Diary of a Touring Musician: the aftermath
One year ago to the day, we woke up in our own bed to the aftermath of our last four weeks away to face repairs, the budget and enjoy our hounds. This is the final part of the warts-and-all-account.
We never expected the writing of this account to take so long, but of course, life gets in the way. Fortunately we wrote a daily diary which, along with the photos, made this account as accurate as possible.
If this is the first article you have seen in the series and want to put it into context, you can find them all by heading over to:
THE END
This is a funny way to start the final article in this series but we think it’s most important to begin with the summary of our experience. It may seem a little out of context, so please read on for the whole story.
Here we go…
We nearly gave up…
Apart from our wonderful fans, friends, family and the great gigs, our experience of the whole tour was fucking brutal and didn’t pick up any instruments for three months after returning.
We certainly don’t do this for the money. Few artists do. Writing and playing music is part of our creative heartbeat, vital to our spiritual and mental health just like breathing air.
This diary is not a hard-luck story but a frank and honest view of what happened to truly independent artists with no external support.
There are tens of thousands of us out there but it’s unusual to read a brutal, warts-and-all account of the realities of touring in hard and honest terms. Nobody wants to criticize. Nobody wants to upset the apple cart.
It’s taken us twelve months to recover, if we ever do.
Highlights
The Corn Exchange, Ross-on-Rye and Mid-Wales R & B Club, Brecon
Meeting all our supporters, old and new
Playing our music to a loving crowd
Lowlights
The contract disputes
The Eel Pie Club, Twickenham
The driving and technical shit
The future…
It was very, very hard to pull ourselves back from the brink.
Only last Friday, we thought let’s start over and remind ourselves of the project we poured so much energy, love, work, passion and time into. We sat down and played the milky clear vinyl of STARLITE.ONE in its entirety.
It was recorded with vinyl in mind and it sounded magnificent reminding us how much we loved making this album, playing every instrument except for the drums.
There is no doubt that pushing our boundaries as musicians has made our creativity and imagination flourish.
We wrote, recorded and produced the record ourselves in the Supertone Sonic Laboratory, refusing to play to the gallery or play safe - just play.
David Bowie is quoted as saying, “Go a little bit out of your depth and when you don't feel that you're feet are quite touching the bottom, you're just about in the right place".
Bowie also said, "If you feel safe in the area that you are working in, you're not working in the right area".
“I think it's terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfill other people's expectations. I think they generally produce their worst work when they do that”
With a glass of wine in hand we went on to listen to everything we had ever recorded. It all sounded great and we are proud parents to our creations.
We have been planning and writing an acoustic album for ages now and this seems like the right time to do it.
Our latest livestream in October contained acoustic-only material which we enjoyed and along with some sexy sonic enhancements can form the basis of a coherent and exciting live set.
The next livestream is on November 6th and tickets are on sale now.
Moving forward it is absolutely clear that the key is to work with proper budgets—unlikely in the current climate—or slim down what we do into a duo format—distinctly possible.
So, the show is still on the road and thanks for sharing in our lives, art and music.
Carpe Diem!
The aftermath
It’s Saturday, October 21st. There’s nothing quite like the feeling of walking through the front door of your home after nearly a month away on the road.
We love the adventure and would go stir-crazy if we were constantly at home as it’s not only the place where we live but also work.
Still, there’s something primaeval about sleeping in your own bed - your own cave: the smell, the familiarity of being surrounded by ‘stuff’ that reflects your taste and creature comforts.
Back to life, back to reality
It’s odd getting back after a very intense experience. You feel a bit lost, wondering what’s next after being thrown back into half-remembered reality.
Wolfgang
Starlite is a washing obsessive and the first thing she does when we get home is sort out all the clothes and put a wash on with Wolfgang, our trusty washing machine which we bought whilst living in Germany. Jah!
The weather took a turn for the worse and started to rain which meant, due to the humidity, we couldn’t dry our clothes inside or out. Starlite was agitated.
Back to reality.
The bin
We installed the IKEA recycling container aka ‘the bin of inconvenience’ (named by Hugo each time he had to move it in the back of the van) back in its rightful place having been on a 5000 Km road trip. It left Portugal filled to the brim with bottles of Portuguese wine and naturally returned empty.
Back to reality.
Pretty Vacant
We were feeling pretty vacant and the following few weeks drifted into a blur as we had a lot of business and creative housekeeping to do.
