How far is too far, how long is too long?

[JamesGrant]

One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of my American friends seem to find travel to gigs more normal than my English friends.

I’m English - I live about 2hours away from London, I think anything more than 45mins drive is significant, at 1.5hours I’m looking for something very well paid. 3hours has to be amazing.

I know some American friends who routinely travel 1 - 2 hours for ‘dive bar’ gigs and jam nights.

Is this a cultural thing, an economic thing or is driving in the U.K. so grim that 1hr feels like a chore whereas driving in the states is far more fun. Or am I totally wrong?

 

[KevInDaBassment]

I'm from Texas...."1-2 hours" is a trip to the grocery store around here LOL

For me it depends on what kind of miles we're talking...is that 1-2 hours of straight highway or 1-2 hours of stop-and-go traffic? I'll do 2-3 hours of open road if it'll be a fun gig with good turnout. 1 hour in traffic is about my limit, as metroplex traffic is a whole other enchilada compared to city traffic.

 

[5StringBlues]

You can drive an hour across Houston, Texas and still be in Houston.


That's not even including the entire metropolitan area.

 

[2saddleslab]

I live near downtown Cincy & many of my gigs are rarely more than 15 minutes away. My central location really helps whether playing Ohio, Ky, or Indiana.

 

[JamesGrant]

On a bank holiday Friday round my way you can drive for 1 hour and travel less that 10miles. Sad but true.

 

[Bob_Ross]

I know some American friends who routinely travel 1 - 2 hours for ‘dive bar’ gigs and jam nights.

Your American friends are nuts.

I almost wrote “you couldn’t pay me to drive 1 - 2 hours for a dive bar gig or jam night” …but that’s not true: You *could* pay me for that kind of travel time, but it would cost way more than anyone typically makes doing dive bar gigs or jam night sessions.

I’m a huge advocate of having a separate travel stipend that’s independent of my fee for playing the gig. I consider “local” gigs — by which I mean ~45 minutes travel time or less — gratis, but anything farther/longer than that and I ask for the IRS standard $0.76/mile rate (both directions) on top of whatever I’m making for actually climbing onstage and thrashing the bass.

 

[ardgedee]

One thing I’ve noticed is that a lot of my American friends seem to find travel to gigs more normal than my English friends.

The US is just bigger. It's really common for people to visit here from Europe or east Asia and not have a good sense of how far away things are from each other and end up traveling three hours for something they thought was under an hour away.

The US measuring distance in miles rather than kilometers probably throws them off too.

That said, it depends on where in the US you're talking about. In the northeast things are closer together than they are in the southwest. The southern US is generally more sprawly than the northern US. People in small towns and exurbs are used to traveling farther for everything than people closer to urban centers are. Travel expectations in the few cities with decent public transit (Boston, New York, Chicago) are different than in the cities where public transit is considered subordinate to highways, fragmentary or effectively nonexistent.

 

[JazznFunk]

I know some American friends who routinely travel 1 - 2 hours for ‘dive bar’ gigs and jam nights.

These days, I never do that for any sort of 'dive bar' gig or 'jam' - especially a 'jam' where I am not getting paid to be on stage.

15-20 years ago it was a different story. The occasional jump an hour or so out of town was definitely doable, and there was a time when I would routinely drive 2 hours for pickup jazz gigs in a different city because the money was good enough to justify it - and I got to play with some good people.

What broke me of the 'long drive for crap pay' scenario was when my old main band decided they wanted to 'tour' - which basically meant playing in the same kinds of bars (quite a few 'dives' in the mix too) 3-4 hours (or more) away that we played locally, often 2 or 3 day stretches - for the same (or less) money than what we made locally. i.e. I lost money on those 'tours' - or I broke even if lucky.

Now, if I'm driving an hour or more to any gig, it had better be paying me a reasonable amount for the travel, the time on stage, and the length of the entire engagement. Those kinds of gigs aren't 'bar gigs' and they certainly aren't jams where I'm donating my time. I raised my standards, and the value I put on my time.

 

[TonyP-]

The US is just bigger. It's really common for people to visit here from Europe or east Asia and not have a good sense of how far away things are from each other and end up traveling three hours for something they thought was under an hour away.

The US measuring distance in miles rather than kilometers probably throws them off too.

That said, it depends on where in the US you're talking about. In the northeast things are closer together than they are in the southwest. The southern US is generally more sprawly than the northern US. People in small towns and exurbs are used to traveling farther for everything than people closer to urban centers are. Travel expectations in the few cities with decent public transit (Boston, New York, Chicago) are different than in the cities where public transit is considered subordinate to highways, fragmentary or effectively nonexistent.

Boston kid here…God luck trying to make money as musician with public transportation.
Almost everyone drives and your best paying work is not in the city itself anymore.

Not being sarcastic here, just real.

Yes America is just bigger and I particularly think it’s a cultural thing.

 

[Dincrest]

It depends where you are in the US as well.

With my old band... gigs in Philadelphia (we lived 30-40 mins from Philly) would sometimes be sparse since there's always something to do in a major city. But one time when we played a gig in Ithaca, NY (upstate NY, kinda "middle of nowhere" territory, took us a good 4-5 hours to get there)... the venue was huge, packed, and all our fans from Syracuse (an almost 2 hour drive from Ithaca) were there! Because there aren't many major cities in that region and not a lot to do, people would come from far distances to see bands play.

