Guests.

It’s always great to have friends and family come to the show when you’re on the road, but it comes with a certain amount of stress.

The stress being that you want them to have a great time, you want them to have great seats, and you want them to be able to come hang out backstage and meet your cool hairy rock star friends. Most importantly, you want to be able to spend some time with them. 

For the second time on this run, William had a bunch of friends and family come out to the show. Which is great. But the downside is when there isn’t a ton of room to accommodate everyone backstage after the show. 

The Coca Cola Roxy is a nice new venue, but it really wasn’t built to comfortably entertain 30 guests backstage. So we ended up squeezing William’s guests into one of the dressing rooms, and all of the other guests got funneled into the catering room. Then they all sat around like customers at a busy deli drinking room temperature water and waiting for their number to be called so they could meet the band. 

The other pressure to having guests come to the gig is that even though it’s understood that you’re working, you still feel a need to try and spend some quality time with your guests, even though you’re busy.
Imagine being a line cook and having your cousins come visit you at work. You’re in the middle of cooking breakfast, then you go out in the hallway for a minute of rapid conversation before you have to sprint back to the kitchen to flip the pancakes. You’d like to spend some time with your friends and loved ones, but there’s always work to be done. Especially if your job entails doing whatever the band needs. It’s hard to spend quality time with old friends when Mike interrupts with a desperate request for a pair of socks, or Sean’s need for gum has reached red level emergency status. 

Virtually every guest I’ve ever had at a show understands this, but it usually doesn’t make it any easier. It’s always a juggling act to make sure your friends are taken care of, but that the set list gets printed and the after show food gets ordered.
So to any of my friends who happen to read this; yes, I want you to come to the show, yes, I can put you on the list, and yes, I can get Jerry to autograph your boob. But we probably won’t see as much of each other as we’d like, because there are always more pancakes to be flipped…