Who's Got The Van Keys?

The months that I’m on tour my day usually starts around 11am. You might be thinking, god damn Esteban you lazy bastard. I as well think this. But shit, sometimes we go to sleep at 4:30am after a gig. Not cause we’re out partying (although sometimes we are), but because by the time we’ve: 

• broken down the stage 
• kissed a few babies
• gotten paid out 
• loaded out
• said our goodbyes
• gotten to where we are staying
• decompressed for a bit and gotten ready for bed

...it’s always pretty close to 4:30am. 

Let’s start at 11am though - cause I just skipped over 15 hours of the day and even I’m starting to question what the fuck we do all day…

Also….. WHO HAS THE VAN KEYS?! 

Once I’m up at 11am my main goal is to figure out where and when I’m getting coffee in my blood stream. If we’re staying with a friend that night usually we have the chance to brew up some fresh deliciousness, BUT if we’re crashing in the van (30% of the time) by 11:30am we are most likely on our way to the cheapest breakfast spot in town. You’re saying you know of a spot with a $3.50 breakfast special in your hometown? See you there.

After we’ve gotten our bearings and are starting to feel like real humans it’s usually about 12:45pm and we are doing one of two things:

1) Waiting for the gig to happen

2) Driving to the next gig

Waiting for the gig doesn’t necessarily mean sitting with our thumb up our ass, in the van on our phone (although sometimes it does if it’s July in Houston, TX and it’s 100% humidity outside). You can usually find us in a coffee shop catching up on work - for me that means booking future tours, answering emails, coming up with posts for social media that week, or falling into a massive YouTube binge and getting zero things done at at all.

We do tour with a 35lb black lab/heeler named, Luna, so we do our best to get some physical activity in at some point every day when we are waiting for gigs. We’ll go play frisbee golf, walk around the local downtown of the city we’re in, go for a hike, or just hang out in a park and let Luna chase squirrels. Usually this involves Tyler and I enjoying some local herbs and Connor doing a yoga routine somewhere by himself.

As far as driving…. IT’S TOTALLY THE BEST PART. Really though, it’s not bad. We listen to Bill Burr podcasts or sports talk radio, new music that’s out, make beats on the iPad, sleep, talk about space. Most of the time the drives are fun, unless there’s snow/ice. Then I’m anxiety ridden and contemplating if we’re going to slide off the road and die.

So by the time we are done waiting, or driving it usually ends up being somewhere between 4pm-6pm. We have been fortunate enough to have meals provided by the venue/bar abut 75% of the time. If that’s the case we’ll grab a quick bite at the venue - but if not we’ll be scouring Yelp for a place that has one $ sign.

By the time we’ve eaten dinner it’s about 7:30pm and every band member’s favorite time… LOAD IN TIME. If there are 30 shows on a tour, we will unload and reload the van 60 times (twice a show). So, guitars, bass, amps, bass rig, 5 piece drum set, cymbals, 2 PA speakers, mixer, 2 boxes of merch, and a number of other miscellaneous items come out into the venue, or on the street, and then back into the van after the show. I’m not complaining, it’s a part of the job and the life we chose, but undoubtedly, it gets old.

Fast-forward to about 9:00pm and it’s warm-up time. Typically you can find us warming up in the van; Connor and Tyler will be hitting vocal scales with various OOO’s, AHHH’s, MUAHH’s, GAHHH’s and a bunch of other weird sounding shit that get’s their voices ready to belt for 3 hours. I like to do some jumping jacks and push ups to get the blood pumping and then play some rudiments on my drum pad, or a van seat cushion for about 20 minutes.

Once 10:00pm rolls around we’re on stage for the 1st set, which typically lasts about an hour and a half. 30 minute-break, quick beer, maybe a toke, and then it’s 12:00am and you’re on stage for your 2nd hour and a half set. Lots of sweat, maybe a tequila shot brought to you by a random person, and a hell of a time later, it’s already 1:26am and you just finished your last song. Maybe there’s one wasted dude in the crowd who’s insisting we play one more cover song that we never know, or we’re getting encored by a packed bar, but typically we end up playing one more song and it’ll be about 1:32am.

Directly after the set we’ll hustle over to the merch booth and do our best to talk to the people that were watching us play, maybe sell a couple shirts, hand out some CDs, make some new friends, or if we’re feelin ourselves, go straight to the bar, order some tequila shots and see what happens in 28 minutes.

OKAY FUCKIN HOLD THE PHONE… WHO HAS THE GOD DAMN VAN KEYS!? CONNOR? TYLER? No… they are in my pocket. 

Now it’s 2:34am and the van is loaded up, we’re paid out, we said our goodbyes and our thank you’s and… what’s next? Are we partying? Or are we finding the nearest Walmart to hunker down for the night? It’s usually the latter since we are playing shows about 4 nights a week and partying means paying for it the next day… but if we have a day off the next day, we are known to drink between 1-100 beers in a given night. DISCLAIMER: We’ve never made it to 100 beers, but it is a goal of ours. Please contact us if you want to be a part of this endeavor.

Well shit, looks like we’re going to the local Walmart and it’s about 30 minutes away…. we’re all hungry, so should we stop and get food on the way? Probably. Or we just stock up on cheese sticks and salt and vinegar chips at a 24-hour gas station.

We got to Walmart, set up our sleeping areas in the van and an episode or two, later of The Office on my phone and it’s 4:20am. Should I smoke a bowl? Nah I’m going to sleep.

Rinse, recycle, repeat. That’s tour! Or in a nutshell at least... There is so much more that goes into making a tour happen, so many wonderful people that allow us to do what we do and make it worth being on the road 6 months out of the year. 

Joey, my business partner in RIVIR, and I are going to continue to talk our experiences being an indie musician, our mistakes we've made, and any great stories we may have stumbled across on our journey.

Much love,

Esteban