Eight People, One Tiny Bathroom

This article was published on MusicRow.com a couple years ago and written by one of their staffers. Its humor and truth are reasons enough to give it a re-read. Hope you enjoy…

The Stark Truth—The Glamorous Tour Bus Life: Eight People, One Tiny Bathroom
“That’s Just What Utah Smells Like”

I recently took my maiden voyage in a tour bus with an artist and his band, an experience that got me intrigued not only about the etiquette of the road, but also about the experiences of those who spend most of their time there.

It seems certain “bus rules” are clearly delineated, hard and fast guidelines that everyone follows. Others are more loosely defined as “bus etiquette,” and those rules vary depending on the band, the bus and the driver.

My trip was on a 12-bunk Prevost coach. But even with just eight people on board, including the driver, it felt like very close quarters. The bus bathroom was the approximate size of one you’d find on an airplane, a challenging place to change clothes.

Asked how many is too many on a bus, bassist Michael Dearing says, “12 people who all get along feels much less crowded than seven or eight people who don’t.”

I knew some of the rules going in, like the one about sleeping with your feet facing the front of the bus so your head doesn’t absorb the impact in the event of a sudden stop, and the one about keeping the lounge doors shut when anyone is sleeping.

There’s another well-known rule I knew about in advance involving a certain bodily function that is strictly prohibited on busses. Brad Paisley’s wife, Kimberly Williams-Paisley, once wrote and directed a short film on this subject with a title that tells the whole story: “Numero Dos.”

One up-and-coming male star has 10 rules posted on his bus refrigerator at all times. They include rule No. 1: “We play country and look the part.” Other rules on his list prohibit drugs or alcohol, complaining, women on the bus with the exception of family (who must be approved in advance), and pornography (defined to include TV, movies, Internet and magazines). Also banned are “music and movies with a considerable amount of bad language or questionable content.”

Needless to say, on most busses the rules are much less strict.

On my three-night trip, sleep was elusive. I chose a bottom bunk, which I was told was the best bet, but it felt and sounded like I was sleeping in the luggage compartment under the bus. The bunks on this bus were less than two feet high, so sitting up was not an option. Trying to get the comforter wrapped around your feet in such a confined space feels a lot like wrestling a bear.

Some busses have what’s known as “condo bunks” that are tall enough to actually sit up in. I’m hoping to score one of those on my next trip.

Mercifully, this bus did have a “slide out” in the front lounge. When the bus is parked, the driver uses a remote to literally slide open the compartment, adding about three feet of width to the area. It makes a huge difference. Another pleasant surprise is that the bus is equipped with WiFi.

With no shower on the bus, I was concerned that by the end of the run we’d smell like the inhabitants of a petting zoo. Fortunately, there were hotel rooms booked in each city where we could pile in and clean up.

During a stop at an all you can eat buffet, I was informed of another bus rule as I watched the band load up their plates. “Eat as much as you can when you can,” I was told, “because you never know when the next opportunity to eat will come.” Not to worry though, the bus itself was stocked with a healthy selection from the four “C” food groups: chips, cookies, candy and coffee.

To rent a bus costs upwards of $475 a day, plus driver salary, fuel and insurance. A “day” is defined as midnight to midnight.

Bus drivers, I discovered, are pulling down the big bucks (many make six figures), particularly when they do a lot of overtime (or “overdrives,” in bus parlance), for which they are well paid. For very long distances, bands bring two drivers per bus. Many drivers are former musicians or frustrated musicians themselves.

“You hear complaints about artist egos, but drivers are their own little niche,” says one artist who was once told by a driver “you may be the star up on stage but in this bus I’m the boss.”

Several musicians told me the quality of the trip is, in large part, determined by the quality of the driver.

On this trip, we were lucky enough to have a great driver, Dana Heidemann of Roberts Brothers Coach. He’s been driving full time for three years, and was a musician before that, including a stint as a drummer in Darryl Worley’s band.

Heidemann says drivers sometime have to make up their own rules, like what to charge the band if someone drunkenly urinates on the floor and the driver has to clean it up. “I’m not the maid, I’m not their mother,” Heidemann says. “My job is to tidy up the bus once a day.”

Among Heidemann’s other rules are “the sink is not the trash” and “clean up after yourself, pretend you are at home.”

Heidemann has seen it all on his busses, including pumpkin bowling down the aisle at Halloween. Plus, he adds, “I’ve seen so many naked people it’s not even funny.”

Among the ways drivers amuse themselves on long trips are games like “bug poker.” The rules are simple. Each person on the bus puts a piece of tape on the windshield with his or her name on it. For the first piece of tape to get “bug splatter” on it, the tape’s namesake wins the money in the pot.

Any musician or crewmember that has spent any kind of time on the road has bus stories. Veteran drummer Tony Mac recalls a trip through Utah when the band began to notice a sulfur smell. They asked the driver about it and were told, “That’s just what Utah smells like.” When they finally convinced him to pull over, the bus’ battery was on fire.

As a musician, Heidemann was once on a bus that hit and killed a deer. Being a resourceful group, the artist and several band members broke out their knives and some garbage bags and helped themselves to about 50 lbs. of meat.

Veteran merchandise manager Kenny Pearson, who was not on my road trip but has been out on tour with several artists, was once on a bus whose driver decided to dump the foul contents of its septic tank right on the interstate while driving, not realizing a state trooper was close behind. The trooper pulled them over, but when he came on the bus a few autographed pictures were enough to make him forget the incident.

One artist (who didn’t want his name used with this story) was previously a sideman for a headlining act. When their bus broke down somewhere in Kansas, the headliners called a cab to come take them to an airport, leaving the band with the broken down bus, which had to be towed to a repair shop which was closed for a holiday weekend. With no air conditioning in 100-degree heat, one band member made the mistake of eating a sandwich that had gone bad, giving himself a severe case of food poisoning. Ever mindful of the all-important No. 2 rule, however, the musician spent most of the next two days naked in a nearby cornfield taking care of business