The Null Device Blog

Our short tour made a profit of $16.81.  Possibly more, if you count merch, but merch is so inextricably caught up with production costs for those CDs and tshirts that we didn’t bring along to sell, fees to the label, mailorder costs, etc that I’m not even going to bother.  If there’s a profit from the merch, it’s also small.

In some ways, I’m kind of crowing a bit about the fact that we came out in the black.  It means I managed to keep expenses down and luck out with some reasonable promotion.

In other ways, I’m am abjectly terrified of what this implies.  $16.81.  For 9 shows.  That’s not counting food.  And lodging was primarily couches and futons of sympathetic friends and promoters along the way.  We’re looking at an average hourly wage of somewhere in the vicinity of a nickel, and only then because of the good graces of many, many people.

Convicts make better money than this.  If there’s anything that will quickly kill the notion of the rich and famous rockstar life, this is it, right here.  A nickel an hour.

Sure, yeah, we’re a tiny band that doesn’t devote all their waking time to relentlessly touring and promoting and building a reputation,  and we’re in a tiny subgenre.  There are a lot of ways we could do a lot better, I’m sure, to bring people out and move merch.   Still – there are lots of bands who do this for a living, and even if they’re doing 100 times better, that’s still less than minimum wage.   That’s no margin for error, right there.  That’s “if your van blows a tire, you’re basically screwed” territory.  That’s “the drummer is delirious from eating nothing but ramen for two weeks” land.

It also hammers home the notion that every night really needs to be a good night.  We had maybe two shows where the door take wasn’t enough to cover the gas to get there, and thankfully one of those shows well made up for it with merch sales.    I admit I was entirely unprepared for such a quick reversal of fortune.  I’m not sure what exactly I expected, but damn, that’s a razor-edge.

I’m glad I’m doing this because I love the music, not because I’m trying to make a living at it.

I know this tour was pretty short, compared to some of the long worldwide hauls many bands go on.  Our tour-mates, TDC had two more dates and another few thousand miles to go when we headed back for the homeland.

Still, for me, this was a pretty Big Deal.  It’s the culmination of years of work, numerous hours of self-doubt, musical re-evaluation, crazy changes at inopportune moments, technical twiddling, and the like.  It’s something I’ve wanted to do for, well, my whole life, but for one reason or another have never quite gotten to, until now.

There are some people I couldn’t’ve done this without.  Not in a million years.

Jill Sheridan – I’ve been told, and I’ve often said myself, that bringing Jill into the band was one of the smartest moves I’ve made.  The girl can sing, she’s enthusiastic about the music, she manages to take all the crazy changes I make with grace and aplomb, she handles all the exceptionally nerdy tech stuff I set up, she’s funnier than hell, she’s easygoing, always great to talk to,  and has always, always been a good friend to me.  She’s probably the closest thing I’ve got to a sister.  I always feel like I’m criminally underutilizing her skills onstage, and I think I need to do something about that.  We work great together.   And I think I simply could not do this whole “band” thing without her.

Elizabeth Scheef – she’s awesome.  She’s hardcore.  She knows everybody.  She’s calm, cool, and collected under pressure (like, say, driving through 4th-of-july Traffic in the DC metro area).  Her packing skills are legendary.  She’s clever, funny, patient beyond any reasonable expectation, can drive like a formula1 racer, friendly, outgoing, and damn professional.  AND she did this entire tour while 3 months pregnant, with nary a complaint.  She’d earned the right to sit out a drive, or to pass on load-in, or to lobby for more comfortable quarters, but never once did she.   I’ve never met anyone with such resolve.  She’s going to be a fantastic mom, too.

Raya Wolfsun – Adding Raya to the lineup at pretty much the last minute was a risk.  We had two whopping days to practice, she’d never done anything resembling this before.  I basically threw her into the deep end and said “swim!”  And swim she did.  The crowd loved her, she’s got a capital-V Voice, great stage presence, and she’s deeply entertaining and sweet.  So, as she would say, it was full of win.

