town around one or two in the morning. You don't
get to sleep until three or four
o'clock, like the second shift.
"Depending on how far the drive is, you roll
into town and you might get there
early, and have to wait until your clean-up
room is ready, or you might just have time
to take a shower and go to sound check. Most of
the time, tours are planned to where
it's a six or eight-hour drive between the
venues, so you usually have time to get up
and work out or take a walk, read a book. I
used to try to get out and see if I was in
an interesting town. Go hit some antique
stores, junk shops, or music stores--what-
ever was local. Then show up at sound check
ready to play. There are usually a few
hours of downtime before the actual show. That
is what you've waited for the whole
day: those few moments on stage. That time
arrives and you get all dolled up to
perform. You play, and when it's over you're
back in your sweat pants, tee shirt, and
sneakers, and you hop on the bus and roll on to
the next town."
"There are no typical days," says Billy Thomas.
"Artists like to do sound check at
different times of the day. They like to eat at
different times of the day. Basically, if
you're traveling on a bus, you wake up on the
bus and go have some breakfast, which
is a social time with all the other players.
Then you go to your room and rest for
awhile, depending on how much rest you got the
night before on the bus. Then you
shower and get ready. With Vince [Gill], we
have a sound check at 3
p.m.every day.
Sometimes he'll sound check for two hours,
playing and jamming. He loves to play.
We use it as a rehearsal time, try out new
songs and just play over the top. If you're
the headliner, you get that time available to
you. It's stipulated in the contract that
you want the stage with all the production from
3 to 5
p.m. Then the opening act
comes on after us and sound checks. We eat our
dinner and then we have downtime
until around nine, when we go on. We stay at
the venue during that time. With
McBride & The Ride, we played sound check
and then went back to the hotel, show-
ered and changed clothes, and then came back
for the gig. It varies from artist to
artist."
"After the show with Vince, we get back on the
bus and change out of our stage
clothes, hang out, maybe eat a little something
and then travel on to the next city,
arriving early in the morning around three or
four. We would continue to sleep on
the bus until ten or eleven, and go into the
hotel and then eat. That was our day. With
some artists they want to get off the bus
early, when they get in, check into a room
and sleep in a bed. Every artist has a
different set of rules."
POINTERS FOR THE JOB SEARCH
"Make sure that you know your instrument.
That's the bottom line. Try to get out
and meet other players. Try to get as much
performing experience as you can, prefer-
ably before you even get to town, so that when
you get an opportunity, you're ready
to step up to the plate. Listen to records.
Hear what is current so you kind of know
the musical vocabulary."--TR
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