Like any job, there is a way to do things. On the road, there is only one way to do things. It has to be that way. With 40-60 people touring and that many opinions about how things should run, routine prevents chaos.
Our show has a number of sleeper bus drivers. Traditionally, these drivers are older men who have toured with every big name in rock and roll or country music. They have seen all kinds of bad behavior. Our show features no divas and right now just one bit of bad behavior and it’s from the bus driver himself.
We have 4 drivers and they all travel to and from the same places. Three drivers choose one direction, the diva driver choses another direction. This is of no concern provided something doesn’t go wrong. But something always goes wrong.
Five miles outside of Sioux Falls after the show, I got a call from the star bus to say the bus had pulled off a highway entrance ramp and started to sink in the mud on the shoulder. As the right side of the bus started to sink, the bus started to lean to the right. One leading lady screamed “Get my babies” and folks grabbed the three sleeping kids and made their escape. Then they waited by the side of the highway in the cold, in their pajamas until our other buses could circle back.
By then, we were about 5 miles away. It was the longest 5-mile journey in my life. Eventually, a tow truck was called and they were able to pull the leaning bus out of the muck. It turned a 6-hour journey into a 7.5 hour one. Sounds pretty mundane, doesn’t it? Nobody was arrested. There were no injuries. It ranks just above watching paint dry. But when you are on a touring show, anything your group does is news. The local TV Station picked up the story and even Associated Press ran the story complete with photos from a highway cam of our buses pulled over.
Why had the driver pulled over on an entrance ramp to a highway? One of the other drivers suspected he was doing a dump (Dumping the toilet storage tank). Since this is illegal, he would never admit that. First he told folks, he suspected something was wrong with the bus. When questioned about the health of the bus, he said it was fine and he was really looking for his cell phone charger when he accidentally drove off the road. Whoops. He thought that made him look better doing an illegal dump?
Once when I was on a tour that had chartered a jet and landed at a small Pennsylvania airport, a local reporter showed up while we were waiting for our bus. When asked how she even knew we were there, she said she had gotten a tip from a local resident that a large plane was landing and she rushed over the to small airport to see if we were news. Chalk that up to a slow news day in Pennsylvania.
The tour is counting down the days (19) until the end. There is something about knowing the finish line is ahead that makes the home stretch seem very distant.
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