Emotional Support Tour
There’s something about moving through time and space, the heart pouring lyrical episodes every night and the tiredness, the gut swallowing tiredness. Something about the combination of being on the road, alone but together, that opens us up as humans.
The escape from the mundane home life, where troubles arrive in the postbox every morning and texts can be fraught with conflict instead of factual with day sheets. This rock and roll existence is good for the emotions and hopefully, sometimes if we’re lucky and with good people we can talk about them. Friends for life are made in the front seat of a splitter van or the back lounge of the tour bus. We share stories of grief as we hurtle across the continents. Marital problems are never resolved but they can be detailed and discussed with strangers far easier than with loved ones back home.
Tour Dog
The purity of departure is certain, the trust of what goes on tour stays on tour.
If the band can lay their lives on the line every night in front of hundreds or thousands of other people, fans singing their fears and dreams and hopes and tears back to them louder than they can stand to hear. If we can achieve our dreams even just a little in these moments it releases lions of courage from our souls so that it’s ok to talk about how we feel. It’s ok to tell each other that I understand and that it will pass and it will be ok. It’s ok to talk.
The drummer had lost his father, the FOH listens. It’s ok to talk. The bass player's marriage is on the rocks, he’s worried about the kids. It’s ok to talk. The driver doesn’t know where the next gig is going to come from. Money is tight. It’s ok to talk. The singer's heart is a scarred vessel of love. It’s ok to sing about it. Life on the road is a brotherhood, a sisterhood, a family. If we’re lucky it feels like home.
There is a flip side to this comfort blanket though and it’s a cold, lonely hellish existence. Tour can be that too. Stuck in a 5 star prison, no one answered your calls. Trapped in a Travelodge family room with 3 strangers that hate you, and smell, and talk about things you don’t understand and won’t ever want to understand.
Tour can send the best men west through loneliness and seclusion. Roadies can be a pack of wolves tearing at your nerves, baiting you, heckling you and desperately trying to break you if you don’t quite fit into their level of weird. It can make timid men turn to drink, strong women turn to drugs, fit men fat and fat men fail.
Band members will smile to your face all the time, they want to take your place. Back stabbers. 🎶
The backline tech that stands over the sleeping, snoring roommate - eyes flickering between the pillow in his hand, the whisky on the table and the anger in the room understands that tour can be wrong much more than it’s right. So, sometimes it’s best to wake up and leave and hope for better days, because they do exist and you deserve them.
According to a study by the University of Westminster and MusicTank of musicians, 68.5% of 2,211 said they have experienced depression, and 71.1% said they had experienced severe anxiety or panic attacks. These results show that musicians are 3 times more susceptible to depression than the average person.
Tour Team
“Touring and Mental Health: The Music Industry Manual is available online and worth a read.It should be the first thing we all pack when we head out on the road." Philip Selway, Radiohead.
Tiff Hudson is a Psychotherapist specialising in mental health support for artists and crew
Psychotherapy & Counselling MA MBACP
🧠 Mental health support for artists and crew
🌍 Lived experience as touring music industry crew