When I'm working, I'll often be upgraded to a suite though I don't ask for preferential treatment. I'll be there with a tour manager, my band and various promotions people and the hotel will offer to upgrade one of us; luckily, it's usually me.
My tour manager, I met him at Boot Barn. He was selling me a pair of boots... and he said, 'I moved to Nashville to be a tour manager, and I need work right now,' and I said, 'Man, I don't even have a tour manager. So you can tour-manage me.'
When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.
I only ever did one hotel room because at the end of the tour, I had a little less money than the rest of the guys, and the tour manager said, 'You remember that hotel room you destroyed in Iowa? Well, we had to pay for it.' And I was like, 'Ooooh. That's how it works.'
When I was a kid, I loved a heavy metal band called Motley Crue. I was thirteen when they came to my city, and I called every hotel in the Yellow Pages asking for a room by the name of their manager in hopes of meeting the band. After two or three hours of calling hotels, I got through, and the manager's brother answered the phone.
Women are often meeker in meetings and afraid to ask for raises and promotions. I've told countless female colleagues to stop apologizing when they ask for more. It's not personal, it's business.
It didn't really sink in for me when I first heard that we would be supporting RHCP. But when I heard people around us commenting on how incredible it is to be on tour with such a celebrated band, that's when it finally sunk in and realised what a remarkable honour it is to tour with RHCP.
We just got a tour bus. I didn't know tour buses could be this nice. It's just me, Brian Haner the guitar guy, the tour manager and a writer. We laugh ourselves silly. Apparently we're going to have a road dog, a miniature pincher. It's the smallest they've ever seen. How masculine am I going to look, working with dolls and a miniature dog?
I didn't even know what a tour manager was, but I was the tour manager, booking agent, all that stuff for almost two years without knowing it. I wasn't overwhelmed, because I enjoyed doing it.
The reason I stopped doing the band is that I wanted to do something different... Yes had become like 'Groundhog Day' for me. I loved being in the band, but it was album-tour, album-tour, different album-different tour.
This year's Hippiefest tour is truly a 'Classic Rock 'n Blues Tour' - a landmark, historic, musical celebration of which my band and I are proud to be a part. It's going to be a Guitar Guru Gala of Gargantuan proportions. For me personally, it will simply be the Greatest! So, see you at one of the dates on the tour. Believe me, this is not one you want to miss. All I can say is Get Ready To Rock'n'Roll!!!
My band got signed in high school when I was 16, and we all dropped out of high school and went on tour. Then I quit the band because I was the manager, and I was doing everything, so I went solo.
The best compliment I get every year is that a band will write me and say, 'We were just on tour, and we had people coming to our show saying they had never heard us before they heard us on your show.'
When I was teaching at an institution that bent over backward for foreign students, I was asked in class one day: "What is your policy toward foreign students?" My reply was: "To me, all students are the same. I treat them all the same and hold them all to the same standards." The next semester there was an organized boycott of my classes by foreign students. When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.
For us, if you're a rock band, there's no way around it. You have to tour. You have to tour a whole lot.
Actually, recording the Suite Chic album was so much fun and while working on this new album, people that I've worked with from Suite Chic has lend their voice.
What we are doing is we are putting in significant training into the people we have currently to upgrade their skill resources, upgrade the presentation resources, and upgrade what we expect from them in terms of not business as usual.