Just been looking at a website showing Elvis concert dates during 1955. Totals out at 259 gigs across all states in south, often travelling hundreds of miles between gigs in a large car with double Bass and drums on top. Considering bands since late 60's have used planes and tour buses I am amazed at this statistic for a 20 year old lad starting out.
Anybody else know of any other harder working artist, or what's the most you have gigged in a single month, let alone month after month.
bearing in mind Elvis was also doing recordings back and fore in Memphis for Sun Records.
Comments
Tommy Emmanuel is perhaps amongst the busiest acts these days. You can read in places like this that he performs over 300 times a year.
When Albert Lee played my local pub it wasn't on his tour schedule he just didn't see the point in nights off on tour, rather play a pub for £150 than sit in a hotel room Wether his band were all happy with that is another matter...
In the nineties though we had a Monday night residency in a pub so gigged every single Monday. Naturally we gigged every Frid, Sat and most Sundays plus quite often Thursdays so sometimes the only nights we didn't gig were Tue and Wednesday.
To be honest though gigs back then were turn up, perform for 20 to 30 mins tops in the house system and then on to the next one. Not turn up, unload a whole van, do 2 or 3 X one hour sets and then de rig etc like most of us do on here so basically I work a lot harder than Elvis ever did
If you have good food, good hotels, good venues and not too far between then it's bearable.
We definitely notice how tight we get when we are in the thick of the summer gig frenzy.
I'm not doing over a hundred with the same band, that would be a bit dull I think, tight but very dull. The 120 odd this year is spread across Superheroes which is rock and soul, Italian Job which is classic rock, Captain Burrito which is funk, Black Rose which is a Thin Lizzy tribute, Kick up the Eighties which is (not surprisingly) Eighties tunes, Betty Blue = Rockibilly and there's another couple of bands I play in that make up another 20 gigs or so between them.
I've read Cash's autobiography when he talks about being on the road with Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and others and and it was basically all shows with 20 min slots each .... no PA to setup or break down. ..... you just gotta cope with life on the road
Some friends of mine did 2 x 6 month stints in Germany in the eighties, they had a normal sized Transit packed with their gear and they slept on top of the gear at night in the freezing cold winter.
In the states the nearby gigs on a tour are 3-4 hours drive whereas here that takes you from the south to north. I've done a couple of big drives in Europe; Bern to somewhere in Belgium, avoiding France, and Berlin to Ravenna.
the other problem with US tours is that they don'rt have proper vans. They all use half-sized mini vans.
Our drummers 50 - last week end we had a club gig on the Friday night (long set, nice big stage and not too hot, then a short set at an open air festival on Saturday afternoon (a 45 minute set with the stage and sound managed by the event) and a pub gig on the Saturday night (hot and sweaty - doing our own sound). All the gigs where within a twenty/thirty mile radius. Between the Saturday gigs we went for a nice bit of pub grub.
The drummer played poorly on the Saturday night gig and reckons it was cus he was knackered...... is that possible? I never feel tired or ill during a gig even if I felt like crap before hand.....
I am 37. Is this what I can look forward to?
I gigg'ed Friday night, last night and I'm gigging tonight, then Tue, Thurs, Friday and Sat so not a bad earn this week
http://www.gigwise.com/news/96880/the-1975-named-hardest-working-band-of-2014-and-of-last-4-years
(formerly miserneil)
For example, on one US tour, we did 9 gigs back to back, after the 9th show we flew overnight into NYC to do rehearsals and record the Late Show then flew back out to another gig THEN had a day off! The schedule was brutal but that's what it takes now to be a number one band. The 2nd album went number one across the world so, you'd have to say, from a label view it was well worth it.
(formerly miserneil)