>>>Five reasons in order of importance:
1) ETHICAL— After suffocating through smog filled cities, pedaling past too many car-smashed mammals, and too many times almost becoming one of those car-smashed mammals, it strikes us as a more compassionate way to transport ourselves then riding in a van or bus. To learn more about the impact of cars vs. cycling see SHAKE YOUR PISS #2.
2) FUN – Cruising down a red rock canyon with your friends, wind on your arms, carrying all the stuff you need to live and work with your own two legs, meeting a kid on the side of the road who sells you peaches from her family's farm, getting crazy stares when you roll into a town you've never seen before, smelling Eucalyptus leaves, bbq, sage, beach sand, night sky, fireworks…it's just the difference between talking to your lover face to face and reaching out to touch them as they talk, vs. talking to them from behind glass at a prison visiting area and talking into a little red telephone. You just can’t experience your surroundings when you’re locked-up in a 4-wheeled can.
3) THE PROCESS IS THE DESTINATION—When riding in a van for 10 hours a day, day after day, the romance of touring in a van with your bandmates quickly fizzles. Soon it becomes the waste of life that most car-driving is. Biking on the other hand never feels like a waste of life - it always feels like living. At its best it's the adventure of a lifetime, at its worst it's a crazy hard workout that makes you get stronger, sexier, and develop iron willpower. When we're bike touring, there’s no more 'life onstage' and 'life off-stage'—it’s all just living our art. A bike-touring musician doesn't only feel free when they're onstage, they feel and are free, all the time.
4) FINANCIAL— Between initial outlay, insurance, repairs, fuel, and the possibility of an expensive accident, the van-tour paradigm is like trying to fill a bathtub without plugging the drain. A bike-tour paradigm on the other hand, eliminates the cost of insurance and seriously reduces the cost of initial outlay, repairs, fuel (food), and likelihood of an expensive accident. The greatest cost-saving aspect of bike touring is that the money you would otherwise spend on gas (buying hor'derves for the Chevron shareholder's poolside soiree) you can instead spend on primo food for your whole band. The hearts of people also open up to you a lot more when they see how physically hard you're working day after day, and this results in a lot of unsolicited and wonderful kindnesses from strangers.
5) MINOR CITY SHOWS— Since you can only pedal so far in a day and still have energy to play a show, you end up playing a lot of shows in “minor cities,” or towns that touring bands don’t generally stop in.
“Minor city” shows are cool because they stretch versatility, leading us to play in a variety of contexts (house parties, hillsides, high school lunch periods, old folks homes, hospitals, outside on the steps of playhouses, or rodeos). Good for 2 reasons.
1. CROWD & TIPS— At these venues an unknown band can play for way more people and probably even make more money (tips) then if we were bashing it out in some dark club for 15 beautiful young drunks and sharing a bill with 3 other bands at a “major city” show.
2. UNIVERSALITY— Some minor city shows stretch our chops as performers and songwriters: sure we can impress our friends with our music, but are a bunch of old geezers or cowboys going to dig it? Some say who cares what geezers or cowboys think anyway, it’s rock & roll. That’s not what we say, but then again, we play folk music, it might be different for a true rock & roll band... Try it and tell us how it goes!
No comments:
Post a Comment