Jeremy Dylan is a stellar human, and was the first person I contacted when I had the idea to do this blog. He is an attentive listener, witty, motivated and definitely dressed better than you. You are likely to find him somewhere between Nashville and Sydney and everywhere in between.
Jeremy is a jack of all trades and has various outlets to show that. His podcast My Favorite Album is a collection of conversations with guests about an album they love and how it's influenced their life. As well as being a photographer and producer, he has directed music video clips and documentaries, including Jim Lauderdale: The King of Broken Hearts and Tommy Emmanuel: The Endless Road (coming soon).
The reason I asked Jeremy to contribute to this blog and thought he was well worthy of being my first guest, was that he has worked in the music industry for many years, as did his father Rob Potts. Jeremy has played a number of different roles working behind the scenes, and has also been on the road himself and promoted artists such as Morgan Evans, Clare Bowen and Kacey Musgraves. It turns out his advice was so incredibly spot on and relevant to me at this time when I am touring.
I asked Jeremy what would be his three tips of advice for maintaining well-being whilst travelling. I know you will find this as insightful and helpful as I did. Jeremy touches on some key points that I think are crucial in getting through various situations you might find yourself in.
1. ROUTINE IS EVERYTHING
The music industry is essentially what you get when you take one of the most emotionally unstable cohorts in society and force them to interact and transact with each other in increasingly volatile circumstances. The majority of touring musicians are starting with some kind of anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder or other kind of mental instability. It’s a key reason why you become an artist - if you could relate to people like a regular person, you’d just have a relaxing day job and hang out at the pub on Sunday afternoon like everyone else, and maybe play guitar for fun and not open your deepest expression up to judgement from random strangers.
That all said, touring is the most unstable part of it all and can be a trigger for anxiety attacks, depressive swings and just general degradation of your mental state. I’ve handled touring life first very poorly and then quite well, and the key difference is routine. Routine means stability, and stability is what allows you to manage and monitor your health effectively. When you’re in a different city each night, and you finish work at midnight flushed with adrenaline, it doesn’t exactly encourage sensible managed behavior. The key thing for me is to think of the routine like work, like a normal job. If someone you know when out and got wasted every night when their shift ended, you’d worry they had a substance abuse problem. So just because you are playing shows four or five nights a week doesn’t mean every one should turn into a party. Set a certain number of sober days each week and enforce the rule on yourself - celebrating a great show with some tequila afterward is a totally reasonable thing to do a couple of nights a week, just as going out for drinks with your mates a couple of times a week is fine and healthy. Doing it every night is just putting yourself into a perpetual and degrading cycle of self-abuse and recovery which also severely cuts into the already limited free time you have during the day. Normal people have the evening and nights to wind down and check in with their life after work, you have the day. Don’t waste it.
Each show you are playing in a different venue in a different city. Some nights fifty friends will turn up, some nights you won’t know a soul there. Some nights you’ll have a great crowd and play the show of your life, some nights you’ll be embarrassed to be on stage. You can control very little of those factors. So set yourself things you can control - try to get to sleep at more or less the same time after the show most nights, and likewise for waking up (avoid 5am lobby calls wherever possible). Start each morning the same - I have a cup of tea, spend twenty minutes with whatever book I’m reading and meditate (all things you can do pretty much anywhere). Try to give yourself a few things to do prior to checking Instagram or Twitter or the ticket sales report for tonight’s show, to level yourself out before you start taking on erratic mental stimuli.
Routine around the show is great too - maybe you always call your significant other just after soundcheck, maybe there’s a group hug / tequila shot just before you walk on stage each night.
So much of life on the road will bring you down or just be anxiety inducing in its unpredictability. A stable effective routine allows you know that whatever highs or lows tomorrow will bring, some of it is reassuring and stable and under your control.
2. PLAN THE FOOD AHEAD
It’s a touring truism - everyone on the road eats like shit. Until you’re in the rarefied world of personal chefs and five star hotels, even theatre level touring is defined by lunches at whichever fast food joint is visible from the petrol station your van or tour bus pulls up at around midday. You’re preoccupied with the show, you’re running late to an interview to shift the last hundred tickets, you’re exhausted/hungover from last night’s gig… it’s very easy to default to garbage, especially when you don’t think about the wider picture. It’s tempting to put yourself in ‘tour mode’ in your mind, to not think of the consequences of your behavior because you’re on tour - it’s not like it’s real life. This is a vestigial tail from how it used to feel as a spectator. If you were going to one of the three or four gigs you went to that month, it was fine grab a burger next to the venue and close down the bar across the road after the show - it was a rare and specialized experience. When it’s your professional reality for weeks on end, all this stuff compounds, and suddenly you’re buying a new pair of jeans three weeks into a tour because your stage clothes don’t fit anymore.
The easiest way to work against this is to turn to our old friend Mr Google and actually research where to eat ahead of time. Finding healthy-ish cafes and restaurants at any price range is normally easy enough in any city (that said, I have not been on tour through Alabama), it may just require factoring in. If you know you’ll need to take a ten minute detour to hit up Golden Lotus or Thai Pothong on your way to Triple J or the Tote, it’s easy enough to account for that when planning the day out a few weeks in advance. It’s much harder when you’ve just realized you haven’t eaten all day and soundcheck is in fifteen minutes.
Tour is physically and mentally depending. It’s a lot easier to cope with if you’re not shoveling trash into your body every day.
3. KEEP SOME TIME FOR YOURSELF
I used to judge musicians who locked themselves away in their dressing rooms before the show, with staff parked outside the door shutting down acquaintances who had dropped by for a hang. Now I think it’s the only sane way to live.
Most intensively for a front person, but true for all in a touring party, is that you are ON when you are on the road. You either are the artist or you’re representing them. You’re constantly answering questions, posing for selfies, fielding decisions about some aspect of the tour, socializing with real or professional friends who have dropped by, signing autographs, acting diplomatic to weirdos who have put themselves in your face and at some point fitting the actual show in. Most people don’t have to be the most public version of themselves for that much of each day. It’s exhausting and emotionally unhealthy, and is what leads to artists turning bitchy and chucking tantrums.
To avoid the emotional bottleneck and putting yourself through the ringer, carve out some alone time. You know how regular people get home from work, pour a glass of water and slump on the couch for a bit watching Netflix? Do that. Don’t talk to anyone for a half hour. Listen to a podcast. Have a nap. Strum some song you remember fondly from your teenage years on your guitar in the hotel room (unamplified). Let yourself chill out and recharge and not have to impress or be responsible to anyone else’s mood or desires for a little while each day.
The whole act of performing music is opening yourself up for the entertainment and catharsis of strangers. It’s a transcendent experience but it’s not a sustainable or healthy day long practice. It’s good to remind yourself that it’s okay to just take care of yourself for a moment, and that you exist outside of your art or your professional skill set. This is a good time to start binge watching Parks and Recreation.
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