Traveling Man

It's not an uncommon reaction. Most fans of touring bands understand the feeling.

"(Insert favorite band name here) is coming to town? SWEET!"

There are those who get pumped when their favorite act comes to their city, and there are those who get just as excited when said act comes within a 400-mile radius of their city. Some fans even go so far as to follow the band on tour from place to place.

Traveling to see a concert is a risky endeavor. One puts all one's faith in the performer's ability to deliver a killer show. Imagine driving three hours to see the most hyped-up movie of the summer, only to realize it was a steaming pile.

However, the rewards reaped by going the distance to see the show of a lifetime are unparalleled in performance art appreciation. Cleveland, Albany, Erie, Pittsburgh and Toronto are all reasonable cities to drive to for the right act.

On the top of my list of good travel experiences is October's Take Action Tour in Cleveland. Seeing the remarkable performance and audience reaction to Dillinger Escape Plan for the first time would have been enough, but I also got the chance to nab the mic from my favorite frontman, James Hart of Eighteen Visions.

A key element in enjoying a long-distance show to its full potential is the presence of a riding partner who is as pumped as the driver. It has to be someone who isn't too cool to listen to the band you're going to see that night in the car on the way. (I am "that guy.")

For me, on the way to the Take Action show, my friend Dan pulled out all his Dillinger discs and educated me. Not that I didn't already know or like their sound, but he took it to the nerdy level for me, which I always appreciate. After he came off the floor, upon culmination of Dillinger's set, he looked at me, with sweat dripping off his brow.

"That band," he said, pointing to stage, "is the apex of mankind's achievement.

My point here is not to argue that Dillinger is great, but that all the nerves that we had felt on the way to the show - nervous that it might become a waste of time and money - made the fact that it was a good show that much more satisfying.

I have also had less pleasurable experiences with manning the caravan to get to a concert. Part of the tension associated with getting there is that it's a foreign area, and finding the venue may not exactly be easy.

Especially when Mapquest is involved.

On our way to Hamilton, Ontario, to see The End, Dan and I realized that Mapquest had given us directions to a street with a similar name to the one we needed to find. After brief consideration, we decided that the show was probably not being held in the basement of a home with purple station wagon parked in the driveway.

A quick trip to the always-handy Tim Horton's for directions from a little cutie behind the cash register cleared things up, and we only missed a one band that was on the bill. The show was good, but nothing to write home about (only a griping column several months later).

The drive home was a marathon of getting lost and finding what we thought was our way repeatedly. It took us an extra hour to get back from the already long drive in characteristically poor weather.

While traveling can be a nightmare, it can also be a dream come true, and to the fan willing to tough-out getting lost, the good times far outweigh the bad.

This Friday, in Cleveland again, one of my favorite bands of the moment, mewithoutYou, is playing. The tickets have been ordered and several friends are along for the ride. I'm going and I'm pumped.