Brent Eyestone (Bleach Everything)
SPB: What are the best things somebody can do when hosting a touring band at their house for the night?
Eyestone: I think we're all in our 40s, so staying with people from shows that we technically could have fathered would be both creepy and highly unnecessary since we have jobs and can afford staying at a hotel. All I can do is imagine how I'd personally host a band these days, which is funny because, when bands I work with come into town, I also just get them hotel rooms so that I don't have to clean up or solve issues (WiFi/how to work the washer/dryer/where the plunger is/etc.). However, if I was regularly hosting bands at the house, I'd personally probably:
• Deep clean the areas they're going to be inhabiting. Makes it way easier to clean up after they leave and they end up being less messy because they'd feel bad ruining anything.
• Set up a guest WiFi network.
• Print out login info and stick it in locations like how Air BnBs do it.
• Have a set of towels specifically for bands only. Wash after they leave and have ready for the next crew. Have adequate amounts of toilet paper, as you know all bands are going to care about is pooping, showering, establishing dominance over each other as weird display to their host, and ultimately dicking around on their phones and laptops.
• Have some easy-to-make fresh plant-based snacks ready to eat since they're probably eating garbage while driving around.
• Use this random, extra half-fridge over here as "their" fridge and stock it with kombucha and all the crazy local beers from around here. Probably wouldn't need water because they already have cases of it in the van from venues.
• Hang out for an hour or less and go to bed. More than likely, it's already 1:30 am or later but the time you get to the house. I wouldn't want a tired driver on my conscience if one of the dudes ended up not getting enough sleep and got into a wreck the next day or worse.
• Have courtesy bags of records already packed and ready to go so that we don't need to go waste hours at the warehouse getting the same records into the same courtesy bags of records.
• Allocate enough time to run them by this quick, healthy, local cafe before they have to take off.
Probably completely impractical for younger people and younger bands, but that's how I'd do it these days.
