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The Reality of Living on the Road    
Everyone believes that living your life on the road and playing music for a living is all great and perfect. Well, it is not. In fact, it is a very harsh, tough life; you spend hours driving, barely being able to pay for food, sometimes not even eating because you lack money, most of the time forced to have a job back home just to pay bills. When you are not living in a van then you’re living in a tiny, old apartment; or in some guy’s basement; or, if you are lucky, in your parent’s home.
Don’t get me wrong, it is a very enjoyable life experience and a great way to live. You feel so alive, play shows for excited crowds, and get to meet some really fascinating people. It’s just that you miss out on so many things the average person takes for granted, like living in one place, having a nice house, being able to shower every day, eating homemade food; the list goes on and on.
 I can remember sitting in the back of a van after playing a show in a tiny Minnesotan town that was less than five miles south of the Canadian border. We had played a great show the night before, and played with some really cool bands. Nothing broke during the show, which was a surprise to all of us, usually we at least broke a string, or a chord, or our drummer would crack one of his symbols. After sweating through the show in a small, church that lacked even the slightest air conditioning, we went to the town’s little grocery store and bought some chicken which we devoured while sitting on a sidewalk under the faint light of a dim street lamp. We slept on the floor of a church that night, woke up in the morning, used the bathroom sink and a few paper towels for a shower, then packed up the van and drove to the next show. This time going to a festival with lots of other bands. They had been planning on having three stages that day, two of which were outside, but then it rained all day so we had to fit all the bands inside and play on one stage, every band quickly tearing down and helping the next set up. It was a huge delay in the festival and made it a much later night than anyone had planned on.
You see, bands and shows may seem like they always go as planned to the audience, but in reality they have many things that go wrong. Ask anyone that’s been in a band or is in a band, and they will tell you of all their shows that went wrong; all the crazy places they had to sleep in, or all the nights they have gone sleepless; and all the ridiculous things they have had to do simply to bring music to the public’s ears. By no means is being a traveling musician an easy life, but for most of us it is a life we enjoy and a life worth living.
I remember most of the crazy things my band and I did. One time we even had one of our ninety pound bass amps fall on our bassist, but he picked up the amp and kept playing the show with the sound guy desperately trying to stop his leg from bleeding. Our bassist went to the emergency room shortly after we finished the show and got multiple stitches, we took the saying “the show must go on” very seriously. It did not matter how little we had slept the night before, or how little we had eaten that day, or if we were hurt; the show had to go on. We were known for our fun and energetic shows, and even though most of us were legally adults we were looked at as the crazy kids who were doing it for the joy of it and to spread a positive message about our Christian beliefs.
I do realize that not all musicians have to go through this much work and struggle with so much, actually most big bands have it pretty easy, they get to sleep on a tour bus, have people that help them carry all their gear to shows, and for the most part live a fairly easy life. However, they do also lack most of the stuff that most common folks have, it is not an easy life for them or their families either. The ones I am talking about when I say they have it really tough are the ones that are not a large name in the music world, the ones who are there to play music but for some reason or another they never “make it” in the world of music, which are not very accurate words: I have seen bands that are thought of as nothing great, but yet they have such great music and such inspiring potential. What it all boils down to in this world is not if the music is well written or not, it is simply whether the public likes the music the band writes.
Is this right or is it wrong? I think it is neither because in reality, the public are the ones keeping bands on the road and playing music. We the people are the ones that make dreams come true. We have the power whether to say a band succeeds or fails simply by whether we choose to support them or not. Sure, it is a little harsh that non-musicians choose how successful a musician will be in life, but that’s just how it is.
The fact that non-musicians are the ones that choose the genres of music that thrive and the ones that die out is not unfair by any means. The whole point of musicians going on the road is to bring music to the public, we cannot choose which bands and genres they will like and which ones the will not. That is for them to decide because they are the ones we are bring the music to; they are the judges of our music. In essence, to be successful in the world of music is sadly not usually based on the quality of the music, but rather simply on whether or not the public will like it.
As you can see, being on the road is much harder than most think, and not only do you have hard living conditions and you have to write music that will interest the public, you also have to give people an example to look up to. I realize that a lot of people do not think that is a big part of it, even some musicians in bands do not realize how much of an impact they have on other peoples’ lives simply because they stand on a stage and play music. The words they say on stage and off stage some people will follow blindly simply because they think the musician is perfect. A lot of people don’t realize that people in bands are just people with nothing special about them other than that the public liked their band and made them famous.
I believe you now see why I say being in a band and bringing music to the public is not as most see it and it does not have all the glory most think it does. Not only do you have to deal with injury, lack of sleep, not having a place to call home, never having homemade food, and constantly traveling; but also you have to write and play music that the public wants to hear and you have to be able to take the stress of having people constantly looking up to you as if you are perfect. You see, life as a traveling musician is not a smooth and easy path; but it is not by any means a pointless, hopeless endeavor for one passionate about music.