by John D. Bess
Daily Lobo
Munchen, Germany — A few days into the tour and we finally got all the equipment dialed in right and all the jet lag out of our heads.
This allowed us to really settle in on stage and rock with a new sense of abandon. The result has been that the rest of the folks on this tour now know who we are. After the show in Switzerland, we went from being the opening band that the headliners and their crew tolerated, to being welcome members of the show.
The headliner’s crew stopped being so surly and actually started helping us out and the other musicians have opened up to us and really made us feel a part of this tour.
Our guitarist, Chav, has found a kindred spirit in Clutch guitarist, Tim Sult. The two of them got acquainted in a Holland hash bar early on in the tour and found that they share a deep affinity for Gibson SGs and stinky Afghani plants. They’ve been bonding through the arduous task of smoking out Clutch’s other band members in the upper deck of the tour bus.
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Being surrounded by four bands’ worth of musicians, a wealth of learning experiences and from technical to musical to professional topics, there is always someone dropping knowledg.
During a jam session with Clutch’s drummer, Jean-Paul Gastier, I was hipped to the subtle intricacies to be found in a good drummer’s left hand. He later schooled me on some professional aspects of making it in this business and gave me a lot of valuable advice on what we should do next in our career, how we should handle the next album, where we should tour next, etc.
Our drummer, Ken Hiner, and I have been spending driving time discussing the intricacies of rhythm section playing. As we were driving through the Swiss Alps jamming to some Charlie Parker, I taught him the differences in Latin rhythms, or claves, and he taught me how to count odd-time signatures.
I was so excited that night when for the first time, I was able to watch Clutch play and was actually able to figure out what time signature they were in.
Beyond the personal interactions, every night is another chance to watch these great bands and study what it is that makes them so damn good. How does that singer interact with the crowd? How do the drummers reach beyond the kit to connect with the crowd? Why did the bass player do that weird thing with his hair?
Playing for 600 people in Munich requires different skills than playing for 200 people in Phoenix. We’ve been filming our shows and watching them the next day, studying them the way football teams study game films — all in an effort to bring a bigger, better show every night.
You learn many valuable bits of information on tour: one is the difference between adapters and transformers. Not being clear on the difference, I managed to create my own smoke and pyrotechnics display. Unfortunately, it was during sound check, and it was my amplifier blowing up — quite an expensive and embarrassing lesson.
Life on the road has been worth the occasional catastrophe. Perhaps the most important thing I’ve learned thus far is to ask questions when I don’t know — a lesson that it’s never too late to learn.
