Photo credit: Chase Lyons Videography
Tell us about your tour vehicle. Any notable breakdown stories?
We now have a 2019 Ram Promaster Van, which we bought as an empty work vehicle and converted into a RV during the pandemic. It has room to sleep three band-members (plus our tour dog, River, of course), is custom-built to fit our gear and instruments, and even has a microwave, lights, fridge, and fans that run off solar power. It’s truly our dream vehicle, and we had to put in a lot of Youtube learning hours and physical labour to build it out!
However, we definitely earned our stripes in tour breakdowns with our first touring vehicle; a 2000 Dodge Ram van that we bought off Craigslist for $3,000. That van had a series of notable events, including two blown transmissions and one spindle arm that snapped in the middle of St Louis rush hour. There’s one breakdown story that really stands out, though:
As a new band, we were driving from Nashville to New York to play an emerging artists’ showcase at a festival when our old van blew a transmission in the middle of Virginia. We managed to limp off the road and into the only transmission mechanic in town, leave the van there over the weekend, rent a car, drive the remaining 10 hours to New York, and get in just in time for our showcase. The amazing thing is, though, that although the showcase wasn’t paid, we managed to get chosen as a favourite emerging artist and return for a paid slot the next year – so it was absolutely worth it!
How do you eat cheaply and/or healthy while on tour?
Our new van (which we call the “Galli-van-tour”), has helped massively with this. We have an RV fridge that runs off of solar power, plus a microwave that we can use for some 90-second rice if we’re in a pinch. We often stay at campgrounds after shows, and will buy a bunch of vegetables and other fresh ingredients from the grocery store, cook them in a cast iron skillet over the fire, and store the leftovers for lunch the next day. The van has saved us so much money at this point when it comes to meals and lodging.
How many strings do you break in a typical year? How much does it cost to replace them?
Each one of us has a different answer for this, but surprisingly none of us break a huge amount of strings! Nick (guitar) would break the most, at about 20 strings broken per year. It costs about $10 for a new pack each time.
Dani (mandolin) is probably the worst offender in regards to remembering to replace her mandolin strings! She once went about 2 years before replacing them, and has not broken a string (yet). A pack of mandolin strings is about $15.
Alex (cello) also hardly breaks his, but will replace them about once per year. His is the hardest on the wallet, sometimes costing up to $120 for just the low C string, or $400 to replace all four!
Where do you rehearse?
Our rehearsal space is typically one of our houses or one of the many campgrounds we stay at between shows. One time we did have a large wild animal pay us a visit at our campground/rehearsal space in Maine, which wasn’t ideal! Thankfully, our tour dog scared it away.
What was the title and a sample lyric from the first song that you wrote?
Wildly enough, we still play the first song we wrote – and we even released it on our debut album, Luxumbra. It was written when two of us (Dani and Nick) met as volunteers on a trip in South America. It’s about learning from the mistakes of our ancestors, and hopefully creating a better legacy in our children. A sample lyric is “Children, take the seeds from fallen trees. Children, don’t make the same mistakes as we. From our ashes, rise, but keep the fire from your eyes… Children, use those fallen seeds, to leave a better legacy”.
Describe your first gig.
Our first trio show was a last-minute, late-night showcase at a bohemian venue in East Nashville called Phat Bites. There were only about fifteen people there at 10 pm on a Monday night. Crazily enough, about half of them are now our best musician friends in Nashville – and two of the others were Lizzie and Joe from the rock band Halestorm. It was an interesting night, to say the least!
What was your last day job? What was your favorite day job?
Each of us have different answers for this, too. All of us do freelance/ contract work in some way. Alex takes a lot of studio gigs as a cellist, tours twice per year with a group called Emo Orchestra, and picks up some shifts at a local liquor store when he’s home in Nashville. Nick records with other artists in his Nashville home studio, does some studio guitarwork, and picks up bartending shifts here and there. Dani works as a registered nurse in a local surgery center. We all find ways to make ends meet, but after seven years as a band, it’s nice to finally be playing more gigs with South for Winter than working our other jobs!
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?
We used to have two full-time jobs as a new band; full-time music that was unpaid (or, unfortunately, that we were often paying into), and full-time work outside of music. We’ve finally tipped the scales to working full-time as South for Winter and part-time work on other projects. It’s been a tough few years of saving up to release our new album, and we have often gone months without paying ourselves, but we’ll finally be able to start making an income from music this year. That’s a huge accomplishment for us as a fully-independent band!
What one thing do you know now that you had wished you knew when you started your career in music?
We were so confident that things would quickly take off as a new band. It’s a type of confidence that’s needed to push through the difficult first few years, where money is just flooding out and you’re working up to 80 hours per week, but we’ve learned to have more of a work-life balance since then. It’s great to love music so much that you want to keep investing time, money, and energy into it, but it’s also crucial to take breaks when needed so you don’t burn yourself out. Our words of advice for our past selves would be: close your laptop at night. Give yourself some weekends off. Go on the family trip rather than booking a tour for that time period. At the end of the day, you’ll be happier if you build a life you love while making music, rather than if you expect music to give you a life you’ll love.