It’s an odd time as you miss the stimulation of being on the road, meeting new people, rocking out on stage and embracing new experiences.
Back to reality.
We also needed to sleep - a lot. It’s essential to rest up after a tour as there is the potential that your brain can go a bit wonky, especially without the adrenaline and dopamine high from the gigs.
Getting back on the horse
We needed to ask people for pictures from the shows, download and archive the live sound files from The Temperance gig in Leamington Spa plus the multi-media concert at The Met in Bury that had been recorded by the venue and filmed by Dario Leonetti.
There were loads of articles to finish for our blog, plus episodes of The Supertone Show to programme, research and record, which were time sensitive being syndicated to several radio stations in Canada, the USA and Europe.
Back to reality.
Of course, we had the budget to consider—but more of that later.
Laser Red
We had been running some adverts for the tour via the award-winning digital marketing agency Laser Red, based in Grimsby, UK and caught up with the wonderful Rebecca who handled our campaign to tie everything up and discuss the results. They have been fantastic to work with and we learned a lot of cool online marketing shit.
Repairs
Cleaning, getting the studio ship shape and unpacking all the gear takes a lot of time and there was a long list of repairs to be getting on with: the USB B port on our USB distribution unit - a problem which caused some anguish during the tour, a replacement screw for the iPad holder, general servicing plus damage to some of the guitars - which is par for the course when you are playing them in anger.
Oh, and what happened to our fucking nail scissors?
Before leaving, Simon identified a lot of repairs around the place, mostly connected with Betty, our 48-channel CADAC analogue recording console. He does as much of the servicing as he can but sometimes when it becomes too technical he has to send stuff away.
Back to reality.
Shopping
The cupboard was bare and we had to stock up the fridge with fresh goodness.
The produce here in Portugal is fabulous and we eat salads every other day: the taste is so ‘tasty’ which is a strange thing to say but tomatoes and salad vegetables in the UK just don’t have the same rich wholesome flavour - it must be due to the lack of happy sunshine.
Back to reality.
We are full-time artists so whilst we are beavering away, please find the price of a pint to support our work or by subscribing to VIBES and/or Bandcamp.
What we learned
Contracts mean nothing
We had a signed contract for the first gig of our tour at The Pioneer Club in St. Albans. The venue had a change of staff and in the process, apart from a single post on Facebook a month before, our concert fell through the promotional cracks. Read days one, two and three to find out the whole story.
We still needed to be paid as per the terms of our contract but sadly The Pioneer did not want to honour their commitment. We were offered studio time in lieu of payment which is useless to us as we have our own studio and live in Portugal.
We kept repeating that we are full-time musicians travelling from Europe and had employed a session musician for the tour.
This went on for weeks which was incredibly stressful and had no choice but to take the matter to court which resulted in a County Court Judgement against them. It’s not something we enjoyed doing at all but we received the money plus the court fees. A very sad business.
We also had a signed contract at the Whitham Arts Centre in Barnard Castle which was negotiated through our UK agent. The venue had approached us a year before asking us to play, a decision that was agreed upon and requested by their committee. As you can imagine, we were delighted.
A week before the gig, the venue controversially bypassed our agent and called us directly.
Cutting a long story short, they cancelled the gig due to a multitude of factors including the booking agent from the venue mysteriously leaving the venue and not notifying us or our agent, very poor promotion and low ticket sales.
We were gutted and asked for payment as per our contract. They couldn’t find it. We asked our agent to send a copy of the signed document to them for payment but he didn’t have a copy.
All this was going on while we were gigging. It was so stressful. Our agent had other acts he had booked into the venue and did not want to go down a legal rabbit hole. We did not want to affect his business either so we ended up with a lesser payment from the venue but our agent waived his fee so it worked out the same.
Shit eh…
We need more rehearsal time
We recently came across the excellent S P A R K S rockumentary - which we urge you to watch. During the course of the video their manager - Sue Harris of Republic Media - mentioned they rehearsed for four months before a series of demanding shows. Four months. We rehearsed for four days. Why? Well, it’s all down to the money honey.
When you are in a band scenario everyone mucks in and does it for free but session musicians need to be paid and their expenses covered.
Once all the songs are together and sounding good additional days are required with the crew in a suitable rehearsal space to emulate a gig - known as production rehearsals. Very fucking expensive.
We need crew
STARLITE.ONE is an ambitious technical undertaking that we wanted to sonically replicate and visually enhance live. Suzy had spent a lot of time creating videos for the whole set which, were technically possible, were to be back projected.
