Photo credit: Destiny Freeman
Tell us about your tour vehicle. Any notable breakdown stories?
We are blessed to have a 2010 ford E-350 we purchased about 5 years ago. It’s got the low low mileage of 150,000 miles on it. I say blessed because until then we had a 1992 Chevy Vandura that broke down constantly. (Don’t mean to start any Ford vs Chevy wars). It was one of those old conversion vans that had the bed and a mini bar in the back door. It looked like a houseboat inside with curtains and a VCR. The first breakdown was pulling out of San Francisco years ago. We got to the middle of rural California and our transmission blew. By some miracle, a small auto shop in a tomato farming town put an old truck transmission in it that lasted until we got rid of the van.
The last time we broke down was when we blew a radiator hose pulling up to the venue in the Deep Ellum area of Dallas. We asked around and there was an auto repair shop by a scrap yard that had 1 radiator hose on the wall. We bought it and it was a perfect fit. That’s when we decided to retire the old van.
How do you eat cheaply and/or healthy while on tour?
For years and years we ate fast food value menus every single day. It’s by far the cheapest a person can eat when you are nickel and diming it. Now we try to eat as healthy as we possibly can. A lot of fruit and nuts from truck stops and hotel breakfast buffets. There is always the occasional pizza slice that you get in whatever city you’re on tour. Eating cheap and healthy on the road is really about not eating what you want to eat most of the time, because a truck stop burrito always looks better than a truck stop salad. You just have to bite the bullet.
How many strings do you break in a typical year? How much does it cost to replace them?
It’s funny, I probably replace less strings than any musician I know. I take 3 or 4 sets on a month-long tour every time, but I usually end up changing them twice. This last tour was 27 dates and I never changed them. I broke a string on the last song of the last show.
Where do you rehearse?
Our rehearsal space in this band is beautifully boring. I say that because we never get shut down, kicked out, rained on or any of the other things that have happened in past bands. We’ve been rehearsing in a tiny bedroom at a family member’s house that’s been soundproofed with foam walls and plywood.
What was the title and a sample lyric from the first song that you wrote?
The first song we wrote as a band was a song called “No Good To Me”. It was so long ago that I barely remember any lyrics, but I think the chorus was “You’ve been lying to all my friends, no good to me, no good to me, call me back when you stop blowing in the wind. No good to me, No good to me.” Pretty aggressive.
Describe your first gig.
It’s funny because the first Dirty Streets gig was at a club that is now burned down called the Buccaneer Lounge. It was sort of like a living room with a fireplace behind where you played. There was a giant oil painting of a Mermaid making love to a pirate on the mantle. We played with a different drummer than our current drummer Andrew. At the time our temporary drummer had to leave and go on tour with his other band. Andrew had rehearsed with us but wasn’t taking over until the other guy left. So we played to Andrew in the audience and maybe 7 other people.
What was your last day job? What was your favorite day job?
I currently work at a place called TubeDepot when I’m in town. It’s an ecommerce store that sells vacuum tubes for guitar and hi-fi amps. It’s my favorite job, actually because I love amps and the other employees are mostly musicians. All three of us in the band worked at restaurants for years, Andrew and I at the same one. It served its purpose, but way too many show cancellations due to knife, grill and slicer injuries.
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?
Since the first few years of this band, we’ve always been able to make enough money back on whatever we do to buy more merch and keep recording. For a really long time we just broke even on everything whether it was a tour or albums. The last 5 years there has been a lot more growth and we’ve all been able to make a little income as well as pump some back into the band for videos and promotion. One thing I’ve learned from being in this band is that you never know what to expect, but I’d like to think we are pretty close to having this band be a rolling machine that we can focus a majority of our time on without the distraction of part time jobs.
What one thing do you know now that you had wished you knew when you started your career in music?
I wish I knew that it’s okay to care about your career. Caring about your career is having gratitude for the opportunities people give you. I grew up as a kid in the late 90s and every person I looked up to pretended not to care about promoting their band or advancing their music career in some way. The ironic thing is that there was a big machine driving promotion behind all of those bands and even the interview I was watching was set up by someone looking to drive that band upward.