruelling - the travelling, the meet-and-greets - it was too crazy.

I'm like everyone else, on the stage it's good. Not too much fun in the hotel or the airplane or the bus, but you got to do it.

I don't think I ever had a certain image of what touring was like... I think when you're young, you think it's very glamourous, but it's not.

After 50, the rock 'n' roll road is a little absurd. It's very difficult to play these little places. You're out there on a rickety old bus with no place to shower.

I remember sitting on the back of the bus on the first day of the Social Experiment tour with my face in my hands. I emptied out my bank account, and before I did that tour, that was the number one thing I said I'd never do. I'll never empty out my savings.

When I first started touring, we had a crappy van, and we would all share rooms. So for many years as a grown adult woman, I would share a bed with a bandmate, whether it would be Jimmy Tamborello from the Postal Service or Pierre De Reeder from Rilo Kiley, just a pillow barrier between us sleeping on the same bed.

I distinctly remember a conversation with my band in the van where I was having a complete meltdown. It was 1984, I think, and I was huddled in the back corner of our van and saying, "I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this." I didn't want to play any more shows. I just wanted to stop.

So many people moan about touring and say it's a chore. I don't know, they must be living on a different planet.

Playing a show is a monumental hassle. You've got to schlep all your heavy equipment into the van, then you've got to drive for five hours, then you have to schlep all the heavy equipment out of the van, onto the stage, set it up, do the sound check, hang around for three hours, then play the show, which is incredibly draining.

I don't want to play stinking, beer-ridden clubs. It depresses me even thinking about that. I really hate it when you're finished with a show and you're in your dressing room with that stink of beer and sweaty girls. It brings back an ugly picture for me. I'd hate to have to do that again.

Anything was better than going to work. All those early tours before we made any money were more like vacations. I don't think it was until 2001 that we pulled our heads out of the sand and were like, "What are we doing?" I don't think Chris realized he was in a band until 2001. He all of a sudden woke up one day and realized he was in a band. He thought he was just recording my solo project. Three albums later, we're in Baltimore trying to figure out what to do with ourselves.

'Easy' is not a word I would ever use to describe touring.