Greetings, MD readers! This is Cyrus Bolooki, the drummer of New Found Glory and I am honored to contribute to Modern Drummer blogs. We are just about ready to tour to promote NFG’s new record, Resurrection, and I figured this would be a great time to touch on how I practice for tours and prepare myself and my gear for the road.

First off, when practicing, the most important thing for me is to have fun. That means playing along to other bands and drummers I like in addition to NFG tracks. If I get to a point where I’m getting bored then I’ll make a decision to stop and continue at a different date and time. I practice to keep my chops up, make sure I’m well versed in the material I’m playing, but also to make sure that physically I’m ready for tour. It’s great to break in my hands with calluses and blisters especially after time off because nothing’s worse than having to deal with that while in the middle of a show.

Next up is gear preparation. This is something that probably deserves its own blog. For me, gear prep starts at the end of the previous tour. I don’t live close to where our band’s gear is stored, so I try to ensure that I leave each tour with an inventory of what I have and what I need to bring the next time around. I’m pretty meticulous with this by having an Excel spreadsheet that lists gear and accessories and I make notes to remind myself what to bring or leave behind. Believe me, it’s not always easy to remember the day before you leave whether you have a spare pedal with you or not. Advertisement

Speaking of spares, always make sure to have spares of the essentials—sticks, cymbals, pedals, etc. You will almost definitely run into a situation where something breaks or gets misplaced and you have no time to go to a store yet you need it that night at a gig. Also make sure to allow ample time to order things because it’s not fair to expect your local store (or companies if you’re sponsored) to have every single thing ready for you. You might have to wait a few days or even weeks to allow for production and shipping.

Other than that, make sure that you are mentally ready to go by not leaving all of your packing until the night before and taking care of any important things locally before you depart. You might have a lot of free time on the road, but it will also be a lot harder to accomplish the things you normally do at home when your hundreds or thousands of miles away.

New Found Glory’s new record Resurrection comes out on October 7 on Hopeless Records. We will be on tour in the US in October and November and then in UK and Europe until mid-December.

That’s it! I leave in a few days and I definitely have some more packing (and practicing) to do. Safe travels and see you on the road.

 

For more information and tour dates, go to www.newfoundglory.com.