The Dead Records on Touring
The Dead Records have been playing shows in Fort Wayne for years, to date they releasing four albums. They are currently in the midst of recording for their fifth. I sat down with the band late last year and talked for about an hour and a half.
What follows is a shortened version of the interview with The Dead Recorded. It has been edited down to the topic of touring. The full audio version is available right through WLV right here.
Names:
Taylor: Guitar, Vocals
Dan: Guitar
James: Bass
Shaun: Drums
---
When you first started playing live, was there anything you didn’t expect?
Taylor:
When we first started it was probably just getting over the nerves. For me at least. You’re always like “I don’t know how good we are. I don’t know how many people are gonna like us.” But you think, “These songs aren’t that great but if I can play them harder and better I’ll bring something else to my live performance and catch somebodies attention. If I have to throw my guitar into Shaun’s drum set, then people will say ‘That band was fuckin crazy! Those guys are awesome!’” If I can play harder than everybody else on the bill then people are gonna remember our band, even if our songs are not better. We used to always get thrown on first. Like, “Oh you’re going on at nine o’clock, but nobodies here yet.” Then I would play harder than anybody after us.
James:
It makes the band that follows you say “aw shit.”
Taylor:
But over the years of playing, building a fanbase, and learning how to write better songs, that does change. You walk in with more confidence.
James:
You don’t have to throw your guitar into the drums anymore.
Taylor:
Yeah, I know we’re good now. I don’t need to do something stupid on stage. Our live performance will hold up for itself. And that does come with playing a lot of shows, and we’ve played a LOT of shows.
I don’t ever get nervous anymore before a show. Because you play so many shows and it’s almost like going to work every day. When you first start a new job you’re nervous, but then after a while you get into a routine. I know if we take it serious enough then our songs are gonna be good and our show is gonna be good.
Shaun:
And we’ve been in every situation in a show, except the really good ones. So maybe if we ever into really good situations, then I’ll be nervous.
Tell us a bit about your touring experience.
James:
It’s never a super smart plan, financially.
Shaun:
Well no, we did a smart tour! The one with Laura was pretty smart. We made money. It was still like a little vacation where we were hanging out with our friends and then playing shows. That was the most recent tour we went on. James was in the band. Two years ago in April I think.
James:
We toured with Laura K. Balke out of Indianapolis, and we all toured in one van. Seven of us in a minivan. That allowed us to have two acts.
Taylor:
It actually worked out really well.
Shaun:
I would recommend that style of touring. Bring a band with you and pack in a van. A lot of venues will say “We can give you gas money.” Okay cool. So say you’re giving us fifty bucks for gas money, they have to give two bands fifty bucks. So then you can put fifty bucks in the tank and then put fifty away. That’s the only tour we ever went on where we came back positive. Still one of our greatest achievements.
We’ve always been good about saving money for tours and recording so we’re not taking too much out of pocket. But the first couple tours we went on dude, we were in the hole bad.
James:
We got lucky on that tour with Laura though, because she booked us some really weird shows.
Shaun:
The best was the ivy leagues. We played Colgate, in upstate New York. And this was a rich campus.
James:
It’s like one of the top ten most expensive schools in the country. There’s a pub on the campus.
Shaun:
We got done and got payed like six hundred bucks. Cash dude. We were like “Fuck yeah we’re rich!”
James:
We played some other weird shows where we had stuff drop off and we had to find something else. We played a show that was a pizza restaurant outside, with one speaker.
Taylor:
That’s the kind of stuff that happens when you’re on tour. You never know what’s going to happen.
James:
We booked a place called Black Dog Pug and we heard it was for a radio show. We got there and it was like an Applebee’s with this very small space. There was no way the whole band was playing there so I didn’t play.
Shaun:
It was just Taylor and I.
Taylor:
We had a show drop so we had an off night. When you’re on tour and you have an off night you try to book something. Because it’s the only way you can get money.
James:
You guys have played open mics before right?
Taylor:
Yeah, that’s the best story. We drove all day to get to Wichita Kansas and when we got there the show dropped. It was a house show and the guy in charge of the house, I don’t know if he got a DUI or something, but he went to jail. We were trying to contact him all day driving there and never getting anything back. Shaun looked at his facebook and there was weird stuff posted to him. So Shaun says “Dude this guy might’ve gone to jail.” We went to the house anyway, it was like five o’clock when we got there. And this dude’s like “Yeah the show’s off.” We said “Well that would have been good to know before we drove this trip to Wichita Kansas.”
It was a hundred and twenty degrees out. It was insane hot. You got out of the van and you couldn’t even breathe. So we didn’t have a show to play. Me a Shaun went around to all these bars in Wichita, just trying to get a show. We went in with CDs, asking if we could play. Got one place that said we could play but they didn’t have a PA, got another place that said we could play, and something was else was really weird about it. And then we went to another place that was doing an open mic night. It was a bar with this outside patio.
