Tim Scott - Survival Guide Interview

	Tim Scott was interviewed by Stella Hemmings for her book: "The Musician's Survival Guide to Life on the Road"
Musician's Survival Guide
	"The Musician’s Survival Guide to Life on the Road" by PC Publishing. Tim speaks candidly about the challenges of being a professional musician and the experience of performing on stage at the ’96 Summer Olympics when a terrorist’s bomb caused death and injuries, cutting short a celebration of the world at Centennial Park.
*The following is an excerpt from Tim's interview.*

For me, I still enjoy traveling. I know people that get burned out on it but I just like seeing other places - I like going to other towns. With your schedule though, you're usually just in and out so if you want to see a town, you've got to have a plan about how much time you've got and what you want to see. Take cabs and go to places of interest.

For one thing, it's really hard on one's health. The wear and tear ... you usually don't eat as well as one should on the road so, nutritionally speaking, it can be a bad deal. Like for me in particular, I have back problems. When I fly I'm always in a cramped seat for long hours and it's real hard on me, and I'm packing an instrument - my bass, I carry it in a bag on my back, and it sets my back out of alignment if I'm walking across an airport for long distances with that. So I always come back just a little beat up from the experience. That and not getting enough sleep, with timetables and stuff; jet lag; losing hours.

I don’t mind it. I really don't mind it 'cos I don't have to make the bed ... I don't have to clean up. And I don't live like a pig in hotels either, 'cos I don't like to but it's pretty cool that you don't have to clean up.

I travel lightly. On the bigger tours people take all kinds of stuff and actually some of the guys in my band will take golf clubs with them. We're going to Park City, Utah for the World Cup Skiing and everybody in the band ... I think everybody but me skis, so they'll have their ski gear with them, but for me I like to travel really light. Sometimes I'll take ... I think music's really important. You'll be on the road and most everybody has a portable cassette or CD player with headphones that they can use on the plane and in their room. And I'll take some books.

What's the worst thing that's happened to you on the road? You had an unusual experience at the Atlanta Olympics.

Yeah, I would say that one gig was probably the best and worst experience that I've ever had as a musician. Being that it was the Olympics, it was really an exciting and joyful time for the band (Jack Mack & the Heart Attack) because we were entertaining the world, basically. People from all over the world were coming and we were playing for audiences of fifteen to twenty thousand a night, and it just felt like it could have gone on forever. We were playing on the AT&T stage in the Centennial Park and every night there would be a headliner like Santana or Joan Osborne, Little Feat, and then they would shut down the stage and do the nightly news, NBC news feed for a recap of the day’s Olympic events and then we would come on and do a party after that and we had some huge crowds. It was the biggest sound system, biggest stage that we've ever played on. There was a room underneath us ... this was an incredible stage and there were just racks and racks and racks of amplifiers - I've never seen so many. The stage was built over soundproof booths, for all the NBC affiliates. Each one had a booth and that's where they did their broadcast. When the bomb went off it was extremely loud because it was so close to us - it was like a hundred and fifty feet from the stage. It was the sound tower, there were two towers out in front of the stage, and one of them they were running lights from and the other they were running sound from. And it was the sound tower that blew up. And it was incredibly loud because the sound fed-back through the PA system and came right at us through the monitors. Actually my cars rang for about two weeks after that, and I felt the concussion - it kind of knocked me back a little bit and thumped in my chest, and it blew debris up on stage. The tower was covered with corrugated metal and it threw bits of corrugated metal up there.

No, the drummer had his arm brushed by some stuff, the FBI pulled out some - it was a pipe bomb with nails and screws in it, they dug some of that stuff out of the stage. We were extremely lucky. It was just the trajectory of it that it didn't get us.

Yeah. It happened and some of us knew exactly what it was. I looked up and saw smoke, that's all I saw and I saw some people running and a stagehand came up and said 'Okay, we've gotta get you off the stage right now. And they just rushed us off the stage and out the back, and it was pandemonium out on the street. All the news crews that were leaving for the night were running back towards the Centennial Park ... and our producer who was with us was actually out at the tower, and he was helping some people doing triage when the emergency crews got there. And so we were walking to the van and some policeman heard that he had been there and witnessed the whole thing, and grabbed him and took him off to be interviewed by the FBI.

