Bus-Legs
Our first time on a bus and opening for Kings Of Leon
by Dylan Kongos
When you picture success as a band, amongst other things, you vividly imagine touring the world—a new city every day, new foods, new people, new impressions. We played our first show in 2003, put out a couple of EPs and albums, and had been grinding in a van since 2007 with many trips crisscrossing the US, Canada, and even Europe, when finally in 2014, our song “Come With Me Now” took off. Overnight, it launched us into an entirely different realm of tour life. Now, after years of cramming into a van, sleeping upright, trading off driving, finding a cheap motel to shower in, eating Taco Bell every night to save money, and chasing the headliner (who travel in a bus and move from city to city in the middle of the night), we landed our first bus—with a driver.
Not just any driver either; we got Tony—the best bus driver to have ever driven. Many drivers who spend their life on the road, in our experience, become bitter and difficult to be around. It’s a tough life—they sleep during the day, drive overnight and have a completely flipped schedule. They barely get to spend time with people, let alone enjoy the perks of being on the road with a band. They eat what’s available at gas stations and restaurants that are open before 1 p.m. and sleep in a new bed every night with kids running up the hall making noise… because it’s 2 p.m. in the afternoon. For a minute, imagine what it would feel like internally after sitting for 9 hours looking at oncoming headlights, eating shitty food, spending time alone in a hotel room, and having musicians and artists who think they’re gifts from God bossing you around…for months and years on end.
That’s what made Tony so special—not only was he a great and safe driver, but he was kind, patient, funny, and always in the best of spirits. We’d hang out up front and chat until we couldn’t keep our eyes open. The band and crew wanted to go hang up front and hear his stories. And his stories were awesome—like the time he drove Gwar and got pulled over by police with guns drawn, calling for backup, because fake blood from one of their stage props was oozing from the trailer and dripping all over the highway.
On this 45-ft tour bus, we could now sleep in one of the 12 bunk beds that line the sides of the middle aisle, we could shower on the bus if necessary, we could relax in the front lounge after a show and have a beer or play video games in the back lounge. Tour Life was good. And it was so new—everything was interesting, everything was novel. I can imagine the feeling must be similar to stepping onto a warship for the first time… just without the threat of…well, war. Instead of sea legs, you have to get your bus-legs. You have to learn how to walk from the front lounge to the back lounge as you wind back and forth in the Canadian Alps. You have to learn how to stand up and piss while the bus sways and bounces on California highway potholes. The technique, by the way, is to take a wider stance and rest your forehead on the cabinet above the toilet with quite a lot of pressure to stabilize yourself—if you’re tall enough. If not, you lean against the side wall and practice your aim.
You have to learn how to live in a tiny moving apartment with up to 11 other people. Like being in a traveling circus, you learn how to organize and minimize your belongings, how to sleep, and how to BE a different way. Because if you stay exactly as you are, you’ll be crushed by the tornado of change that comes upon you. Many merch guys and roadies, with dreams of touring the country and meeting chicks, quit our crew after only a few weeks or months, realizing that this life was just not for them. You’re always tired and often exhilarated… sometimes simultaneously.
In 2014, we toured on that same bus with Tony and crew for 7 months straight. Early in the year, because our song was climbing the charts and we were starting to draw a significant crowd at most shows, we were offered a summer tour opening for Kings Of Leon and Young The Giant. It was for 2 months, paid well, and the schedule allowed us to hit a few festivals and headline shows along the way as KOL only played 4 shows a week. They traveled with 9 buses, 10 semi-trucks, and almost 50 crew members. It was a fucking operation. They had a catering crew who’d wake up at 6 a.m., provide 3 meals a day, and only load out after everybody else, sometimes at midnight. There was a lighting and video crew with a couple of semi-trucks full of trusses for LED screens and pyrotechnics. The list went on and on… and they all worked like a well-oiled machine, putting on an incredible show to 20,000 people a night. It was an inspiration for us to see. Their core team had been together a long time and you could tell—they worked together, had fun, and interacted with the local crew and opening acts with such respect and professionalism.
The vibe on this summer tour was electric. No one was there because it was just a job. It felt like everyone—from the band to the stage manager, to the assistant production managers, to the cooks—believed in creating something bigger than the sum of its parts. It felt like everyone valued their craft and the experience of the audience members above their own opinions and petty comforts.
Most people on this tour were in their 30s and 40s, and although everyone still liked to have a good time, they’d outgrown the early days of partying and drinking themselves into oblivion. Instead, the morning buffet was full of clean eating options and smoothie bars, etc. There was also a daily workout schedule that some of the guys on the KOL crew ran. They carried a bunch of gear in one of the semis and invited anyone to join. Often heard leading the workouts and yelling at the other members to “dig in, bitches” and “one more lap, motherfuckers” was Mike. He was a quintessentially American-looking surfer/crossfit dude often seen pre-show longboarding around the amphitheater grounds in colorful shorts and a neon tank top. He had bleach blonde streaks in his hair and tan skin from doing a bunch of calisthenic exercises in the sun. He was always smiling and talking to you about babes. It seemed like he was living his best life, as they say—skating around, working out, doing 90 minutes of work at night programming and running the lighting rig for the show, and meeting girls.
No matter how many times I’ve been proven wrong, most of the time I’m convinced that my first impressions of people are correct. It’s a disease we all suffer from, I guess—one of not actually seeing anything or anyone for who they actually are. We only project our own image and imagination onto them. This is one of those times. I wouldn’t say that Mike came across as dumb or anything, but most of us just had the impression he was a “lampy” workout junkie. Man, were we wrong. Turns out he wasn’t just skating around on all his downtime. He was waking up early and staying up late, working on his aerospace engineering PhD in between load-in, rehearsals, and load-out, and being poached for a job at SpaceX. “Magic Mike,” as we affectionately called him, was probably the smartest guy on the whole 75-person touring entourage. He nailed the light show every night, packed up and studied, woke up early and worked out, and laughed his way around the arena telling people to do another fucking push-up. He made us do so many one time that Mo, our stage manager, actually couldn’t move his arms and had to skip a whole show… literally, he sat it out and drank his liquids from a straw.
The KOL tour really sticks in everyone’s memory as something we could aspire to as we moved onto planning our own headline tours with production. How could we bring not only professional performance and management of the show but also that intangible “something” that we all felt in July and August 2014… something that permeated the atmosphere and helped push our group to strive for a kind of excellence.
I Miss those years…