Lessons From a Punk Rock Lawyer 2: Zombies!

("Zombie Lawyer Makes A Counteroffer", by Jeromy Murphy 2009) One of the best parts of tour is the hours of conversation with tourmates during the hours of tour. There are often long drives in the middle of the night after a show with one person driving and one person riding co-pilot as navigator (and for the safety of keeping the driver awake).
After a week or so you run out of bad jokes and stories and beging to talk about movies
One of my favorite genres is Zombie movies. I love them all from Day of the Dead, I Walked with a Zombie to more recent Shawn of the Dead and Zombieland.
The plots of Zombie movies are a lot like touring.
A typical zombie movie has a group of people thrown together because of the Zombie Crisis. The groups quickly organize themselves into a heirarchy and work together to stay alive. There are roles that every group seems to have: the reluctant leader, the victim /weak link and the trouble maker/antagonizer, the quiet one/loner. For much of the movie the team works together because failure to work together will result in being eaten by Zombies. At some point in every Zombie movie it breaks down and the interpersonal conflicts emerge. Think Shaun of the Dead at the Winchester (gruesome clip which you may want to avoid but you get the point). It's important to remember when you are on tour that the team is the only thing keeping you safe from the Zombies. They will make you crazy-you will want to wring necks and tell them off but for the duration of the tour they are what is standing between you and the metaphorical Zombies.
I tell my business and litigation clients all the time, Remember that the Zombies are out there. Don't fight with your team. Fight the Zombies.
It is easy to get caught up in the moment and forget what matters. In a legal setting what matters is a good outcome for the client. Interpersonal conflict, hurt feelings the like are distractions from the real task. So on tour do the best show you can and take care of your band. When you are fighting Zombies, fight zombies not the other survivors AND when in litigation, keep the focus on the litigation. There are zombies out there just waiting for you to give them an opening.
Touring can be a pressure cooker. It is easy to let the stress of the tour tear a band apart. There is usually at least one day during a tour where everyone decides to quit. A great example of my Zombie analogy happened in my law practice not long ago in a settlement conference. The parties were all present and mostly represented by counsel. As we all sat around the table, my client had been coached to let us on the legal team do the talking but it became clear that the defendant had not. At a particularly tense moment in the negotiation the defendant unloaded an emotional barrage of invective at lawyers generally, me specifically, and people, like my client, who file lawsuits. While defense counsel was busy cleaning up the mess, we swooped like a hoard of hungry zombies. Keep focused on the litigation or we'll get you. (See a cartoon depiction of this episode above).

Lessons From a Punk Rock Lawyer 1: Surrender to the Tour

A typical day on a tour involves hours of travel from one venue to another. Things are both heavily scheduled and loosely planned. Every venue is different. There is usually a call sheet created by the tour manager or the venue's production manager and on a well organized tour it gives you both times for load in (bringing your gear into the venue) soundcheck (putting your instruments on the stage and testing the microphones) and performance. A call sheet will also have information about internet access (essential if your band includes an attorney working from his laptop) buyout (money to pay for dinner) and local accommodation like hotels and coffee. As you can imagine, for a guy like me who bills his day by the tenth of an hour, a well drafted call sheet is a thing of beauty, an oasis of organization in the tumultuous sea that is a typical tour. Unfortunately, it is rare that that the times listed are ever accurate. It is not due to the failing of the tour manager, production manager or the musicians involved. What happens to undermine the schedule is tour, itself. On my last tour we had a musician go to the emergency room, a snowstorm in the Donner Pass which required a stop to purchase and install snow chains and the bridge collapse on the upright bass. This was all in one day. Each thing, beyond anyone's control, pushed the schedule.
Even on days without medical emergencies, blizzards, potential cannibalism or instrument failure I found that much of the day was hard to schedule. You may only be on stage for 30 minutes and you may only get a 15 minute line check before you perform but you spend the other 23 hours and 15 minutes waiting and gearing up for that window. We would often arrive at the venue hours before the show and wait. There is simply nothing that can be done but wait. I realized that with all the moving parts and all potential for chaos that there was simply nothing to do but to surrender to the tour. I'd like a smooth predictable schedule but that is simply not possible with four bands, 22 musicians, five support staff, three vans, a trailer and a converted transit bus driving 3500 miles over five days. So I say surrender to the tour. This was my mantra. Like the AA serenity prayer, I accept that there is stuff I cannot change. I accept it. I made sure everyday that my guitar was tuned and my strings were fresh and my stage costume was clean(at least cleanish appearing). I was where I needed to be when I was needed and then I waited. Surrender to the tour. What a joy to return from the last tour to my orderly law practice and suburban family life where everything is calm and predictable...Right? Of course that is not the case. Life, even in the tightly run, well organized law practice, can be chaotic at times. By "chaotic at times" I mean "generally chaotic", of course. There are simply too many variables in a typical case beyond the control of the lawyer and the client. I tell the story about my wife's first time watching me in court. I told her I simply needed to make a five minute appearance at a hearing, get a judge to sign the order and then I would buy her lunch. I was, in fact, only in front of the judge for five minutes. I waited for nearly three hours because the docket was unusually heavy that day but the part I could control went as planned. Surrender to the tour. In litigation, just like on tour, there are many factors I can't control, but I always show up in tune, dressed to perform and ready to give it my all in that five minutes. Control what I can and as for the rest, Surrender to the tour. Next time, my tour take on team building and zombie movies.

Lessons from a Punk Rock Lawyer: Intro

In a previous life, before law school I was a musician. I toured a bit, worked in studios, taught lessons and played every gig imaginable from festivals and concert venues to house parties and potluck suppers. It was a great time but I got interested in the practice of law, had kids and the idea of living on a bus for months at a time seemed unreasonable.
However, about two years ago I felt a tug back into the life of a musician. I began performing, locally at first, with Houston based celtic rock band Murder the Stout. I say, at first, because we soon got opportunities to tour. We recently toured the west coast for a week with Street Dogs, Matt Freeman of Rancid's Devil's Brigade, and Old Man Markley.
So for a week a middle aged husband and father used to a comfortable suburban existance, traded the minivan suburban life for the punk life. I've been writing up ideas about lessons learned from my experience. What works, what doesn't. I have always handled some entertainment law and it is great to be able to directly relate to what life is like for my clients. At the same time, the stress of touring essentializes and distills the human experience. Touring creates a state of liminality which breaks down existing structures and allows insight that would be hard to get to in the comfort of a suburban office. (All of this academia to say that tour is tough and you have to dig deep at times to keep together. This process is enlightening.) These insights are of course relevant to my clients outside the Punk rock world. People are people. And People on tour are much more intense people. Over the next few postings I'll be adding my insights about life from my time on the tour bus and the insight that it gave me on my law practice. The one phrase that I repeated again and again as a mantra and theme, despite it being a bit "self-helpy" for me was "Surrender to the Tour." That will be the subject of my next post and a fairly consistent theme for me. In the spirit of my mantra, I'm asking you, even thought this series idea of mine may seem silly, to "surrender to the silly idea" and keep reading.