That was the end of our gig. I actually played there the next week with another band from Los Angeles. But they decided not to have any more night events so we played during the day.

What's been the most alarming technical problem you've ever had on stage?

This didn't involve my equipment but ... originally I'm from Seattle and I had a band up there. We used to back up a lot of national artists and we got to play with the late Big Joe Turner, the blues singer, and ... but this was right toward the end of his life and he had some real serious physical problems. He had diabetes and he had circulation problems in both legs, a heart condition ... and so he didn't stand on stage he would sit. He walked with two crutches and he just had a microphone right there in front of him. And so we played this set for him, in this little club, and when the show was over we would play what they call a 'chaser' which is just background music that we vamp on while the artist would walk off the stage. So he went to get out of that chair and um ... his legs buckled under him and he fell back into the drum set and completely wiped it out ... and we're all trying to play ... it was one of the more embarrassing moments in my life. I felt very bad for him. He passed away about a year later.

Well, for me, I love all different kinds of music, and 1 love the challenge of playing different kinds of music. And I've also found it's really helpful for trying to stay working, and stay busy. The more versatile I can become then the more sought after I am.

I played with him once, yeah. I was doing a gig with Dr. John and Eric was there and we got him to come up and sit in. And that was a wonderful gig; it took me a week to come down from that one. I got to stand right next to him ... he was just great. I asked him ... I said, 'Do you wanna sing something?' and he said 'Well, I don't know what I'd sing,' and I'm thinkin’, "Well I don't know, maybe one of your millions of hits, anything". But you know how he is; he just wants to stand at the back and noodle.

She's great. She's like one of the guys. She's been in the business for so long and she's used to being in bands that are almost all guys. She really comes in and takes charge. She knows what she wants, and she's great ... she's great fun.

Musicians are often renowned for being practical jokers as well, has that been your experience on tours?

I've had a few jokes played on me. It usually involves ruining the bed that you plan on sleeping in. Someone poured beer into my bed once. It was soggy and it smelled bad. I've also had some shaving cream put in my bed and I actually had someone take some cheese and jam it into the lock on my hotel room door and so I couldn't get in.

It's an area that I'm pretty well versed in. I've been in recovery for over four years now. It's really hard to say. Because I'm a member of a twelve-step group, I do a lot of speaking to people about that and especially to adolescents. And it's really hard to tell kids, you know, "Don't do this". At that age I know that I wouldn't listen to anybody about it. 'Cos I was just getting started, and I had to do about twenty-five years of research before I found out that it didn't work for me anymore. I guess the only advice I could give is '"Be careful. Don't let it get out of hand."

Towards the end of my using I acquired a nasty habit, and when you're out on the road it's very difficult to acquire and stay well. It was a problem for me on many occasions. So you just end up being sick, and it really detracts from the whole experience. You want to be conscious, do the job and enjoy yourself'. What happened for me was my band did what's called an 'intervention' with me and they said that I was out of control and they were concerned about me, and they wanted me to get some help. They had this guy named Buddy Arnold - Buddy Arnold is the Head of the Musicians Assistance Program and he came and facilitated the intervention and got me into a treatment program. What MAP does is they get funds from the record companies to support drug rehabilitation programs for musicians because most musicians - by the time they get to the point where they need help, they can't afford it - because there's no health insurance for us. We get nothing to fall back on, so this group probably saved my life, and I know that they have for a whole bunch of my friends, people that I know. And so it's well worth mentioning that if there's anybody out there in music and they're having a tough time and they don't know what to do, they should call them.

Were you resistant to getting that help at the time or were you ready for it?

I was ready. I was really beat up and I was ready, I just didn't know what to do or where to turn.

They have a couple of facilities out in the desert that they refer people to and they provide as much funding as they can for it. In my case they did a co-pay with Riverside County, and sent me out to the desert. And it was the best thing that I ever did for myself. And afterwards, they've got a private aftercare program where they have sober living facilities you can go to if you're not quite ready to come home, or go wherever you're gonna go, or if you've lost everything and you have nowhere to go, you can go there. And they have an encounter kind of therapy group twice a week. They work out of the musicians union. They have some licensed therapists that facilitate these groups, and they hold benefits around town. They've had some at The House of Blues and Billboard Live, with people like Bonnie Raitt and Natalie Cole performing and it's a really great organization. I'm very grateful to them.