Adam Elmakias is one of my favorite band photographers, he takes really awesome pictures and he seems like a cool guy. Sometimes when he is on tour he dresses up in an angry birds costume and crowd surfs in a blow up raft; clearly he pretty badass. As well as being awesome Adam also is really good about telling his fan base what he is up to and the kinds of experiences he is having on tour. He has a YouTube channel and writes a blog which is linked to his personal website: adamelmakias.com.
One of the blogs he wrote was about his experience working at Warped Tour 2010. For anyone who doesn't know what warped tour is its a huge concert/festival that happens during the summer in the US and now in Canada. This summer will be the 20 year anniversary! Anyways, its awesome and it's a fun time and there are typically about 50 touring bands, also local bands which change depending upon location. But its a three month long tour in the summer so its hot and its crowded and the bands have to be on location setting up for their performances at 830 am rather than at 2 pm which is the standard time to arrive at a location for a show that starts at 6 or 7 pm. Its not an easy life: life on the road, its grueling. I think that is one of the things that Adam tries to point out in his 5 part blog series describing his Warped Tour experience, while its a great time and something that he loves to do, something that he lives for, its also really really hard.
One of the things he touches upon in the first entry is how precious a simple shower is. When you're on the road there isn't a lot of time to shower or a lot of opportunities to shower. Depending upon the venues they are playing at there may only be 4 to 6 showers for everyone to use. That is not a lot considering that on average there are: at least 5 people to a band plus each band has a crew that sells merchandise, sets up stage gear, does sound checks, manages the bands, run social networking sites, and so on. Adam talks about what they call a solar shower. when there aren't any actual showers they take a trash bag and fill it with water and leave it on the sidewalk in the sun to get warm then they hang the bag on one of the bus side mirrors and cut a hole in the bottom of the bag so it is like a really ghetto shower. He says its better than trying to take a bird bath in a sink.
Also there isn't a lot of space on the buses, so you have to travel light. He has a ton of camera equipment too so he has even less space to bring personal belongings like clothes. Also he ends up bouncing around the buses for different dates so the less stuff you have the easier it is to travel from bus to bus.
On their days off the tour members get the luxury of being able to stay in a hotel instead of being trapped on the bus. Adam talks about when the tour stopped in AZ for their day off and at night they all participated in a charity bowling tournament and then after they went to Walmart to get basic supplies and they accidentally left him at Walmart and had to turn back for him.
So in the end tour life isn't easy but it definitely sounds like fun if you can handle it. You get to make some money, see some sites, and meet some really rad people and do some really ridiculous stuff with them.
this is Adam circa 2010
here are the guys at the T.J. Martell Foundation charity bowling tournament, AZ 2010
source for blog and photos: http://adamelmakias.com/photoshoots/warped-tour-stories-part-1-days-0-10/
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