What’s A Tour Manager?: An account of life on the road from Amir Hasan

Photos by Mike Edmonds

While attending the Deas Vail show in October, The Horn correspondent Tavish Faggart saw what he thought was a familiar face and, of course, it was. Meet Amir Hasan. He’s a Richmond native and an avid tour manager for a variety of bands. After running into Amir at the show, Tavish learned that he would be in town for a few weeks, so they scheduled an interview before he went back on the road.

The Horn: How did you start tour managing?

Amir Hasan: The first tour I did was in ‘04 with some hardcore bands called Black My Heart and On Broken Wings. They were pretty big at the time but they were just friends of mine. When they came to Richmond, I told them that I want to tour with them and I went on the road with the bands for two weeks. It was pretty exciting but of course I had to go home and return to my sales job at T-Mobile.

Five years passed and as vacation I went on tour with my friend’s band, Bury Your Dead, for two weeks and during that time I had fun and got wasted every night. I acted completely ridiculous but I also watched how they work and how their tour manager works and I was really into it.

About a year later I asked if I could come on tour with them and tour manage and their first response was “No way. There’s no way in hell we’re letting you come with us. You wouldn’t work well at all. Last time you were a monster.” I explained that I could do it. The reason I partied last time was because I was on vacation. They agreed but only if I came out as their drum tech and they wouldn’t pay me. So I went from having a really awesome, well-paying job to basically working for free at the lowest position on tour. I had no idea how to be a drum tech. I knew nothing about drums. Eventually I went from a drum tech to a tour manager in-training to drum teching and officially tour managing to exclusively tour managing. At the end of the nine months with Bury Your Dead, I was managing a tour with 5,000-capacity arenas. My best friend, Myke Terry, sang for that band, so it was like being on tour with your best friend with 5,000 fans and selling out arenas. It was a great time. It was a rough way to learn but sometimes that’s the best way.

I feel like tour managers have a reputation for looking pissed off. From what I’ve seen, they tend to have a certain look.

Yes, the angry tour manager face. We always looked stressed out. First day of tour, I always tell the bands that I always look stressed out.

If you see me looking stressed, don’t talk to me. I have a million things running through my head. I usually have a list of things that I need to do when I get to a venue. On the way, a merch person or light director or a promoter stops me. It’s a really focused look. It’s not stressed but really focused. There’s definitely a tour manager look.

What are your daily duties?

I get this question a bit, my friend. If we stay at a hotel, the typical day on tour goes like this:

I’ll wake up earlier than the rest of the band, usually an hour and a half, shower and get ready. I’ll look at my contract about the venue and see if there is a dressing room and if the venue has Wi-Fi. I might have to call a promoter that day. I then get the band up and ready [and] on the bus or whatever we’re travelling in. We head out and usually drive a little bit to the venue. When we get there I am usually the first person to get off the bus and go inside the venue. I greet the promoter, I greet the loaders and I meet the lighting person and the house sound engineer. I say “Hey, I’m Amir with this band,” and I find out where the dressing rooms are. Then I go back to whatever [vehicle] we’re in and I tell them where they need to go.

Then I tend to the needs of the band throughout the day. Do they need to go to Guitar Center? Do they need to go to CVS? Whatever they want to do I make sure that it happens. I make sure that load-in is going straight because our crewmembers work with local loaders. I make sure no one is fucking up our gear. This is usually five hours before we play. I usually do stage managing as well so I’m standing on the side of the stage and make sure no water bottles are being thrown on stage, no gear’s getting wrecked, no one is climbing on stage, and that no one is doing anything weird. If anything goes wrong on stage I fix it.

Then we do a post-show meet-and-greet or merch meet-and-greet. After we get that done, I make sure load-up is going smoothly and that we get paid. If the guys want to party I round up people who want to hang out with us and the party starts. It’s really spontaneous. Everyone thinks it sounds so awesome but it’s a lot of work. My days are from 9am to about 3am. It’s a little more relaxing because it’s a lifestyle and less of sitting in an office, but it is still an insane amount of work.

Hasan on the interview:

“I’m never in front of the camera. I’m always behind the scenes. No one cares about what I have to say. It’s so weird being a tour manager. I have a lot to do but I don’t ever have to deal with fans. I don’t have to take pictures.”

