Since the "Songs About Us Tour" draws to a close next week. I thought I would write one about what it's like to have two families. Did you notice that I am not using any quotes there?
Every time we roll out after a break, it starts in a parking lot.
We make arrangements each year with a big box store... park away from the doors, agree to stock the buses before we leave, and the store lets us use spaces that are usually empty outside the holidays. It's a few hundred dollars a bus for them, easy money for spaces nobody's using. Most managers are fine with it once you explain how it works. It's a small thing, but it's the first sign a run is starting... buses lined up where the shopping carts usually are.
The Roll-In
The buses are always in place a couple hours before leave time, so nobody's fighting rush hour trying to get there right at the wire. After that it's a slow roll-in. Some of the crew have a regular arrival schedule, down to the minute. Others just wing it. I like to get on an hour before we roll... gives me time to drop day sheets on all the buses, make up my bunk, and get my stuff stashed before anybody else shows up.
Then everybody starts arriving, and it turns into a family reunion. Hugs all around. Smiles, always smiles. I've been on a lot of different tours over the years and this part never changes... it's not unique to one crew or one artist. If it's a tour that flies to the first gig instead of driving out, the same thing just happens wherever the buses are waiting instead of a parking lot back home.
What Makes It Family
Put six to ten people... more if somebody's "Riding Dirty"... into a 45-foot tube for months at a time, and you get close fast. Inside jokes. Teasing each other like siblings. That "I've got your back, no matter what" feeling a younger sibling gets from an older one. It's all there.
I moved away from home at twenty-two to do this job, and honestly, I know some of these people better than I know members of my own family. I've spent more hours over the years with my touring family than I have with my blood family. That's what happens when you live and work mere feet from each other for months at a stretch.
Got Your Back
I was on the road when my dad passed.
There has never been a bigger outpouring of love and comfort in my life than that day. It came from the artist I was working for at the time. It came from every last person on that crew. It's hard to talk about even now, but I never once felt alone, and I never felt like I was missing the kind of family contact you need in a moment like that.
"Got your back" took on a whole different meaning that day.
Every run starts the same way... a parking lot, a few hours early, hugs and smiles as everybody climbs aboard. Every run ends close to the same way too, just headed the other direction... hugs and smiles again, scattering back to homes and families spread across a dozen states until the next one starts.
In between those two moments, this is the family I've got. And more than once, it's turned out to be exactly the family I needed.