Dan Clark – the dude nudged me, poked me, and eventually shoved me into committing to this.  My own self-doubt had kept me from trying it.  Dan finally was the guy who said “dude, you MUST DO THIS.”  So I did.  And it was great.  And I can’t thank him enough.  He’s managing his own band – which was excellent every single night – and doing a fine job of keeping me informed about what’s happening when, where, and putting me in contact with all the people I need to contact.  A great, hairy guy with talent to spare and a level of professionalism I can’t even touch.

Thanks to all these people for making this tour happen, and for making it great.

Interesting and useful statistics from the 2010 Fading Belief tour:

• 9 days
• 9 shows
• 2700 miles
• 7 states
• $16.31 in PURE PROFIT
• The 3 best band members I could ask for
• The 4 best band members in another band I could ask to be travelling with
• 5 homes opened to us for post-show flopping
• 1 hotel room that smelled vaguely like a handi-wipe
• 15 hours of solid driving home
• 20 harrowing minutes in western Baltimore
• 5 hours average sleep per night.
• 21 tshirts moved
• 51 CDs moved
• 13 tanks of gas
• $411 in fuel
• 3 hairs in Jill’s Waffle House lunch
• 1 Bob Evans breakfast
• 27 new dents to our keyboard stand
• 2 new 9v batteries for the violin
• 72 bottles of water
• 2lbs of beef jerky
• 1 purchase of a Naseer Shamma album, which due to spotty data connections in rural PA, took me 5 hours to download
• 5 demonstrations of how to work CheetahDave’s coffeemaker
• 3 overtakings from behind of the TDC van
• 8oz of organic baba ganoush, randomly found in central Maryland
• Approximately six million juvenile sexual innuendo, scatological jokes and “That’s what she said”s
• 24oz of awful 7-11 coffee
• 10 pancakes hand-made by Jim Semonik
• 3 incidents where my snoring kept Jill awake
• 24 chaal beats
• 1 Strawberry pie from Eat-n-Park

We’re pretty much into a groove now.  Get up, drive, load, play, load out, drive, sleep, etc.

It’s getting surprisingly easy.

Dan made the comment, though, that the tour lifestyle quickly recalibrates your concept of traveling luxury.  Jim Semonik offered me a glass of water with ice and I thought it was the best thing ever.

I have to say, we’re being treated remarkably well by, well, everyone.  I keep wondering what exactly I’ve done to deserve this.  Jim, Roy, Ada, Dave, Kristy, JSun, Don…I mean, everybody is helping us out in ways I couldn’t really expect.  I was expecting, I dunno, a floor to sleep on and that’s about it.  Instead we’re getting homemade pancakes at Castle Semonik and pizza from the Retrofits and Dave’s fabulous breakfasts and so forth.

I mean, this is pretty great.

We’ve had some glitches.  Violin battery died midway through a song.  We had a ludicrously cranky soundguy.  I clammed a few notes in a horrible manner (D natural!  Natural!  AAAAGGGGHHH!).  A bathroom that screams “it puts the lotion in the basket.”  The GPS took us on a little “detour” through some…interesting…neighborhoods of Baltimore.  But these are basically minor things.  We are in good hands along the way, with good people, and we’re having a LOT of fun.

Reliable wifi access has been a bit spotty for the past few days, hence the lack of regular substantial updates.

And right now, sleepiness is taking care of the rest.  I just wrote “henche” by accident – typing a full blog entry would take hours at this rate.

So for now, just going to say that the past few shows have been kind of amazing.  Not necessarily huge crowds, but damn good crowds.  Crowds that were made entirely of fans, and in many cases people who now number as friends.

Also, huge, huge HUGE thanks to Uncle Jimmy Semonik, Ada and Roy Retrofit, CheetahDave and Kristy V for putting us up, putting up with us, and getting these shows set up.  We seriously owe all you guys.

MOre once I’m awake again.