Anonymous asked: How did you get involved with Klean Kanteen and Vans Warped Tour? What's touring like as a girl?
I’ve answered a couple questions about this before, including as part of WATK’s “How To Get On Warped Tour” series, so forgive me for not going in depth about the first question.
As for the second… and pardon the fact that this is so long, but thinking about this question made me really happy in reminiscing some moments:
Many times, at least in my experience, it depends on who you’re touring with. The easy, and obvious, answer is, you’re ultimately there to do a job, so, it shouldn’t really matter if you’re a girl or a guy, just get your job done, and carry on. In reality, that’s not always the case. Some guys are really cool with girls on the road. Some are really against it. I’ve missed out on tours before with the reasons that the guys didn’t want a girl on the road because they didn’t want to be “tempted”, or have their girlfriends suspect anything. (In fact, one musician spoke to me just once during an entire tour, because his girlfriend was the extremely jealous type and had spies. Seriously.). I’ve also been asked during phone interviews what I wear to sleep - they wanted to make sure I wasn’t “one of those girls” who wear thongs and bra tops to bed, or something.
I’ve been drunkenly, and sober-ly, propositioned by guys I’ve worked for (nothing has ever happened). I’ve been flashed genitals and asked if I was “interested”. I’ve been asked extremely personal questions about my love life, and had plenty of comments made that in a normal office would have resulted in an immediate sexual harassment case. There was one guy who took delight in randomly screaming at me out of nowhere. One time, on a sidewalk in front of a venue on the East Coast, he asked if I was requesting to use the loaders because I was “a weak, b-tching girl, PMSing, or just f—king lazy?” Found out a couple days later, aside from a history of being sexist and racist, he had been relapsing on drugs for most of the tour (so I’m sure you can imagine why I’m not saying anything identifying about him. You know, that whole pesky, people claiming “slander” thing, though it’s absolutely true and they know it). There was another time I was offered a tour manager position, then, right before flying out, they decided I was “just” going to sell merch. The manager felt a guy who had only worked security at a venue—and had zero tour or management experience—would be able to better handle the job than a girl with experience.
But, on a personal level, touring as a girl can also be amazing. I’ve worked with some guys who’ve made it a point to look out for me, sometimes without me even realizing it’s happening. On my first club tour, the band I had initially started working with was leaving early, and another band on the same tour had hired me to stay on with them. The next show was in Detroit, and before the guys left that night, I overheard one guy single out a couple of the guys in the new band and say, “Look out for her. She’s like our little sister. Don’t let her go anywhere alone in Detroit”. One of the guys looked him straight in the eye and said, “No worries man, we will.” And they did.
Then there are people like Nick. Who stand on stage, look to the other guys for quick validation, stare straight to the back of the venue where merch is set up, and basically says to the sold-out audience, “See Jasmine there? She’s going to kill me for this, but, she’s single, and just so amazing, and to all the guys here - she needs to get laid before the tour ends”. Coincidentally, I think that show was also in Detroit. Girls came up and apologized for him (thanks to Nikki for paraphrasing in a tweet way back when). I didn’t hurt him for the remarks, fyi, and you can hear what I’m sure is an incredible new album from The Spill Canvas, Gestalt, on May 22nd.
