Photo credit: Josh Wool
Tell us about your tour vehicle. Any notable breakdown stories?
I’ve used both personal vehicles and rentals over the years – everything from small compact cars to large vans to accommodate a full band.
In my early touring years I traveled in my 2003 Chevrolet Tahoe, affectionately known as ‘Ol Blue. I criss-crossed the country many times in Blue, logging countless hours behind the wheel with just myself and my guitars. My last big journey in the Tahoe was about 5 years ago. While driving back to Nashville from NYC the water pump gave out, and we had to limp our way home. After that repair we decided that with over 225k miles on him, we should probably limit ‘Ol Blue’s duties to just “around town” driving, and started renting cars any time we had a tour. Since the pandemic, however, the price of rental cars has shot through the roof. So in the last year we’ve put over 30k miles on our own Subaru Outback.
The most notable break-down story happened in the UK in 2016. We were opening a run of shows for Jools Holland, and our good friend and fellow songwriter, David Ford, offered the use of his van for that run – a very generous offer indeed. The first show was in Sheffield, which was about 5 hours away from our starting point of Eastbourne. We had to make a quick detour in Birmingham to pick up the bass player, and then we’d continue onward. However, right as we were entering Birmingham we started to see smoke coming from the hood. Thankfully we were able to pretty much coast our way to our bassist’s front door, but upon parking the van smoke just started billowing out of the engine.
Two things were immediately clear. First, we were going to have to very quickly find another way to get to our gig, which was still an hour and a half up the road. Second, we’d just broken our friend’s van! In a mad dash we managed to hire seemingly the only van left in Birmingham, which was just a two-seater with the rest being cargo space. So two of us went in that along with all of the gear, while the others piled into the bassist’s own vehicle, and we all furiously started off toward Birmingham.
We were running well behind schedule at this point, and alerted the venue and crew of our situation. They graciously held the doors for a few extra minutes so that we would have time to quickly load our gear on stage and plug everything in. There was no time for a soundcheck, but we’d miraculously made the gig!
Unfortunately, Ford’s beloved van didn’t have as happy an ending. We arranged to have it towed back to Eastbourne to his mechanic, where it was deciphered that her days on the road were done. It’s possible that it would have happened anyway, but you never quite shake the guilt of it happening on your watch! Thankfully, David Ford is a rare breed of human who was unbelievably understanding (and forgiving) about what had happened.
How do you eat cheaply and/or healthy while on tour?
Eating healthy when on the road is a struggle for sure. It’s a little easier when touring in the UK, as most of the services along the motorways have shops like M&S where you can get something reasonably healthy, but it still isn’t cheap. It quickly adds up when you’re having to eat out every meal.
In the US it’s virtually impossible to eat healthy on the road without making lengthy stops and detours, as all you see is one fast food joint after another fast food joint along the interstates. I’ve always tried to eat at least moderately healthy when on the road, avoiding straight-up fast food, but recently it’s become all the more important for me.
In 2021 I was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes as a direct result of having Covid at the very beginning of the pandemic in March of 2020. The virus apparently attacked the beta cells in my pancreas that were in charge of producing insulin, and now my body no longer makes insulin on its own – making me a Type 1 Diabetic. Along with many other things, my diet now has to be very strictly monitored, and is fairly limited. I have to calculate how many carbs are in anything I eat or drink, and that determines how much insulin I have to inject before consuming whatever it is. If “healthy” options are limited when on the road, “diabetic-friendly” options are almost non-existent! So that’s been a whole new challenge to add to the touring equation.
How many strings do you break in a typical year? How much does it cost to replace them?
In the early days I seemed to break a string pretty much every night. It was infuriating. However, I think I’ve only broken one string on stage in the last ten years! I don’t want to jinx myself here, but for whatever reason I just don’t seem to break them very often anymore. (I really hope that statement doesn’t come back to bite me in the ass!)
Where do you rehearse?