What kind of traits would a person have to have to manage tours?

It’s funny because I don’t think I necessarily have them in terms of actually working, but when I’m on the road I have them. You have to have high energy and you have to be really flexible. That’s something that I’ve learned along the way. A lot of new tour managers think that you have to be firm all the time and that’s a mistake that I made when I was younger. You don’t have to be firm all the time. You need to flexible. You have to be focused and detail-oriented, you have to know everyone involved with the tour, especially if you’re in charge of a headlining tour, and you have to be able to multitask. It’s funny because when I’m home, I can’t remember anything, but when I’m on the road I can remember what every band member needed.

What are some of the bands you’ve worked with?

I’ll do the chronology: I worked with Bury Your Dead in 2009. I had nine months with them. After that I went about nine months to a year without work. It picked up last year and I tour managed It’s Alive. They’re on Wind-Up records, an indie label backed by the major label EMI. That’s a really good deal for them. We did a few tours last year and then I went out with a band called Framing Hanley. I think they’re probably the biggest band I’ve toured with. And then I went out with a band called Anchored. That wasn’t a good situation, so I don’t work for them anymore. I was just hired by a band called Me Talk Pretty. We have about three months of work. This is their first headlining tour. I haven’t done a headlining tour in long time so I’m very excited about it.

Are there any Richmond dates for that tour?

There may be on the second part of the tour in January. There was talk about being here on the first part of the tour, but there is a Virginia Beach date on the second date and the first show is in Baltimore.

How do you get on these tours? Is it contract based or is it just who you know?

I haven’t yet [worked via contract], but I really should. It’s a smart way to do work. Probably the next time I go out on tour I’ll do it through a contract. With It’s Alive, I was referred because their guitar player knew Myke and asked him if I would tour manage for them. My philosophy is to go out and do a good job and if you let other people see that you’re working hard and doing a good job, they’ll want to hire you. When I was out with It’s Alive, Framing Hanley did not have a tour manager so they were tour managing themselves. You don’t want to be at that level and touring without a manager. It’s such a weird thing to do. I couldn’t imagine juggling it. They saw me working and liked my ethic when It’s Alive was opening for them and asked if I would work for them and I agreed.

What’s the most difficult decision you’ve had to make as a tour manager?

When I went on tour with Bury Your Dead, the tour was not going well at all. There were 5 bands on the tour, the ticket sales were low no one was coming out to the shows and we had to go to Canada.

When you’re headlining you have a budget for catering for the entire tour. Normally it’s $400 to $500 [a night]. I take the money from the promoter and we buy groceries. Usually you buy a case of water, a case of beer, and the band gets about $10 a head. A lot of the shows, the catering was about $200 and for five bands that doesn’t work. I think we had five guys in the [headlining] band and four crewmembers. That’s $90 right there. So for the opening bands, I barely had enough money for water and a $5 Hot-and-Ready pizza.

It was really stressful for me because I hated doing that. I’d tell them “I’m sorry but there’s no money.” I’m not going to tell my band that they can’t get their money because there’s not enough for the other bands. They would literally fire me for that. The tour didn’t go well, there was no money for catering, and that wasn’t my fault. I knew that they hated me. They definitely hated me. They hated my guts. We were on the tour bus and they were in vans. They were slimming it. Every night on tour I felt really bad. I knew they hated me for it and I knew I couldn’t do anything about it. I had to suck it up. I didn’t think that the job was as cool during that time.

How do you survive the drives?

Fortunately, I never drive on tour. If you’re in a van and there are four guys in the band, you each get your own bench in the van. You can put your headphones on and zone out. There’s a lot of texting involved. We’ll have a movie on the laptop. If you want to smoke substances out the back of the van you can do that. Overall, it consists of lot’s of really dumb jokes and really terrible music.

On a bus it’s different. It’s kind of like an apartment. You can lounge out, lie down on couches or lay in your bunk and zone out. The drives aren’t that bad though. They’re usually between four and eight hours, but the bad ones are 12 hours plus. It’s like “get me out of here!” Even on a bus those drives make you want to kill yourself. It feels like you’re in a submarine. It’s big but it’s tight quarters after ten hours. You can’t go anywhere except walk back and forth.

