PROLOGUE
Life on the road can get lonely. It can be busy and it can definitely keep you occupied, but it can still get lonely.
The phone helps. Skype helps a little. Sometimes you fly home in between tour dates or maybe your family flies out to see a show or two, but it's never enough time. You're still left alone in the end, lonely in your upholstered cocoon, flying 75 miles per hour down the highway from one city to the next, never remembering where you are.
Sure, your brothers are there. They're in the band with you, they have to be. Your backup players are there, too. Crew members. Bus driver, tour manager--hell even our father is on the road with us.
But it's still lonely.
Social media helps, too. A little. It would help a little more if my wife used it more frequently but I guess I have to be understanding of her, seeing as I've left her alone to chase around our five children all day long. But this is how we make our living. This is how I provide for my family. This is what I'm passionate about.
Social media can also be the death of you. Maybe that's being a little too dramatic, but at times that is definitely what it feels like. When the show is over and it's too late to call home and everyone on the bus has decided to call it a night and you're still too wound up to sleep, you find yourself alone in the upholstered cocoon, your phone lit up in your face, cruising social media. You like to keep up with your fan base. Your band has an app where fans can speak to each other, so you keep up with that. You cruise Twitter and Instagram and Pinterest and Facebook and Vine and your band's own website...what else is there? You have accounts for them all. Some of it's amusing. You want to jump in the conversation but you know you can't. It's a bad idea for various reasons. If you're not lonely one way, you're lonely the other.
No. Social media CAN'T be the death of you. It IS the death of you...
Life on the road can get lonely. It can be busy and it can definitely keep you occupied, but it can still get lonely.
The phone helps. Skype helps a little. Sometimes you fly home in between tour dates or maybe your family flies out to see a show or two, but it's never enough time. You're still left alone in the end, lonely in your upholstered cocoon, flying 75 miles per hour down the highway from one city to the next, never remembering where you are.
Sure, your brothers are there. They're in the band with you, they have to be. Your backup players are there, too. Crew members. Bus driver, tour manager--hell even our father is on the road with us.
But it's still lonely.
Social media helps, too. A little. It would help a little more if my wife used it more frequently but I guess I have to be understanding of her, seeing as I've left her alone to chase around our five children all day long. But this is how we make our living. This is how I provide for my family. This is what I'm passionate about.
Social media can also be the death of you. Maybe that's being a little too dramatic, but at times that is definitely what it feels like. When the show is over and it's too late to call home and everyone on the bus has decided to call it a night and you're still too wound up to sleep, you find yourself alone in the upholstered cocoon, your phone lit up in your face, cruising social media. You like to keep up with your fan base. Your band has an app where fans can speak to each other, so you keep up with that. You cruise Twitter and Instagram and Pinterest and Facebook and Vine and your band's own website...what else is there? You have accounts for them all. Some of it's amusing. You want to jump in the conversation but you know you can't. It's a bad idea for various reasons. If you're not lonely one way, you're lonely the other.
No. Social media CAN'T be the death of you. It IS the death of you...