Earlier today, Amy Klein offered up part one of her tips for eating healthily when you're on tour. Below, you'll find part two.
Make It a Picnic
Touring means nothing if not going stir crazy during long drives. Because of the sheer contrast it provides to the daily routine, the act of eating outside instantly transforms a mediocre meal into a memorable experience. Most rest stops have a bench overlooking the parking lot where you can sit and eat a sandwich and do some people watching. Together, the cars rushing by on the highway generate a nice breeze and for a few brief moments, one can imagine oneself eating lunch in a peaceful park. Sheetz gas stations and convenience stores have real outdoor tables where you can watch a young couple on a date holding hands, a college sports team milling around, sweaty and enthusiastic after a big win, and a large Pennsylvania Dutch family in traditional garb exit from a Chevy van to slurp orange slushies from long straws. Eating outside lets you taste the flavor of a place, and make you feel immediately as if you belong there, in a way that few activities of such a superficial nature can.
Sharing is Caring
Always share your food with your bandmates. This practice creates feelings of companionship and trust among the members of the band, and increases the chances that if, one day, one of your bandmates purchases a particularly delicious snack, she will decide offer some to you. Furthermore, sharing food evokes the communal spirit that is the essence a home-cooked, family dinner. It is therefore possible to imagine that you are actually at a homecooked family dinner, even if you are merely eating stale pretzels in the car.
Be a Locavore
My fondest memories of touring are of those times when I felt myself to be not a passive observer, but rather a lively participant in the culture of the city or place in which I found myself. Therefore, I recall with fondness the afternoon I sat on the curb across the town square from an outdoor café in Belgium and downed an entire Belgian waffle in less than a minute, chocolate sauce and homemade whipped cream trickling in streams from my hands as the coffee drinkers in the café tittered softly. When in Rome, they say--and so, in Belgium--or Buffalo, or Montreal.
Composing your meals of local and regional specialties will turn your tour into a great, cross-country culinary adventure. When in Brooklyn, nosh on a poppy seed bagel, in Chicago, sample a hot dog or a slice of deep dish pizza, and in Wisconsin, invest in a wedge of sharp cheddar cheese. You'll leave your tour with distinct memories of the places you've seen--and the particular food you enjoyed will be become the touchstone of each memory--so that the smell of fresh cilantro will always remind you of the two dollar tacos you bought from a Mexican family in El Paso, Texas--and of the family--and also of the heady blue sky over the Mexican border, and the barbed wire, and the old brick churches with murals of the Virgin Mary painted in bright colors onto the façade.
When you're in a foreign city and don't know where to stop for food, always take your clues from the locals. They know the place best, after all. Try the little deli that's got a line out the door. Choose a crowded coffee shop over one that's empty on a Saturday afternoon. A plate glass window with an orange sticker from Yelp, or with “Best Of" and “Cheap Eats" certificates put out by the local newspaper is almost always a good place to check out. I once stumbled into a Vietnamese restaurant in London merely because it had so many reviews and certificates plastered onto the door, I couldn't see inside. I ended up slurping down a bowl of rich, fragrant noodle soup that, for six dollars, filled me up for hours, and left me with enough leftovers for dinner that night.
Do Not Give into Temptation...
Convenience stores everywhere display vividly colored arrays of chocolate, candy, and chips in front of the register; the idea is that most shoppers fall prey to lapses in judgment at the last minute--as in, “Oh, what the hell. Why not?"
Now imagine these shelves stacked high with junk food as the last temptations of Christ. If you can stick to your guns when the Devil's whispering in your ear, then you can probably do anything--maybe even rise from the dead.
In all seriousness though, buying candy and chocolate is almost always a waste of money, and, given all the sugar, you'll probably crash right before sound check. Similarly, snacks like potato chips provide little to no nutritional bang for the buck and will leave you dehydrated under the stage lights.
It's important to realize that snacking all the time has a neutralizing effect on the power of each snack. If you treat your favorite snacks as a mere matter of course, they no longer produce the same feelings of well being that they do when they appear in your life only once in awhile. If you save them for when they really matter, these treats become compelling forces of motivation.
...But Do Treat Yourself Once in Awhile
In a particularly black mood, when I'd much rather retreat to my sleeping bag and pull it over my head than get on stage and act brave in front of everyone, it dawns on me suddenly like a revelation--the idea of dessert! So I hightail it over to the nearest diner, select a quiet table for one, and place an order for the thickest, creamiest, gooiest cake in town. There is no cure for a bad attitude like the visceral sensation of icing dripping one's chin, and yet, somehow the cake itself always turns out to be less important than the psychological effects of the experience.
All musicians live beneath the weight of expectations: the expectations of fans, the expectations of haters, the expectations of the media, the expectations of random bloggers who for some reason have the power to make or break a band's entire career. But all of these expectations pale in comparison to the high expectations that most musicians place upon themselves. If you want to be an artist without going crazy, you have to learn to respect yourself to such an extent that you're no longer unhealthily beholden to all these expectations.
It turns out that the quickest way to diffuse unhealthy expectations is to eat something really unhealthy. The point of taking yourself out to dessert is to banish your inner critic, to remind yourself that you deserve good things regardless of whether or not you are perfect, and start being really nice to yourself for absolutely no reason at all. See, you don't need to do anything in order to be awesome. You just need to be yourself.
