Where do I even start? I left home for tour on May 18th, 2010 to embark on a 3-4 week journey with one of my great friends in life and rap music, Brzowski. This was to be my 2nd time touring the Canadian landscape and hopefully the second time making a good living as a touring rapper. I had many fond memories of touring Canada from April of 2009 and I had written quite a bit about the experience I had while out there with some great people (Thesis Sahib, Pierre The Motionless, Funken, James P Honey and James Reindeer). I had been anticipating the same results and was just very anxious to leave the states considering where I was in my state of mind. My girlfriend at the moment had just broken it off with me, I was dead poor, and I had fallen into a slight slump when it came to my writing getting done for my next album. This was the beginning.
The Chronicles Of H.W Continues, After The Jump….
Brzowski had a show the previous night opening for Murs, NoCanDo, and Sick Jacken, my dj (DJ Emoh Betta) had decided to make the trek to Portland, Maine (where Brzowski resides) and DJ for his set during this show. I decided to take that time and start packing all of my stuff up for the long haul to Albany, NY. I had just received my T-Shirt order from [email protected] (hit him up for a great deal, tell him I sent you) and I decided to take the trip down to his shop to talk for a bit. I hadn’t heard from Jeff in a few years and had not gotten anything ordered in quite sometime from his company because as a struggling rapper its a bit hard to come by funds when you need to make rent and pay all your awful bills (I’m currently in Canada as I write this and I know Advanta bank is breathing down my neck waiting on my payment that was due on the 11th of May). The weather that night was the worse I had seen in a few weeks due to my leave of absence from the Boston area to spend sometime with my current ex. I don’t want to make it seem like we were great for each other but I loved her and we had some conflicting issues, with all that aside I appreciated all the time we spent with each other, I just wish I had that money still. Jeff had just recently gotten a new shop to expand his business since it was actually booming, I was very happy for him considering about 4-5 years ago I had placed the first order ever that he had made and now he was destroying competition with his hard work ethic. He told me how he had been making all of the Strange Famous Records merchandise for the last few years and it has really been a saving grace to Classsick Clothing. Sage holds it down on the merch tip. I finally parted ways and grabbed my amazing looking T-shirts from him.
Hazardous Wastes (H.W)
I spent 2 hours there just going back and forth about touring and hip hop music, It felt good to know I had someone like Jeff in my corner before I left for tour. I started my trek back to Boston around midnight, I was dead tired from trying to get as much work in at my job as I possibly could since I was not going to really have a paycheck for at least a month and that’s a scary situation for me. I know most touring rappers actually stay home and live with their parents and while I understand their reasons for it, I cannot personally do that myself. I need to know I can handle my own and chase my dreams, help here and there has been ok but I want to do this on my own and know that I can handle life. My mother hates me for this and still asks when I am coming home to stay. ok so fast forward to my home and now I am putting together all of my cds and merchandise for this tour. I actually have to mail it at some point to get it across the border because we don’t have the visas/work permits to properly go into Canada and do this the correct way. Here is a tip to all you aspiring rappers/bands that want to tour Canada:
1. Mail your merchandise at least a month ahead of when you are leaving for the tour: I have heard horror story after horror story about so many friends not getting across the border easily because of their Merchandise being snagged on the way into Canada by border patrol, or if your like me; having your merchandise seized by customs and held up in Toronto when you mailed it in Detroit the previous night before heading over to Windsor to pick it up. At this point in time I still don’t have one of the boxes of Merchandise that I mailed out at the same time of mailing one of the boxes that actually made it through customs in Canada. But I digress.
I stayed up that night putting together about 174 slim case cds of A Years Worth Of Worry (I never pressed this album and was/am giving away the digital version, but I needed to make something to survive on tour). I saved money on the packaging of the cds by recycling older releases that had not sold through my label Delusional Records. A local producer had actually given me the idea for this and I went ahead and grabbed some old copies and started to throw away all the cds that were in these slim cases previous to this tour. This whole process took about 3 hours and I ended up going to bed around 3am. Raplife is rough sometimes and I needed to sleep.
Next post: Tour is Hell
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