Shaun:
It was a sweet fuckin bar so we were like “Alright.”
Taylor:
They had all this gear just set up on stage. You walked up onto the stage and wrote your name down and when you wanted to play. We had to wait in line and we were behind like, Bill, Steve, Ted. We were just sitting at a table waiting to play. They said, “You can play three songs.” And we say okay and we put The Dead Records on the list.
So we went up and we picked up this acoustic guitar and Dan played this first act Stratocaster through these terrible amps. Shaun played this terrible drum set. We played three songs and it was weird as hell. I couldn’t hear anything because my guitar was acoustic and I had never even played an acoustic guitar. We play these three songs and we get done and people are like “You guys are fucking awesome!”
We ended up selling all this merch. We were selling CDs like crazy. Apparently I need to get an acoustic guitar. And these people were gonna get home and that CD was gonna sound nothing like what we just played live.
Taylor:
We learn a lot from being on tour I think. That’s where you learn everything. You learn it from older bands that have been on tour forever. You learn it from guys that run bars. You learn it from sound guys. You just pick up stuff. I think now, we could teach people a lot about being a small independent band trying to go on tour.
One thing we learned big time was when Shaun tried to book this show in Cleveland one time at this place that was a pretty big, well known place. It’s funny because we were on the road at the time and he gets in a fight with this guy.
Shaun:
Hold on, let me tell this story. So there’s this dude at this place in Cleveland called the Beach Lane Ballroom which is a pretty big venue. Like I saw tons of awesome bands play there. I tried booking a show and he would not get back to me. His name was Ken. So I e-mailed him and I said “You know what dude it’s pretty rude that we’re a small aspiring band and we’re trying to get out to your place and you won’t e-mail me back.” So he finally emails us back and he was like “We can’t have you guys play because you have no draw in Cleveland.” I emailed him back and I was like “How the fuck are we ever supposed to get draw if no one’s gonna book us?”
I’m pretty arrogant. So finally he was like “You know what here’s my number, you can call me if you want to. I called him and we got into a little verbal dispute over this. But we ended up talking on the phone for like an hour. He taught me so much. One thing he said was “If you can’t draw people in your own home town, you shouldn’t be on the road.” I thought about that and I was like “Maybe this dude’s right. We’ve been doing it all wrong.” Because at the time we didn’t really have a following.
How do you have a good time on tour?
Taylor:
You literally have to think: Nothing matters. The shows don’t matter.
James:
That sounds so sad though!
Taylor:
It’s a mental thing dude. If you go on the road every day like we did on our first tour, you’re immediately bummed. Because you’re gonna play a bad show, then you’re going to sleep in a car or under a tree at a truck stop and get rained on. You’re gonna wake up after maybe an hour of sleep on a park bench and you’re gonna drive six hours to another city where you’ll sit for five more hours in a bar. And then you’re gonna play a show to three people that walk out in the middle of your set. Then you have to pack up and you do it all over again. Now when you’re on day five of that, you’re gonna be like “I wanna go home.” It sucks.
So you have to think “ Nothing matters”. It sounds shitty, people will say that that’s a bad mentality. But you have to do that man. If you’re not used to that, you get cranky, you get down on yourself. So me and Shaun, we’d get on the road and we’d just have a fuckin good time.
Touring is the most bittersweet thing. You love it, but you have days where you’re like “This fucking sucks.” When you get down on yourself and everybody’s hostile, you start eating away at each other. You just keep everything light.
We used to have talks before we went on tour like “Alright, we can’t rip on each other that much.” Because somebody might just be in a bad mood and he doesn’t want to take it. It’s not like hanging out on a Saturday afternoon. You learn how to adjust being next to a dude for a month solid. Literally next to them the whole time. I think that’s why it’s hard at first because you have to get into that mindset of “I love doing this.”
If we go on tour and somebody says “I have a house you can sleep at and there’s just a floor. We’re like “Fuck yeah! There’s a floor!” Because we’ve had nights where it’s raining outside and we’re sleeping outside or we’re sleeping in a van and we’re all packed in there. So we’ve got the point where a floor is magical.
It does make you a little harder if you get used that kind of thing. Me and Shaun will go into a tour with two t-shirts and three pairs of underwear. It’s gross but we’ve learned that we don’t need to pack four bags. You dry your shirt out after you play and you play in the same fuckin shirt every night. You have your show shirt and you have your travel shirt.
James:
It’s changed the way I treat bands that tour through here. I roll out the red carpet for these guys. I’m gonna feed you! You can take showers! Do you need to wash your clothes? Because I know they smell like shit!