MoodyTunes

Yesterday I had the good fortune to meet a tour manager for a band that is currently faux-rocking cities all across this fair land. I will not name this band, but I will say that they are roughly equivalent (in my casual music-fan mind) to New Kids on the Block.

I was at the laundromat trying to read in between washer and dryer loads. This is sacred time for me. I like people-watching, not necessarily people-listening, and it’s a great spot for that. NKOTB Tour Manager did not honor my Code of the Laundromat, which can be summarized like this: Don’t talk too much, and for God’s sake, don’t yell.

Some observations:

- to be a tour manager, you must lack the ability to recognize when people don’t want to hear you. You must talk very loudly, and get excited about inane things, and repeat stories over and over, or over-explain them. I’m serious. This makes perfect sense — if you have to direct 8 buses and 18 trucks and multiple entourages, you better be able to a) not listen and b) repeat your message, over and over. Next stop for you, tour manager, is politics.

- I don’t need to hear “dude” again. Ever.

- apparently NKOTB-style groups are severely lacking in talent. They make up for the lack of talent with extra servings of arrogance! Who knew? I can’t believe that teenage recording “artists” would have inflated egos, a fear of instruments, and terrible voices. I think it’s great that everybody on the inside believes and acknowledges this, and laughs while counting their stacks of money.

- U2 has 85 big-rig trucks to haul around their stage and stuff (this was a NKOTB tour manager anecdote…U2 is not the band in question). I think one of those trucks contains the stage, 80 are dedicated to Bono and his sunglasses and hair gel, and 4 are filled entirely with Bono’s Apostles, the opening act and transcribers of all that is Holy. Or, one of the trucks contains the animatronic Other Guys in U2 Besides Bono.

- this is pretty random, but if you talk about how much you love surfing and start naming surfing icons, you better get the names right. Laird Thompson? Kelly Snyder? What? Are you even the tour manager for the super-cool 2009 New Kids?! Now I’m starting to doubt everything.

I said over the summer that I needed to enter Nashville Year Two with a better plan for meeting celebrities. If my laundromat visit is any indication, I’m in for a long year. Why couldn’t I meet Jack White? Nicole Kidman?

At least now I’ll have a good story for them if we ever do cross paths.

“Seriously, Jack, I was managing this tour and we had 18 rigs and me and Bono ate Twizzlers back stage while Laird Thompson did handstands in the front row.”