2010 to now (part 1)

Wow, it’s hard to believe over a year has passed since LORD was a touring band.

Like Andy said in his blog, we haven’t played together since we all left the stage on the final date of the Tyrants Return tour in 2010.  I remember on the last few dates thinking “3 to go… 2 to go… last one” and a sense of relief coming over me that it was over. This is not a good thing when you’re supposed to be doing this because you love it.

I remember being angry at the poor decisions that were made, both from us as a band, and from some promoters and some labels we were working with (and no, I won’t point fingers or name names) that we didn’t have the support we were promised by them when we started our working relationship with them. For all of the highlights of the tour (let’s face it, another tour to Japan and this time with Doro and Jaded Heart is pretty awesome), every step of the way was met with “so why is this happening, who was supposed to be looking after this?”. Lost opportunities, relatively poor crowd attendance and the band all dealing with their own stuff in their personal lives in one way or another really took its toll.

I also remember being really, really tired. Like Andy mentioned in his blog, the amount of tour dates that we played in 2010 was miniscule compared to big tours that you regularly see going for day after day, for months at a time. But unlike a lot of touring artists, we look after literally everything. We book our own shows, arrange our own merchandise, do our own websites and artwork (sometimes even the cover art itself), write, produce, record our own records, release them on our own label. We’re our own management company. We’re our own accountants (dear God, don’t get me started on that!), and the money for touring has to come from somewhere – and in this day and age when there’s no money in the industry any more (save for major label mainstream artists), every step you make is crucial to get things right or you end up very much in debt.

That’s a hell of a job. The other guys do day jobs to eat and pay their bills. I do LORD and recording so we can get over the line when we need to, and a lot of stuff that people take for granted (like a weekend off or having money to go and party or buy CDs or whatever) just isn’t real when all of your time and income is funneled more or less back into the band so it can keep going.

I’ve been doing this thing since I was a teenager when Dungeon started. And when Dungeon ended in 2005, we knew that we had to go out with all guns blazing to reestablish ourselves since it was an obvious (but necessary) step backwards from the point that Dungeon was at.

And go we did… the first year we were touring behind Dungeon’s The Final Chapter album and supported Queensryche and did a bigger Australian tour than Dungeon had ever done. The next year we had Ascendence out. Then Hear No Evil the next year. Then Set In Stone the next year. Then Return Of The Tyrant. All the while touring relentlessly. I think just in 2009 we did something like 40 dates in Australia alone. And in all of that, it was the band looking after all of the logistics, promotion, tour artwork, getting new musicians in (we’d changed guitarists and drummers in that time and needed to show the new people their parts)… it was non-stop.

Also, we had to put on a world class rock show on a shoe-string budget, and push even harder than we had ever done before since we had something to prove – LORD wasn’t just a shallow imitation of Dungeon, it was it’s own thing and could be far more dynamic. New stage props, new backdrops, new gear, backing tracks to add in parts we were never able to convincingly do in the past. Basically, we worked hard, and absolutely non-stop to make sure we gave ourselves the best shot at achieving our goals.

By the end of 2010, we were exhausted and needed a break, simple as that.

Usually at the end of a tour we’re making plans for what we’re doing next year as far as recording or touring goes, but every time I thought of that, my heart sunk. The idea of heading back out on the road seemed so abstract and distant to where I wanted to be. Another year of being on the road or locked in a studio working on a new album while you know that your personal life is withering and dying before your eyes. You can’t remember what it’s like to be able to plan time with friends. You know that you’re slipping away from your partner and family. You can barely remember who you are outside of your persona as “the guy from that band”. Hobbies? What are they? Got another plane to catch to our next show, no time for hobbies.

After doing this since I was a teenager, this is literally all I knew for more than half of my life. I gotta tell you, that’s really scary when you sit and think about it. Your life is defined by a tour and recording cycle and everything else is put on the back burner so you can make this happen. Unless you’ve been in this situation with a band or a job or whatever, it’s hard to grasp, but it’s all-encompassing and consumes you. And worse, unlike a challenging job, there’s not even any monetary reward in it since there’s no money in the industry for bands like ours.

By the end of the tour in 2010, this was really starting to play on my mind and I knew that I didn’t want to end up a very lonely old man one day that spent his whole life running so fast towards the destination that he never noticed the amazing view and the amazing company he had with him all along. Looking around the room at the band, I knew everyone else had their own dramas that needed to be sorted out and we all decided that 2011 was the year we got our shit together behind the scenes so we could make 2012 amazing.

So what did I do in 2011?  Onward to PART 2!