The dusty trail........

mikyok

Platinum Member
How far do you good folks here travel to play, what's the farthest away you've played. (There's at least one guy who does world tours regularly so I'll ask what's the strangest gig you've done as well)

I'm in the middle of England so we go up to about 2 hours in each direction. As a rule of thumb if I see sea I've gone too far.

Farthest away I've done is Scotland, man that's a mission!

Strangest gig was probably some island we played Essex way where you had to wait for the tide to go out before you could get on/off the island.

At this point I realise I live on a little overcrowded Island so my road trips may be on the modest side compared to most!
 
I once drove from Los Angeles to San Francisco (almost 8 leisurely hours) to rehearse and play drumset with a drum and bugle corps for four hours then perform a 12-minute show for FREE.

Yeah. Only once.
 
My furthest (farthest?) gig is only 2 hours and 15 minutes. Normally my gigs are 1 hour or slightly less from my house.

In the past I have driven 4 hours for a gig, but that only happened once.
 
5 hours in traffic from Rugby to Leeds to play a 25 minute set to an empty room

That is the time for me NOT to have a microphone
 
I once drove from Los Angeles to San Francisco (almost 8 leisurely hours) to rehearse and play drumset with a drum and bugle corps for four hours then perform a 12-minute show for FREE.

Yeah. Only once.

Ouch!

The Scotland gig was a mere 7 1/2 hour drive and we stayed over!

I wouldn't have liked to have seen the size of coffee you had if you came back the same day. If so how were the hallucinations?
 
We played SXSW in Austin a few years ago, which was a cool 2 day drive. We had a show booked on the way which fell through, so we drove two days to play two shows for a total of an hour to about 100 people. And I would do it again in a heartbeat!

Normally we say that our gigging area is Philly to Maine and anywhere in between (about 5 hours in either direction). Usually anything over 3 hours we will try to set up a couple of shows in a row to make it worthwhile, but that's not always possible. We just want to play to new people on new stages, so we all just hop in the van and drive to just about anywhere that will have us.
 
Ouch!

The Scotland gig was a mere 7 1/2 hour drive and we stayed over!

I wouldn't have liked to have seen the size of coffee you had if you came back the same day. If so how were the hallucinations?

Well I did stay over night and it was a favor out of love for who I was working with, but once you get back and realize what you’ve done you stop volunteering yourself for things like that ;)
 
The farthest I travel for any gig at the moment is 28 miles, but since I'm in Houston that's over an hour's drive, in very heavy traffic, and on freeways that are thirty years past their prime.
 
I once drove from Los Angeles to San Francisco (almost 8 leisurely hours) to rehearse and play drumset with a drum and bugle corps for four hours then perform a 12-minute show for FREE.

Yeah. Only once.

I did the reverse of this from SF to San Pedro for a show one time. Lucky for us, Mike Watt showed up and made our year listening to our humble post-punk BS at a great show with very enthusiastic fans.
 
My furthest (farthest?) gig...

Farther = distance
Further = degree

"If we drive any farther, I will not discuss this further." :)

Apart from my touring gig, the farthest I've gone with a local band is probably 500 miles, and happily it was a carpool situation. Occasionally I'll drive 100-120 miles, also usually a carpool situation.

Fortunately, most of my gigs are "in town", which in L.A. can mean 25-50 miles.

Here's another rule just for fun:

Theater = the building
Theatre = the craft

Sadly, nobody sticks to that one.

Bermuda
 
As a pub band drummer in the North East of England we fill our diaries closer to home and the farthest I've driven is about 45 miles/an hour. I remember years ago seeing a pub about 70 miles away advertising for bands and I mistakenly thought that playing further from home equalled "success". It was then pointed out to me that there were dozens of closer venues we hadn't even looked at.
All being well I'm gigging with one or other of my bands 3-4 Saturdays a month next year with most gigs being within 20 minutes drive and the farthest about 45 minutes away.
 
