Tour life might seem glamorous and fun, but it ain’t for the faint of heart. Between the homesickness and long drives, there’s also the issue of where to rest your head each night. Up-and-coming bands cutting their teeth playing tiny gig after tiny gig don’t get to ride in a lux tour bus much less stay in a hotel room every night (although, those can be weird, too). Instead, they get to crash wherever they can while trying to save up gas money. San Francisco-based melodic metal outfit Lightworker know all about this — they’ve stayed in some pretty shady spots while on the road. The band — comprised of Joe Calderon, Grayson Hurd, Ryan Johnson and Brad Green — are gearing up for the release of their first full-length record, Fury By Failure via Solid State this spring. We caught up with Hurd to get a look at what tour life is really all about.
Some hotel in Cincinnati
I don’t remember the specific hotel we were staying in, but I remember it being a very tall brick building with vines growing all over it. It borderline looked like it could have been abandoned, but it was the only option we had that night considering our van needed servicing.
Ambassador Hotel, Milwaukee
This isn’t necessarily the weirdest place, but on this list more so because of the history behind it with Jeffery Dahmer. What made it creepy was that our room wasn’t too far from the room that Dahmer always requested to stay in.
Creepy converted house in Louisville, Kentucky
We stayed in a huge brick house that had converted the front room into a coffee shop. It was actually a pretty cool house, but here’s the weird part — we went exploring through the house and found a backroom with a dried up well in the ground and a single chair sitting at the bottom… immediate horror movie vibes.
Backyard studio
I don’t remember what city or state this was in, but one time a fan offered us a place to crash and it ended up being a studio he had built in the backyard of his house. It was a cool place, but I think it was just weird using a studio to sleep rather than record.
Home
Yes, home. The first time I did a tour that rolled through my hometown and I got to sleep at home for a night before heading out the next day. Man, that felt weird. Good, but weird.