We were inspired by one of our favourite bands of the moment The Smile touring as a three piece. Of course they have a small army of technicians to assist them.
We didn’t realise how much it would take to get it right when you factor in the huge variety of technical gear and competence in the many different venues we played.
This added to the unholy mix of driving and stress factors inherent with being on the road for nearly a month made the experience painful. Simon just took on too much work and suffered from both a performance and a mental point of view.
It’s now clear that we need enough time to rest, be free of business and technical demands - to have the liberty to get into the musical mindset and totally focus on the artistry and performance.
The only way we can tour such an ambitious project is to have the crew set up our gear, mix the front of house, run the in-ear monitoring system and technology, pack up, load up and drive.
An added bonus would be someone to work on the merchandise table as we undoubtedly lost a load of income by not having anyone dedicated to the sales aspect of our tour.
This equates to two or three competent people who need hotels, paying, feeding and watering - costing around £700-1000 per day plus of course the cost of the additional vehicles.
Yes! We have now a template for the future the only snag being we need the money to cover all this additional expense, which brings us to the knotty subject of…
The budget
We do this for a living.
Yes, we have other sources of income: royalties, music sales, equipment sales, subscriptions on Bandcamp and VIBES plus studio bookings, but historically live concerts make us a reasonable percentage of our annual income and try to be super careful about the type of gigs we book.
Even with the lack of crew, on this tour fees were low, and apart from several sold-out shows, attendances were down—the tour was a financial disaster.
The UK music scene has changed
It’s heartbreaking to see what’s happened to the UK music scene. It’s not the place to go into the gory details but every week the press publishes stories of venues closing due to rising costs and a lack of support from the public. Type in your favourite search engine “music venues closing” and witness the horror.
The Music Venue Trust is constantly banging the drum about this subject and if you are interested it may be worth looking them up.
Companies are making vast fortunes from music by selling hugely expensive tickets for established artists and raking in incomes from streaming. Less established artists get virtually nothing.
Of course, this will eventually bite the business in the arse when there are no new artists to exploit as the small venues are where musicians cut their teeth and try out their material. But that’s for future generations to consider.
Our vision
This is what we do…
Take a minute to share this story far and wide. It really helps.
Onwards
One thing we have consciously tried to do this year is go out once a week for lunch or dinner, visit the beach and when we can, hang out with friends. We work too hard which we have found to be counterproductive.
Following the isolation during the Covid pandemic, don’t we all appreciate being surrounded by people, chatting away and feeling a part of the community?
As soon as practicable - which was the Wednesday following our return - we visited our favourite local Europa Restaurante.
In Portugal, Prato do Dia (menu of the day) is 10/12€ per person and you get bread, olives, a main course, half a litre of vinho tinto each and coffee - some places even throw in a dessert. Fucking cool and the same price as a slice of Pizza in London.
Dani & Tiago
Our great friend Tiago Cruz - who did all the graphic design work on STARLITE.ONE - was still away working in Dubai so we arranged to meet up with his wife Dani at the excellent Taverna Ribatejana in Samora Correia.
Dani did a fabulous job filming us on location in Lisbon for The Voting Machine music video. It was such a relief to order a meal and a bottle of wine that didn’t rob you blind! We handed out presents and ended the night next door at Bar do Concelho.
Yes, we were home.
The following week we planned to meet with Dani again to arrange a surprise for the wayward Cruz.
He was due back from Dubai in a few days and we were unexpectedly going to pick him up from the airport as Dani was going to be working. Big surprise!
We turned up at the bar and there he was!! The little bastard had decided to come home a week earlier and surprise everyone!
The Boehlerts
The Friday after returning home we drove to the Porto Drum Show and made a stop halfway up in Figuera da Foz as we had a lunch date with two of our wonderful supporters, Jeff and Rhonda Boehlert.
These guys have been fantastic and are so effusive about our music. It was a real tonic to finally meet up. We love these guys!!
Jeff and Rhonda certainly make us feel loved and supported as artists. This is some artwork Jeff made recently to promote STARLITE.ONE on social media. Great fun!
The Porto Drum Show
Hugo Danin played drums on STARLITE.ONE and accompanied us on our tour. He also runs the Porto Drum Show and invited us as his VIP guests for the weekend.
It was also a handy trip as we could kill two birds with one stone, meet some cool people and drop off his SONOR drum kit that he had used on the tour.
