August 5, 2008  I just got back from tour managing Guy Forsyth's east coast tour.  What a whirlwind.  A month just went by in a blur outside the van windows.  It's the kind of experience I look at and know that I am a better person for it. 
A lot of people have asked me exactly what a tour manager does.  For big tours, my job would be divided amongst numerous people including road manager, accountant, merchandiser, stage crew, etc.  Essentially, I handle all the logistics, finances, and merchandise as well as helping schlep equipment and set up Guy's gear every night.  At bigger events like festivals, I also help coordinate any press or media appearances, act as liaison between the guys and anyone trying to make contact with them, interact with the festival crew to make sure everything goes smoothly.  At smaller venues, or at radio appearances and in-stores, there is still a lot to do, and it changes every day.  In general, I interact with the venue owners and crew to make sure everything runs well and to insure the contractual terms and hospitality are met.  I make sure the guys get to the venues on time, in good spirits, and without feeling rushed.  I make sure the guys know what they have scheduled every day so they can mentally prepare themselves.  I check us into hotels and deal with anything that might come up unexpectedly (like lost keys, credit cards, lack of parking at the venue, etc.)  The job changes daily, even under the best of circumstances.  A big part of the job is to anticipate things before they come up by gathering as much information as possible about where you're going.  I had a conversation with Guy about how I saw good tour managers.  I said, "If I do my job well, then it is completely invisible."  And I liked to think about that as I worked, to challenge myself to achieve invisibility.  Tour management would be the worst job ever if you were working with overly difficult people.  All the guys were great, and I can say that I came away from the experience having more respect and admiration for them than I started.

Photos: (left) A Chinese woodblock at the Museum of the Art Institute of Chicago.  (right) Stone sculpture of Sarasvati.

We had long drives from Austin to Memphis to Chicago where we stayed for two nights in a swanky condo overlooking the lake.  What a fantastic city Chicago is!  It was my first time there aside from layovers in the airport, and I gladly wandered around on my own to go look at art. The Museum of the Art Institute was easily one of my favorite museum collections I've ever seen.  Many pieces deeply impacted me, and the Asian collection is incredible.  Also, Picasso's Old Guitarist is one of the most devastatingly beautiful pieces I have ever seen.   It's the rare kind of art that hits you right in the gut, brings you to your knees, in tears.  Hegel says a good artist is the 'vessel of Spirit's sorrows,' and for me, this piece embodies that idea so profoundly.  It is divine, devastating, haunting, beautiful, sad.  Hegel criticized the direction modern art was taking because it caused us 'to bow at the knee no longer.'  And in general, I agree, but this particular piece, and several others I saw that day, are notable exceptions.   They continue to impact me long after I left their presence.

Photos: (left) [...]  (right) Picasso's Old Guitarist. 

From Chicago, we went onward to Canada.  The border crossing required all sorts of paperwork, but in the end, it was easy and uneventful.  The guys played in Toronto, and then we moved on to Ottawa for the spectacular Bluesfest.  I loved working the bigger festival shows.  I have tons more to do, but somehow that's easier for me.  The guys sounded fantastic for both days they performed.  Their second show was inside a war museum which had a phenomenal theatre.  They played a completely full audience, and you can hear that performance along with an interview with Guy here (scroll down about half-way where the artists are listed alphabetically by first name).

Photos: (left) Guy with guest musicians from Texas Strings sitting in at the Ottawa Bluesfest. (center) Rob and Will holding it down in Ottawa.  (right) Guy's daughter, the most adorable little girl in the whole wide world, Mary Mae, watching the show from side stage.

Photos: Feist in Ottawa.  Her stage design was awesome and made use of some really amazing shadow puppets and other cool props (like flowers petals thrown on her).

Ottawa was the first of several towns we passed through where Feist was playing on the same night.  My crush on her was an ongoing topic of conversation on some of our long drives and was a continuous theme on the first part of the tour every time we saw her posters up in a new town.  In Burlington VT, after my morning and early afternoon were eaten up  dealing with a whole bunch of work unexpectedly, I walked to a sweet little place for brunch.  I noticed one of the waitstaff had a Feist shirt on, so I said, "nice shirt."  She said, "She was just here, in the restaurant, not even thirty minutes ago, she sat right there."  Sweet!  But damnit that I had just missed her by a little.

On to New York City, one of the few places other than Austin I have called home.  I met up with one of my best friends in the whole wide world to go gallery hopping.  We saw some amazing exhibits as well as some sweet street art.  One of the more interesting exhibits we saw made us feel like Lilliputians.

Photos: (left) LL at the Richard Therrien exhibit.  (right) Another view of the Therrien exhibit.  (below) Some nice poster art up on the streets of Chelsea.

Then on to Washington DC to record at the XM studios.  This was one of the highlights of the tour.  The guys recorded an hour long set for one of XM's stations.  The sound engineer, 'Q,' was phenomenal, the guys sounded fantastic and recorded two songs never recorded before, the program director was hanging out the entire time having tons of fun, and passers-by would stop and linger to listen to a song or two.

Photos: (left) Guy setting up in the XM studio.  (right) Will, Rob, Guy, and sound engineer Q listening to the playback and liking what they hear.  (below)  Rob, Jessie Scott (program director), Guy, and Will at XM.

And look who else was recording in front of a live studio audience in a super swanky studio at XM the same day.  That's Alejandro Escovedo and band with Carrie Rodriguez sitting in on violin.

That night, Guy's manager, Nikki Rowling, took us out for one hell of a dinner at the phenomenal Clyde's in Georgetown.  We dined like superstars.  I had the best eggplant parmigiana I've ever had.  After our entrees, Nikki snapped a photo of us contemplating dessert.  Afterwards, we walked to a nearby theatre to see Wall-e.  I thought it was a pretty ballsy move by Pixar to make a film with no dialogue for the first 30 minutes, and the multiple layers of social and political commentary were brilliant.

Be sure to read PART 2 of my adventures with the Guy Forsyth Band.