On their Work Together Tour this spring, Gang of Thieves played 60+ shows over the course of four months and made a goal to volunteer their time to various community service projects across the country. As any touring musician will tell you, it takes great motivation and dedication to perform live concerts. With a vigorous tour schedule, it takes immense physical and mental effort to travel from city to city, and perform your best to any size crowd, despite how many hours of sleep you were able to catch in between.
So for a band to incorporate community service into their tour schedule, it is quite the victory. Live For Live Music applauds the Gang of Thieves for reaching their goals, and are happy to share their experience through the words of Michael Reit (lead vox / violin) and Tobin Salas (bass). Read below for a recap of their Work Together Tour:
Being from Vermont, we are extremely lucky to live in a state that is so supportive of its local community and economy. The idea for our “Work Together” tour was definitely influenced by what we see around us in our daily life. Our goal as a band, especially when we are touring, has always been to spread a positive message through rock and roll, so this tour was really a natural evolution for us. Early on in the planning stages for the tour, we had a lot of positive feedback about what we were trying to do, and ended up pairing with Darn Tough Socks, Cabot Cheese, and Lenny’s Shoe and Apparel as sponsors. All of those companies are dedicated to having locally made products and supporting their local communities, which is exactly what we wanted to encourage along the tour.
As we hit the road, our goal was to volunteer in as many communities as possible, from food shelves to animal shelters. When we started adding these extracurricular activities to our usual tour schedule, we expected it to be a little strenuous, since we were giving up whatever extra sleep and downtime we had between all our shows to volunteer. That being said, right off the bat we discovered that contributing to communities gave us an incredible sense of fulfillment and accomplishment, which helped balance out the lack of sleep or down time.
The truth is that there are a lot of people who don’t have the opportunity or lifestyle we are lucky to have, people who need help and support. To us, getting a couple more hours of sleep or down time doesn’t compare to being able to fundamentally contribute to helping some of those people.
For example, we played a late night set in Roanoke, Virginia then hit the road that night for a place to stay in Charlottesville where we were scheduled for an early morning start at the local Habitat for Humanity. Despite the lack of sleep, we had a blast helping build homes for people who needed them. We worked all day putting in trim, sideboarding, and other late stage jobs at a site with rows of houses waiting to be finished. The people there were positive and super dedicated to the community, and appreciated our help so much. We ended up playing an acoustic version of “Work Together” for them at lunch, and made some great friends there. A few of the workers onsite even came to our show that evening in Charlottesville! It felt so good to contribute to the local community, but seeing those same people come support us in turn that evening was even more amazing. It gave us a sense of the power that working together can have.
We definitely encourage fellow bands to find time in their tour schedule to help out in the communities they travel through. Not only is it incredibly fulfilling to help out where it is needed most, but you never know who you might meet. Maybe someone will offer to put you up for the night, or you might make some unexpected fans who will keep supporting you and your music for years to come.
For more information about where we went and how we put all this volunteer work together, check out the “Work Together” page on our website.
More bands should be like Gang of Thieves. Bravo!