Tell us about your tour vehicle. Any notable breakdown stories?
I have a classic 15 passenger band van. Her name is Marisol. We’ve put quite a bit of miles on it, we’ve crossed the country on tour a bunch of times now, I think we might almost be at 250k miles or more.
We’ve had almost all the work you can think of done to it, the most recent big fix was a new transmission. The worst breakdown was after a 20 hour drive, I accidentally put gas instead of diesel (oops). We broke down in the middle of Nebraska about 5 miles from our hotel for the night. We ended up missing the first gig I had at a festival, and it took a week and a half to get her back in running shape. So we had to rent another van for that part of the tour! It was a pretty big mistake that put a big hole in my wallet.
How do you eat cheaply and/or healthy while on tour?
We have a plug-in cooler in the van, so we usually stop at a grocery store and stock up on sandwich fixings and make sandwiches when we’re hungry. I always try to buy a bag of apples or oranges to get fresh fruits in our system so we can at least reach for those when we’re feeling snacky. Rather than getting some candy at the gas station.
How many strings do you break in a typical year? How much does it cost to replace them?
Not too many I’d say 5 times a year, I usually just change the string I broke. I know lots of folks change the whole set of strings when one breaks, but that just seems wasteful. I think a set of strings is like around $8? I probably spend $30 to $40 bucks a year on strings for multiple guitars.
Where do you rehearse?
I rehearse out of a lot of different spaces, but one particular space has one little quirk. This one spot we sometimes rehearse out of has an outdoor mini fridge that we keep drinks and snacks in for rehearsal. Toronto is pretty well known for being a city with lots of racoons. Anyhow, the racoons found a way into the mini fridge and we ended up having to get a child safety lock put on the fridge to keep the dang racoons from drinking our beer and eating our chips and dip.
What was the title and a sample lyric from the first song that you wrote?
Shipwreck – It’s not the gold in my belly that’s holding me down, the water that I’m under weighs a million pounds.
Describe your first gig.
My first gig was at this bougie new hotel that opened up a couple towns away from where I used to live. It was a New Years Eve party, and they hired me to do an hour-long set. I was really nervous because I only had two original songs and could probably only fill about 35 minutes of music. So once I booked the gig, I ended up studying and learned a bunch of tunes! It was a fun first gig, they had lots of hors-d’oeuvres and tasty food. Eventually I ended up playing a lot more gigs like that, weddings and wineries. I learned enough songs to play for 4 hours straight!
What was your last day job? What was your favorite day job?
Before getting into music full time was a farm laborer. I worked in market gardens and flower farms for years. It was probably one of my favourite jobs, growing delicious food and being outdoors. I got to work with some really cool people. So yeah, that’s probably my favourite job. I learned a lot about growing food and about nature, both things I really love.
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?
Early in my career, I worked a couple jobs to keep up with the bills. I feel fortunate enough to say that I can now make a living from music and touring without a side gig. I still at times feel like we’re scraping by, and often any money that comes in usually goes right back into the business to keep things going. I am slowly trying to save when I can. I hope one day to build my career to something a bit more stable, where I could one day buy a home and support my family with it all.
What one thing do you know now that you had wished you knew when you started your career in music?
I think the main thing is, be really careful after those 20 hour long drives and always triple check if you’re actually putting diesel in your tour van!