Interview with Kristin Klein, Tour Managing Queen.
By Pedro

Kristin Klein has been tour manager for bands like Ariel Pink, Atlas Sound, BBQ, The Black Lips, Deerhunter, the Fresh & Onlys, Jay Reatard, King Khan, and Thee Oh Sees. She lives in San Francisco and loves Mission Chinese. She also has a pop-up shop called Vacation which has a three date residency at The Make-Out Room starting this Saturday (6/11). I sat down with Kristin at Mission Chinese a few weeks ago to ask her about tour managing, and what she’s up to these days.

Night Fog Reader: Why would you do what you do?
Kristin Klein: It’s a dream job. I’m lucky enough that my friends do really amazing things and can afford to take me with them. I also dropped out of high school – so touring happened on accident. But it’s an awesome job. I get to travel the world with my friends and go to a different city every night.

What’s the longest you’ve had to hold it in?
Hold it in? Like how? On tour?

Yeah.
There’s this SXSW where I peed myself. But I was wasted, and there was nowhere to pee. I was just trying to pee on a dumpster but ended up peeing all over myself. So that was probably a three or four hour wait. But in the van I’m good. I’m like a camel. I’m really good in the van. Its always the dudes that have need to pee. It’s never the girls that have to go pee.

I find that with myself whenever I have to go (pee) just a little bit, I just REALLY want to go.
Yeah, dudes have no control. It’s like a boner. I think I’ve exercised mine (bladder) as well. You can do breathing exercises to expand your lungs before you go under water. I think that I have stressed my bladder to the point of holding more than a normal person’s.

Is tour managing an art? If so, who’s your inspiration?
It’s definitely not an art. I think anyone can do it as long as they can keep their shit together. It’s really important to not be doing it because you are interested in any level of celebrity. It’s important to separate: You are there working for the band, you are not there to be associated with the band.

Do you have any groupies?
I do. Not really groupies. I have a Flickr page because my memory is horrible. I would take camera phone pictures and post them to my page and have probably been doing that for the past five years. There’s a girl named Madeline who I’m still friends with, and I just sent her to the Fresh & Onlys show. She lives in Bloomington, Indiana - I think she’s my biggest fan. But there’s also a girl in Birmingham, Alabama that was following me and my exploits on the internet and wanted to be a tour manager. She’s touring now with a couple of bands, which is cool. I think she sorta looked up to me as a influence. My hero is this guy Bob Whittaker, he’s a tour manager. I met him on tour with the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. He was the tour manager for Mudhoney all throughout the 90s. He’s this legendary guy who always had it together, was always was on the band’s side whenever they needed it, and I think back then it was totally a different world because there was no internet or smart-phones. But he was also known as the most insane party animal. Ever. He’s an amazing dude. Now he’s working with R.E.M., and a bunch of different people.

For people who want to be a tour manager, do you have any words of advice?
No. It’s just luck. If you’re lucky enough to know people. It’s all about getting a job because you know people. I was lucky enough that when I started doing it, two groups of my friends in Atlanta, their bands got popular.

Have you ever been approached by a band and thought, “FUCK NO”?
Totally. I did one tour with a band, and I didn’t like their music - the tour was a nightmare. There’s been a couple of other bands that were privately funded, rich kid type deals  - they want me because they think I’m something that I’m not. You know? And I’ve turned that kind of stuff down.

Have you ever been a victim of license plate profiling?
I think it’s certain states that are always going to fuck with you. I got arrested in Kentucky, and that wasn’t because of the license plates that was because of a sobriety stop in the middle of the highway.

I heard about that. Did you have the mushrooms in you, or on you?
You know, I was touring with a band who were Canadian, who were in the United States on artist visas. If an American didn’t take the charge their entire livelihood in the United States would have been nullified. Their visas would have been revoked and they would never be able to perform here. Technically I was the guilty party, but I think everybody can read between the lines. That wasn’t license plate profiling, but if you drive through Arkansas with California tags, or any other tag that’s not Arkansas you’re probably going to get pulled over. The Fresh & Onlys just got stopped in Ohio. Searched. Tim Cohen got put in a cop car.
- I saw Shayde’s (Sartin) photos, that sucked.