Farther = distance
Further = degree

"If we drive any farther, I will not discuss this further." :)

Apart from my touring gig, the farthest I've gone with a local band is probably 500 miles, and happily it was a carpool situation. Occasionally I'll drive 100-120 miles, also usually a carpool situation.

Fortunately, most of my gigs are "in town", which in L.A. can mean 25-50 miles.

Here's another rule just for fun:

Theater = the building
Theatre = the craft

Sadly, nobody sticks to that one.

Bermuda

Thank you for finally clearing that up for me Jon.

And good tip on the theater/theatre thing.

Now I know who to ask when I have those pesky grammar questions.

Here's my offering. When a Roger says to Dale that he is jealous of one of Dale's possessions....it is correctly described as envy, not jealousy.

Roger is envious of Dale's possession.

Jealousy involves a minimum of 3 people.
 
Strangest gig was probably some island we played Essex way where you had to wait for the tide to go out before you could get on/off the island.

At this point I realise I live on a little overcrowded Island so my road trips may be on the modest side compared to most!


Ahhh, good old Mersea Island! My sister lived there for a while. Used to look up the tide times before travelling!
 
It varies for me. I've toured europe/UK probably 10 times (I live in LA now but used to live in NYC), Mexico too a couple times.

Farthest I've probably gone is Japan. One of those times we travelled to Tokyo for a one-off show where we spent more time in the air than we did on the ground.

If I'm driving, it's usually within a region of the US: Northeast, Southeast, Midwest, West Coast, etc...

Right now I'm in Edmonton (from LA) for a one-off festival show.
 
I'm normally willing to travel up to 3 1/2 hours for a gig-- a little longer than it takes to drive from Portland to Seattle. It has to pay, and/or be something I really want to do, of course. I'll drive an hour for not-that-great normal gigs.

The furthest I've driven per gig was kind of a bad SXSW tour-- we had shows in San Francisco, San Diego, and Austin. With the return trip that averaged out to ~1500 miles of driving per show.

The furthest I've driven to see a show was 1800 miles from Eugene to Kansas City, to see DCI finals in '88 or '89. I think we decided to do that on Thursday evening, and the show was on Saturday.

The strangest gig I've ever played was a children's party in Hong Kong at 8:00 am on Christmas morning. I guess there were about 500 kids there. There was supposed to be an hour of piano trio background music, then a gift drawing, for which they asked if I would play a drum roll. The piano player decided to just play Song For My Father for the whole hour. The drawing was conducted in Chinese, and the only person who gave me any indication of when to roll was our singer-- urgently-- who didn't speak Chinese, and had no actual idea of what was going on. I didn't do anything and it didn't matter.
 
The strangest gig I've ever played was a children's party in Hong Kong at 8:00 am on Christmas morning. I guess there were about 500 kids there. There was supposed to be an hour of piano trio background music, then a gift drawing, for which they asked if I would play a drum roll. The piano player decided to just play Song For My Father for the whole hour. The drawing was conducted in Chinese, and the only person who gave me any indication of when to roll was our singer-- urgently-- who didn't speak Chinese, and had no actual idea of what was going on. I didn't do anything and it didn't matter.

There is nothing that I don't like about this.
 
Went with Noodle Muffin to UC Davis, roughly 500 miles from LA. It was our best gig, with regard to attendance, excitement and sales. We didn't even promote.

This was when we figured out that the farther away from LA one gets, the better the audience can be, and the better the gig.
 
When I was young and foolish my original band drove to Sydney (almost 1000 miles) to play a 45 minute set at a three day festival, because 'the industry' was going to be there. Dodgy hand written map from the organisers, got lost, late, overtired, noisy accommodation in big tin sheds, cold showers...

Played OK at one of the smaller stages, OK response, no industry people, very little money... Ultra tired, and nearly fell asleep at the wheel way home, even rotating drivers. Then about one hour from home I got a speeding ticket which really was not my fault. Very frustrating, and not worth the effort.
 
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