SXSW 2009

Life on the road

Martin Atkins has seen it all and done most of it and his book tells musicians what they need to know

By Joe Gross
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Wednesday, March 11, 2009

If it's happened to a rock band on the road, British drummer Martin Atkins has experienced it personally or knows someone who has.

He joined post-punk band Public Image Limited at 19, spent six years on and off with them, played in industrial rock titans Ministry's best lineup in 1989 and '90, founded bands such as Pigface, Murder Inc. and the Damage Manual, runs Invisible Records, and has generally kept himself busier than most folks who have 30 years in the music business without ever hitting superstardom. Dude is a role model for how all of it should be done.

Which is why his book, "Tour:Smart" might be the single best monograph ever written about touring which, these days, is virtually the only way a working musician can generate continuous income. It covers everything from logistics to media exposure to why not to skimp on a bus to live sound to finances to sex and drugs while on the road. There are war stories and cautionary tales. There's advice from tour managers, crew, musicians, promoters and more musicians. It's a shockingly useful document, whether you are a working musician or just want to think like one.

And it wasn't like Atkins just talked to so-called experts. His experts are the musicians who lived it.

"The coolest thing for me (about putting the book together) was just the idea that I could learn from Sheep on Drugs," Atkins says by way of example. (Sheep on Drugs is a notoriously, um, indulgent techno act.) "They put out a tin that said, 'Sheep on Drugs alcohol fund, please give generously.' I never would have thought of that and for them, it was sometimes the difference between eating after a show or not eating after a show. During the meals, they would go over the day's events. Without those meals, they wouldn't have made it through three days."

He's reluctant to boil the book down to an easy fix. "It's not one thing, it's 20 little things," Atkins says. "You can't smart your way through it. I don't know if I'm particularly smart, but I'm the guy who touched the wet paint nine times and on the 10th time I thought, 'Maybe I shouldn't do that.'"

That said, there's one thing Atkins is thinks almost no bands do: "Instead of arbitrarily deciding where to tour, more bands should tour where the fans are," using programs such as Google Analytics to analyze Web site traffic. "It can be the difference between playing to two people a night and playing to, for example, 30." Which can be the difference between eating and not eating for a band heading out for the first time.

You never know where fans are going to be. "I was just in Marietta, Georgia, for a lecture," Atkins says. "There were 160 people out of their minds on Jagermeister. I was floored. Atlanta must have 20 suburbs like that. Lots of American cities do. It starts to change the way you look at touring. Just going where your audience is gets you the steam and fuel to keep going."

The man is on a roll. "I was watching one of those restaurant programs on BBC," he says. "If someone has a good meal they will tell five to seven people. If they have a bad meal they will tell 21 people. The same applies to touring. The pollution from a bad gig spreads quite far. Carefully planning a tour is all about minimizing the things that can make for a bad gig."

Read that last comment again. In other words, if you pay attention to all the details that need to be paid attention to when your band is not on stage, it frees you up to be your best on stage.

Or as Atkins puts it, "It's just really lame granddad advice, but touring is about risk management on one side so you can take risks on the other side."

Perhaps needless to say, he would make one cool granddad.

jgross@statesman.com; 912-5926