My current rehearsal space is wonderful… that hasn’t always been the case! I lived in a shoebox apartment in Brooklyn for many years. In those days my “rehearsal space” was also known as my bed. When we left NYC and moved to Nashville in 2017 I graduated to the guest bedroom in the tiny house we were renting. It was still very cramped, but compared to my situation in New York it felt like a mansion. Just over a year ago, our landlord sold that house (which has since been demolished), and we moved to the suburbs just outside of town; thankfully to a larger (and significantly nicer) home. My rehearsal space has now been upgraded considerably. We have a (mostly) finished basement at our current house which has a fairly sizable room that I’ve been able to claim as my music space. I’m now able to have my guitars, amps and humble recording setup all in one place. The basement is only partially below-ground level, so I can sit and look out at our backyard while playing guitar or writing. I feel pretty lucky to have that space and look forward to hopefully many years of writing and creating in it.
What was the title and a sample lyric from the first song that you wrote?
Thankfully, I genuinely don’t remember what the first song I wrote was called, or anything about it! However, one of the earliest songs I wrote was called “Slow It Down”. Here’s a verse from that song…
Running ‘round so fast
As present turns to past
Try not to blink, you might miss it
Why are we so rushed?
Why do we feel we must
Swim so we don’t sink?
What are we so scared of?
As one would expect from an early attempt at songwriting, the song itself was nothing special. Only frustratingly talented people like Bill Withers hit home runs with their early songs. The rest of us have to write a hundred painfully bad songs before we get something worth keeping. This song is no exception, and the lyrics here are hardly profound, but the sentiment is something I should probably remind myself of now and again!
Describe your first gig.
Like a lot of musicians, my very earliest experiences of playing music in front of people were in a church setting, but my first real “gig” was at a place in Austin, TX called Dominican Joe. It was a little coffee shop just off of South Congress. Like most coffee shop gigs, the only people in attendance who actually wanted to hear me play were my parents and a couple of friends who I likely guilted into coming. Everyone else happily ignored me while the banging, clattering and hissing sounds of lattes and frappuccinos being made drowned out my sad little folk songs.
What was your last day job? What was your favorite day job?
The entire time I lived in New York City I worked at an old hat store on 5th Avenue called JJ Hat Center. It was the oldest hat store in New York, dating back to 1911. Any time I wasn’t on the road I was working 6 or 7 days a week there. It didn’t pay much, but they let me come and go as needed, often being gone for a month or two at a time without the fear of losing my job. So it was a fair trade-off. I also amassed a pretty hefty hat collection during this time!
More recently, my wife and I have started what I’d call more of a “side hustle” than a day job. When we moved into our current home, which had much more space than our previous place, we obviously needed to find more furniture to fill it. We both love mid-century furniture and design, so we started hunting for vintage pieces that we could afford at estate sales and on FB Marketplace. We soon found ourselves seeing things, and saying “That wouldn’t really work for our house, but look how cheap it is! I bet we could sell that ourselves, and make a good bit of profit”… and that’s what we started doing! It’s something we can do while we’re on the road as well as at home. We often find smaller pieces while touring that we bring home to sell. It’s been a fun way to furnish our home with pieces of furniture that excite and inspire us, as well as being a way to make a small amount of cash on the side.
How has your music-related income changed over the past 5-10 years? What do you expect it to look like 5-10 years from now?
Like everyone else, I’ve watched the sale of physical music diminish to almost non-existent numbers. These days, your last real hope of scratching out a living in music is by non-stop touring. You can still sell some physical merchandise on the road, but it’s a fraction of what you once expected to sell. As for what it will look like down the road? It’s hard to say. I’d like to believe that we’ll see a revival of people buying physical records, and we have seen that to an extent with vinyl, but I reckon touring is still going to be the primary source of income for artists like me.
What one thing do you know now that you had wished you knew when you started your career in music?
I wish I could go back, and tell the younger me to snatch up as many vintage guitars and amps as he could, because he wouldn’t believe just how much they’d go up in value in just over a decade. I’d be sitting on a gold mine by now!