So hiring a manager vs. DIY, and why?
Well, when your tour makes 180K in 30 days you need someone to be a little bit more responsible than the lead singer or whatever. A lot of what I do is accounting. I do is all of the advancing, I’m the person who is in touch with each sound engineer, each promoter, and each venue. I handle all of the logistics, I have a travel agent booking hotels, and figuring out the drive times. I mean there is so much stuff that goes on. So if you have a lot of press, it helps to have someone coordinate all of your publicity.

I tour with Thee Oh Sees to help them out because they’re good friends. But they’re completely capable of doing it on their own, because they’ve been self-sufficient and John (Dwyer) has been touring for years and years and years. But hiring a tour manager makes it so much easier than having to take care of everything yourself, and be the person who has to play every night.

What are the best roadside attractions?
The prairie dog farm which is on the border of South Dakota and Kansas is amazing.  Salvation Mountain, and the Salton Sea in California – outside of Coachella. It’s this huge mountain that this crazy guy made out of adobe, hay and latex paint. It’s totally amazing to see. The Badlands in South Dakota is amazing – it’s totally worth the extra 30 minutes to drive through. Barringer Crater in Arizona is awesome. It’s outside of Flagstaff, and it’s the biggest meteorological crater in the world.  North Bend, Washington which is the town Twin Peaks is – the real Twin Peaks is called North Bend, and you can go there and go to the R&R diner and get cherry pie and a cup of coffee.

Who decides stereo rules?
The driver. It’s always up to the driver.

So if you’re ever on tour, and you stop by San Francisco. What’s the first thing you do?
Usually you’re coming from Portland, so lots of times the first thing you do is run to the venue because you’re late. But every time I would come to San Francisco before I was living here I would go to Tu Lan - I would make everybody go to Tu Lan. It’s this Vietnamese dive restaurant on 6th and Market.  San Francisco was never a town I had a lot of time in. What we would always do is that after a show is that we would all go to the Knockout. So it was more like a “we’re in San Francisco, let’s all go to the Knockout after the show.”

What’s the best festival in your opinion?
In the U.S. or …
Whichever.
There’s a festival called the Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona. It has consistently been one of the most amazing festivals I’ve ever been to. It’s on the ocean, and a million people that you know are there – from other bands. There’s always a really good line-up. Everything is awesome about it. Also, All Tomorrows Parties are really fun.

I heard that Barcelona is teaching the world how to party.
Oh my god, they start at 2 in the morning and end at 11AM. It never stops.

What are you doing these days?
Trying to get a grown up job that isn’t tour managing.

What does the future hold for you, you think?
Hopefully a job with a salary and 40 hours a week.

Could you tell me about Vacation?
I toured with Deerhunter a long time and I saved up my money and I opened a vintage store – it was like a curated boutique. We would do live shows, it was an art gallery, and we’d have parties. We’d keep really weird hours. Lots of kids would come around and hang out. We would carry any local music whether or not it sucked. It was very inclusive of everyone in Atlanta. Then I met a dude out here and kept spending more and more time out here, and then finally decided to move. So I sold my store, and I moved out here, and would love to do that again some day. So I’ve been doing it here as pop-up shops because there are so many places to do it. I have a space that I want, it’s ready to go I just don’t have enough money to get it. I need an investor. I have a friend who is helping me build an app, and all of the money that I get from the sales of that app will hopefully pay to open the store.

What’s your app idea? Are you allowed to talk about it?
No. But it would be awesome to do something like that here. I basically drew upon all of my friends making and doing amazing things whether it was in a band or awesome art or whatever, and then helped make it public, in addition to having cheap stuff to buy. So San Francisco is sort of the same way. There’s so many people doing really awesome things - it would be really awesome to do something like that here. Kinda like a bigger and more than just clothing version of  Painted Bird. That’s the closest thing in San Francisco that I have to Vacation.

Be sure to check out Vacation at the Make-Out Room this Saturday (6/11). More details here.