Years ago, when I was still getting on buses and planes to play music instead of write about it, I happened to mention to Allan Pepper (my manager at the time, and owner of the much-missed Bottom Line club in New York) that a lot of people I knew were getting married right around then. I remember myself saying something to the effect of, “Seems like this is the year for marriages.” To which Allan, after waiting the standard two-beat Jewish pre-punch line comedy interval, replied, “Wait ten years — it’ll seem like the year everyone’s getting divorced.”
What went unsaid in that chronological exchange was that after another, less specific interim had passed, we’d get to a point where it seemed like it was the year where everyone was dying. I’m nowhere near the point where I start at the back of the paper, skimming the obituaries, checking on the status of friends and, if I were old enough, myself.
When I lived in the Miami area a decade or so ago — a.k.a. “God’s Waiting Room” — I discovered that this particular activity was a real thing down there, a way of reaffirming your continued existence. But I have reached the point where I increasingly notice the obits in the trade magazines, such as the recent in memoriams to ML Procise and Bob See, and realize that a lot of those no longer with us are a lot younger than might have been expected.
Observing ages of passing in the 50s and low-60s, even a few 40s and very low-70s, is disturbing for a number of reasons. But what this underscores most? This industry — the business of getting onto buses and airplanes and schlepping through airports and terminals — is accompanied by eating processed food washed down with beer and setting up hundreds of tons of gear in a few hours. Bad enough, but it’s followed by making sure everything works perfectly, because thousands of people out there in the inky darkness of a hall or arena have an enormous emotional investment on what happens tonight, then taking it all down and precisely putting it back into a truck and doing it all over again tomorrow and for another three months. And this process can kill you.
It’s Not Easy
The reality is that people in the touring business do not take sufficiently good care of themselves. It’s not an indictment as much as an inescapable fact in an industry where everything, such as the quality of food and the environment around you, changes constantly. Much of the time spent traveling is done so while sitting for extended periods, on planes, trains and automobiles, which has been documented as being bad for health. (Yes, that’s a reference to the famous John Candy/Steve Martin movie, but if we actually had a working passenger rail system here, you’d at least be able to walk around while traveling.)
Staff and crew catering has gotten a lot better in recent years, but there will always be potato chips and hard-core (i.e., not diet) Coke and Mountain Dew glimmering in a bucket amid the crushed ice. The bottom line is, while the quality and variety of choices have improved in a lot of ways, it’s still you who has to make the choices. A lot of the ills that derive from the road are a result of pilot error.
I’m not aware of any health data specific to the live touring business, but just Google a phrase like “maintain health on the road” and you’ll find tons of useful information about doing just that by people who do more or less what you do much of the time. I was particularly impressed by one YouTube (youtube.com/watch?v=y-y6JPVy9BE) video — “How to maintain a healthy lifestyle as an over the road truck driver.”
This clip chronicles the fitness routine of Bryan Celestine, a long-haul trucker who manages to find creative ways to keep in shape, for instance using the edge of a flatbed trailer as a pull-up bar. (Not while the truck is in motion, of course.) What is especially interesting about the video is that it was shot and posted by the trucking company he drives for. Pro audio manufacturers offer a cornucopia of free how-to’s and other educational materials online, but I’d love to see one put together a brochure about how to stay healthy on the road.
But even if one did, there would still be the need to get people to read it. Let’s face it, nutrition simply isn’t as cool and sexy as digital audio networking or running an FOH console from an iPad, but it’s far more necessary. There are all the usual cautions about what you eat on the road, and as importantly, when you eat it (the earlier in the day, the better), and the Internet has plenty of suggestions about how to fit exercise into small spaces and even smaller time windows (20 pushups = eight-by-three-foot space and 30 seconds).
But the single best thing you can do is get healthcare insurance, which is more attainable and in many cases more affordable than ever before. (I’m hedging on that last point a little because various legal and legislative challenges to the Affordable Care Act will ultimately have a financial impact on insurance premiums.) But whatever it costs, it’s worth it, because even a semi-major illness can wipe a family out financially in no time, not only because of the costs of treatment but also the loss of income when it prevents you from working. But one of the best parts of the ACA is the preventative measures it mandates, such as wellness checks and colonoscopies, at no cost. It’s the deal of the century for that alone.
So acknowledge that even if we’re not on a par with coal mining or smokejumping, touring sound comes with its own inherent health hazards, and it’s apparent that those are taking their toll. You’re already a logical person — think of setting up a healthier travel regimen as just following signal path.