For ease and financial sense, Hugo had flown in and out of the UK for the tour and we had driven with all of the gear.
We had also been invited to see Ricky Gervais in concert in Lisboa that weekend as Starlite’s friend Gordon was the tour manager on that gig but we felt it was important to support Hugo and meet all the musicians in Porto. Next time Ricky.
Of course, we took our hairy beasts with us. We had been too long apart already and there was zero chance that they were going to be left behind.
Sadly, the girls were not allowed into the event so we took turns to walk them but they were more than happy chilling out on the front seats of the Van of Rock which was parked at the back of the venue. The security staff were also keeping an eye on them and visa versa.
We did however sneak into the foyer of the venue for a photo opportunity next to the show banner - oh really - hounds are not allowed?
Michael Lauren
When we first moved to Portugal, Simon had contacted Michael Lauren, an American drummer from New York now living in Lisboa and tried to arrange to get together.
Michael is a renowned educator and has played with loads of great musicians including Chuck Berry and Tom Jones.
He was a founding member of the world-renowned Drummers Collective NYC, Professor of Drum Set Studies and head of the Jazz Department at the Escola Superior de Música e Artes do Espectáculo (ESMAE) in Porto.
Michael is currently a Professor of Drum Set Studies at Escuela Superior de Música Jam Session Barcelona, España and is the founder / artistic director of The International Drum Academy Lisboa, Portugal.
Impressive!!
We finally managed to meet up at the Drum Show and what a cool guy. We got on really well, had some dinner together, met some of his friends and said we’d get together soon. A few months later we hooked up in Lisboa and spent a fun day together with his wonderful wife, artist Kathleen Kuchera.
Billy Cobham
We also met a drumming legend - the one and only Billy Cobham. He played the whole of the groundbreaking album STRATUS on Saturday night and you knew you were watching a man that had made history being such a massive musical influence to so many of us. Simon had a great chat with him after the event!!
All the people were so friendly - we had a blast.
It was late Sunday night and asked Hugo for a recommendation of where to eat.
We ended up at Restaurante CUFRA - an old-school diner restaurant like you would find in an Italian American gangster movie. You know those diners where you all sit around the edge and the chefs cook in front of you with a load of tables and booths in the back.
It was surreal and enchanting. The staff were fantastic and very friendly. We had a great laugh with them.
It was late, the doors were locked and the staff were tidying up when some drunk guys started banging on the glass front doors wanting to be served. The staff motioned that they were closed but the drunks were having none of it and started kicking off.
It was a bit hairy as these guys were banging hard on the glass and wouldn't stop shouting. The staff turned the lights off, called the police and, like a scene from a movie, we were ushered out of the restaurant, through a dark kitchen, into a small back room that led to a door at the rear of the building. They let us out. We ran!
And finally…
It doesn’t seem like a year has passed and based on the experience have made positive steps in our career and life plan.
Thanks very much for reading and please feel free to comment on this or any of the series. Don’t forget to subscribe to receive our updates.
Much love
Suzy & Simon
Simon and Suzy: Well I am finally getting around to reading this… totally understand how drained you guys were after such a physically and emotionally draining tour. I applaud the vision and commitment to do it… and it could have and should have been so much better… but we are living in strange and scary times.. our arts are threatened… you lived it… you have exposed it… where do we go from here?
So happy that after the tour you and Suzy stopped and spent time with us on your way to Porto. Truly a pleasure to hang out for a bit. Although the tour took a toll it didn’t take your spirit away. We watch excitedly from the sidelines as you regroup and determine the next steps, the changes and adjustments needed…the battle plan to fight back. We are here to support.
We love the monthly livestreams. One day we hope to catch you live somewhere.
Much love, Jeff & Rhonda
PS loved the photos and thanks for sharing my digital doodles.
Hope to see you soon maybe… Braga bound 😎🎸🎶🍻
Can I just say I thoroughly enjoyed reading your "warts and all" series.
That must have been really hard at times to force yourself to recall and relive the nightmares you endured during your visit back to the UK and I so hope it hasn't caused long term damage to your artistic creativity and we get to see you again over here in far better circumstances.
Also, though, you clearly had some wonderful experiences which will now be always there to recall as our memories ain't what they used to be. You almost need to "edit" the series and take out all the good stuff in a condensed version purely for your own benefit. You've clearly already learned from all the pitfalls so they can be filed under "B"!!!!!
Onwards and upwards you two... you deserve good things as fabulous artists!!