Many local bands run their course without ever going on tour, or sometimes without ever leaving their home state. That is not the case for Omaha progressive metal quintet, Superior.
Superior is scheduled to hit the road next week. They’ll kick off their tour with a show in Minneapolis on January 9th, and they’ll wrap up back home in Omaha on the 26th. In between those two dates, they have shows all over the central and western United States, including Oklahoma, New Mexico, California, and Montana!
Superior will be joined by By The Thousands, a djent band from Minneapolis, for the entire tour. BadassConcert has covered By The Thousands previously; read those articles here… Cotyledon guitar playthrough and here… B.T.T. release new single early.
This is Superior’s second tour in the past year. In June 2014, they toured with Terraform for just over two weeks, hitting Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and North Dakota.
Superior is also releasing their first full-length album, entitled (Sad) Earth, in early 2015. You can hear the first single, “Lifeblood,” here…
I had a chat with Superior guitarist Matthew McMillin about the upcoming tour.
Damascus Wootz – You guys are going to be out for over two weeks and are playing every night except for two, that’s really impressive! Who booked your tour?
Matthew McMillin – We actually completely self-booked along with our dudes in By The Thousands; It’s been a tough long road, but it was definitely worth it to go south for winter! Haha. Along with playing music we love to people we love, of course!
DW – How did you guys get hooked up with By the Thousands?
MM – We’ve been friends with By The Thousands for quite a while now, they’ve played a lot of shows in Omaha and we always offer them a place to stay and some quality hangs. We saw them in Lacrosse, WI, at the Warehouse while we were on tour with Terraform and really had to tour with them at that point. They’re all extremely gifted, tight musicians along with being super doods, not to mention their great hair.
DW – I noticed that you had some sponsorships on the tour with Terraform, what did your sponsors help you out with?
MM – Our sponsors mostly just helped with promotion and the design and printing for any tour merch/passes, etc. The fact is, all the companies who sponsor are as broke as us; they’re hardworking people making good products though, and these are the companies we support and vice versa.
DW – There’s been an awful lot of buzz on the internet surrounding that Pomplamoose tour and how they lost money while they sold over $100K in tickets over a 28 day tour. What do you guys do to keep expenses down?
MM – The article about Pomplamoose portrays the business of being a traveling musician entirely wrong, especially in our case. On our tour with Terraform, we shared one hotel room with ten guys and probably spent 70 dollars, but on every other night we were sleeping in our vans at Walmart or on someone’s floor. We make enough money to go to the next venue, and sometimes not even that, but we support the band to go on because we love playing music! To keep expenses down, we take a mini grill on tour so we don’t have to eat out, and we just live very minimalistically. We all love seeing local attractions so we just usually do whatever is free!
DW – How do you guys get the word out about the shows so far away from home?
MM – Getting the word out about our shows is done through our Facebook. But, at the level both of our bands are at, a lot of the responsibility to get kids out to shows is held by the promoter of the show, who is actually there to hand out flyers and tell fans around town to come.
DW – What do you think the biggest challenges are in preparing for tour half-way across the country?
MM – The biggest challenge in preparation for the tour is just getting all of our music to the most playable state. We’re always looking for new ways to improve and make our performance better, so I would say practice is the greatest piece of work. But, of course, the other big challenge is maintaining our tour vehicle and trailer. We actually had two tires blow last tour though and had to buy new ones, so we should be set for winter!
DW – What is the one item you couldn’t live without in the van?
MM – I couldn’t live without bananas on tour. That’s for sure.
Well, personally, I know I couldn’t live without going bananas at some metal shows. And you can’t either–it’s part of a well balanced musical diet!
Get out and pay some cover charges f**kers!
