As potentially ill-conceived as that tour may have been, we actually managed to do a number of things right. However, the luck and money ran out simultaneously shortly after we arrived in Toronto and we were sent packing to our families' homes until we could book some more shows. Roughly a week-and-a-half later the tour culminated in a show at Detroit's State Theatre which was followed by a 55-hour bee-line for Vancouver during which we stopped for gas, food and nothing else. It was an uncomfortable ride, but we had achieved all of our goals; we were broke, exhausted, and happier than we'd ever been.

Although touring has changed significantly for us since then, inevitably the preparation sometimes still seems more intense than the tours themselves.

Even after the judicious addition of a couple of cover tunes, and a frenzied week of writing to slap together a few more songs, many of the gigs we played on our first few tours required a little more material than the band had at their disposal. The solution: wait until the crowd got good and drunk and slap a couple of songs from the first set into the third. On the up-side, it was gratifying to look out into the crowd and see some of them nodding their heads at us and each other as if to say, "Hey, I know this song." And as long as they couldn't quite remember where they had heard it before, everything was fine. It's been a very long time since we've had to write an extra hour of material for the road in one week, but tour prep hasn't gotten that much less intense.

Long before we go out our management and agent are putting the tour together; solidifying the bill, booking venues, negotiating contracts and liaising with our road manager and the band itself concerning assembling a crew, developing merchandise, working out what variety of press will be done and so on. As that gets solidified the band goes into regular rehearsals to get the music together and then a few days prior to the first show we enter pre-production, during which the band and crew assemble in a large empty room with all the gear that will travel with us, i.e. house sound system, stage sound system, and lighting rig, to run through the show a few times and make sure that everything works as intended. Initially it never does, and during the first few nights of a tour, changes are always being made. This preparation is essential, but it, and touring itself, is an expensive proposition, so once out there it's advisable to travel as efficiently and swiftly as possible, because every day you're not playing, whether it's eight people in a van or several buses and trucks, you're losing money hand over fist.

David Usher And Kevin @ Fanfest in Vancouver

So the first rule of tour survival is...

Try not to lose money. None of the other rules to survive the road with your sanity and health intact matter one steaming plate of yak bladders if the tour goes belly up and there's nothing left to survive. My parents were always glad to see the band when we ran out of cash and energy and would hand us a garbage bag of sandwiches and other supplies early on when we were eight guys in a van, but their enthusiasm would no doubt be somewhat diminished if we pulled up, parked two 45 foot tour buses and a semi on the front lawn and requested dinner for 26.

One of the wisest bits of advice I've heard on tour? "You can drive it, but the blades are worth $10,000." A little piece of information imparted to myself and Paul by the Zamboni driver at an arena in Victoria, BC the last night of the Creature tour (post-post-tour party). At the time I was hanging off the side of the Zamboni with my hands on the keys, our tour manager was hanging off me trying his level best to physically dissuade me from stealing it and Paul was hanging off him trying to dislodge him and getting ready to fake left and jump on for our intended victory lap. O.K., there may or may not be some larger symbolic context to that comment, or it may be entirely irrelevant. Either way, it's a good story.

Anyway... Barring financial disaster our most important consideration on tour is to jealously guard and maintain our mental and physical health against all comers. No matter how well the record is doing, how many bodies are in the house, how fast merchandise is flying off the shelves and onto the sweating, thrashing bodies of the crowd, or how bone-crushingly, ear-shatteringly loud we are, it's no good if you're as sick as two dogs in a barrel of biological waste and on the verge of emotional collapse. How to know if there's a problem? If the only people you're getting along famously with are the voices in your head, then there's a problem. If you ever have to coax another band member onto stage with the words, "I believe that you believe you are who you say you are, but we have a show to do. After that you can teach the Prussian army a lesson," there's a problem. Health is key.

Our tour survival kit includes; oxygen, a really swanky first aid kit, a boatload of ibuprofen, Tylenol and assorted topical pain killers, medicine to ward off flu, colds, dysentery and evil spirits, a bizarre collection of heating pads, any prescription medication required by pre-existing medical conditions and some that aren't, several rolls of duct tape and a large bottle of premium scotch whisky.
It's not enough, but it's a start.

Starting a band? Determined to get out on the road? Besides health, sanity and the possible consequences of blowing up the hotel's plumbing, a little mental preparation is in order... Learn to love being around people virtually every second of every day, and get used to dramatically reduced privacy and personal space. Anytime you take a group of people, stuff them into a vehicle together, start the whole thing rolling and put it on a really tight schedule, there's bound to be the odd hiccup, hacking cough or cerebral hemorrhage. Considering the amount of time Moist have spent within spitting distance of each other, it fascinates me that we haven't killed each other yet.