So there are no breaks?

No, no breaks, but it depends on what you’re driving in. I’ve done the drive from Dallas to Orlando twice. It’s an 18-hour trip and you only stop for gas.

Are there any projects that you pursue on or off tour?

The only thing now is working for The Silent Age. Myke Terry is a really good friend of mine, I give input so whenever they have a show here I go out and help them. I pitch in merch ideas, how they look [on stage] or their website, how they interact on their Facebook or Twitter. I would love to start doing artist management or artist development. I’ve tried a little bit but it didn’t work out. But I don’t think then it was the right time to work with the band that I worked with. That’s the kind of thing I’d like to get into.

What’s a day off like?

On tours we have this saying that “there are no days off, there are only off days.” Of course, I don’t have any day when I don’t work. If there’s an off day, usually the guys decide they want to go to the mall. We go to the mall and walk around and spend our money. We ask each other why we’re doing this, but it makes for a good opportunity to see people and get a feel for that town. Especially with It’s Alive, we tried going to local attractions. I still have to talk to promoters and take care of the guys. If they want something I can’t say, “oh I can’t do it. I have off today.” I still have to do it, which kind of sucks. I say it sucks but it doesn’t really suck.

Yeah, I could see how you could get used to it. I remember you had that blog, ‘What’s a Roadie.’ Do you have plans on continuing that this tour?

Yeah, I started it because I got sick of talking about tour stuff on my actual blog. It wasn’t the content that I wanted. I uploaded all the pictures from my years of touring and put them in my queue but once they got done posting, I realized I have to update this thing. I think I’ll update it more when I’m actually on the road and make it an on-tour kind of deal.

‘What’s A Roadie’ is funny because when I first got on tour there was a tour manager, Jenny Douglas, who was tour manager for New Found Glory. She tour managed Bury Your Dead, Paramore and many other bands, but Paramore and New Found Glory are probably the biggest. I was talking to her and I said “roadies” and she corrected me. She said, “There are no roadies. Don’t ever use that term. That’s a derogatory term. There are crewmembers and there are techs and there are loaders.” So there aren’t any roadies! It’s not a real term. Everyone has a job and a job title.

Earlier you mentioned that you worked in sales. At the time, how difficult of a decision was it to leave your job and take on a nomadic lifestyle?

When I actually left to start touring I was working at Verizon. It was a really tough job. It was all commission. While it wasn’t physical work, I spent most of my time trying to convince someone to buy something. You didn’t necessarily need this new product but I’m going to convince you that you did. I had a knack for it but I was feeling burnt out about it. It was a tough decision because I was leaving behind a lot but it was all material stuff.

For about a year, I was questioning my decision because I left an awesome job to work for free on the road. I ended up with a lot of debt. I lost of my car. I lost my apartment. But now I have crazy stories; I have friends in every state and I’ve been to every state at except Hawaii and Alaska at least twice now.

What advice would you have for someone who’s interested in touring?

People talk to me everyday at shows telling me that they want to have a life on the road and do what I do but you can’t just want it, you have to do it. Make the decision that you’re just going, to go. You have to meet a band and become friends with the band. Even if they’re a smaller band that is just starting to get on the road, you can still ask to go on the road for free. It just takes the initiative. Not just sitting at home talking about what you wish you could do. Quit your job and do it. I did it. I left behind so much.

You just have to go. It was super rough for me at first and it’s super rough for everyone at first. I was working for three months and not getting paid; I was paid $10 a day if I was lucky. There were some days where I would get yelled at and say “fuck this band. I’m sick of this tour. I’m going home.” There were times when I was almost crying. Everyone’s stressed out. I had to ask, “Why are you yelling right now? What I did wasn’t that extreme.” I don’t get yelled at anymore. Now I do the yelling.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Touring is great. It’s not always a party. There are a lot of fun moments but when you’re working on the road, it’s all work. Like I said, I take it very seriously. It is a business and I represent the bands that I work with. Any attempt at messing around isn’t something I tolerate. I have this saying: “It’s what you think it is, and everything you think isn’t what you think it is at all.”