If you live in a more sparsely populated region in the US, a 1-2 hour drive to the grocery store is normal. In a more densely populated region, that's a whole lotta "nope!"

And, yeah, unless you've visited the US it's hard to imagine how much larger that country is. The US is almost as big as the entire continent of Europe.

Europe consists of 47 countries, covers a total area of 9,938,000 square kilometers (3,837,083 square miles)
The contiguous United States (meaning the US mainland of 48 states, not including Alaska and Hawaii) occupies an area of 3,119,884.69 square miles (8,080,464.3 km2). If you include Alaska and Hawaii, the total area of the United States is approximately 3,796,741 square miles (9,833,517 square kilometers).

 

[WG Plum]

Given the geography and resultant traffic in Seattle, folks sometimes won't even drive across town to see their friends, let alone play or go to a gig. Definitely depends on where you are.

 

[Podgorny]

Europe consists of 47 countries, covers a total area of 9,938,000 square kilometers (3,837,083 square miles)
The contiguous United States (meaning the US mainland of 48 states, not including Alaska and Hawaii) occupies an area of 3,119,884.69 square miles (8,080,464.3 km2). If you include Alaska and Hawaii, the total area of the United States is approximately 3,796,741 square miles (9,833,517 square kilometers).

It can be helpful for our European friends to understand the United States as analogous to the EU. with 50 separate states, each with their own legislatures and unique cultures.

 

[Podgorny]

And yeah, to the OP, it's all relative. The more densely-populated an area, the less likely you are to see someone willing to travel that far for something.

 

[monsterthompson]

Age. Geography. Traffic. Price of fuel. Quality of the gig. Alternative options for activities in the same time. Social connections. There are many factors and the anecdotes we know probably aren’t enough to yield a real comparison. I’m sure for every X Americans willing to drive “more miles” there are Y Americans who are not.

There was a time I was willing to drive from Los Angeles to Oakland for a gig. The pay barely covered gas, but I got to see friends and play for an appreciative audience for a project I loved. The 6-8 hours of driving was just part of the deal.

These days, any drive seems like too much. I recently got stuck in traffic that took me almost 90 minutes to go about 10 miles.

 

[N4860]

Here in Canada I think the furthest I've ever gone for a gig was ~3 hours but I was being paid by the band leader and he rented a van and dealt with all of the expenses. Otherwise no way in hell I'd have done the gig. Normally I'd just gig in town and surrounding areas in which case I'm basically driving 5min-20min but I'd go up to an hour or so if needed for a decent gig in a big city. Fortunately where I am most of the big cities are about 1 hour in any direction.

 

[Fun Size Nick]

Difference in fuel price is likely a factor - it’s much, much cheaper in the US (though that does encourage the use of larger and less efficient vehicles).

 

[TeaTime]

There are places in the western half of the USA where high school (think secondary + sixth form age) sports teams travel for every away game at least 90 minutes, often 2+ hours, each way. Some families will make that drive. 4-8 games a season in some areas. Things are just far apart.

Also, I've found the emotional scale is different for many people. You think of England as a stand-alone country. Germany. France. Poland. Each of these is a unit of 1 country. The USA is also just 1 country.

But... drive Raleigh NC (east coast) to Seattle WA (NW corner) and you're looking at about 42 hours of active road time. Assuming you don't get slowed or stopped in one of the dozen very different weather regions. But still just USA.

Drive 42 road hours from London? I don't even know. I've done London to Berlin, and that was a very long day, but only like 12 hours. Disregarding any border issues it's only 32 hours active road time London to Moscow. You've crossed a half dozen major countries, very different cultures, and still haven't moved the width of the USA.

I used to actively gig in US west coast/western mountain regions. Book gigs from San Diego, LA, San Francisco, Portland, all the way up the coast to Seattle. Come back down through Boise, SLC, Vegas. And anything in between. When you could get the gigs sorted nice and efficiently it wasn't a bad trip, but reality usually involved a lot of back-tracking. 8 hour road nights weren't uncommon.

These days? Unless I can pair the trip with some personal goal I'm limiting it at about 90 minutes, assuming good venue and pay. But I'll drive 4 hours for an average gig that's in a place with good hiking or whatever and I can stay a few days.

 

[J Wilson]

James, the US differs from the UK in that public transport like buses and trains are very poorly developed in most of America, so we're just conditioned to drive ourselves any and everywhere.

And it depends where you are: Just as you could easily drive two hours in the City of London, we could do the same here in an Atlanta or Houston or Los Angeles without ever leaving the city limits.

I' ve 'commuted' to gigs an hour or two away without thinking much about it, paid enough to make it worth it and several of us would carpool together, so that helped.

That was far enough.

 

[EdwardofHuncote]

As already posted, more expensive for you to travel in the U.K. than most places here. My typical gig circle was about 150 mi radius. So a couple-three hours to/from. The band has a van though, so riding was an option. I just didn't personally enjoy riding in back with the gear and while I loved them like brothers, the driving skilz were uhhh... well... I drive better.

 

[matthewbrown]

I found myself driving an hour each way to $100 gig not that long ago (American Songbook standards gig), and if it had featured better music (and a better match of players) I would have been fine with it. But for that kind of money, I'd like to have a lot more fun than I had. I drive an electric car, though, so that keeps expenses down -- as well as the distance I'll drive.