Buzz Osborne on How to Route a Melvins Tour: Listen

Touring may be the lifeblood of most artists, but being on the road tends to wear down even the most seasoned musician. Buzz Osborne, the singer and guitarist of legendary rock band Melvins, has found ways to sidestep some of the pitfalls that make touring grueling. 

With more than four decades of experience and thousands of shows, Osborne takes a hands-on approach to tour routing, ensuring that travel is bearable and the band has enough energy for cross-country treks. He examines other artists’ tours with dismay, wondering why they pick the routes and sequences of cities he has learned to avoid. 

“I look at some bands’ tours, and I think, ‘I don’t know why you guys are killing yourselves like this. No wonder you hate touring,’” Osborne tells Billboard’s Behind the Setlist podcast from a stop in Allentown, Penn., on the band’s Save Imperial Death March Part II tour with Napalm Death. Melvins were supporting their latest album, Thunderball, released in April on Ipecac Recordings.

Without an artist taking an active role in routing, Osborne says agents often take “the path of least resistance” when booking tours, piecing together cities and dates without strategically considering travel distances or workloads for the band. “I don’t want to tour routing that looks like you’re decorating a Christmas tree,” he adds, referencing the chaotic overlap and zig-zagging that comes with poor planning. 

Unlike many artists who leave tour planning entirely to their booking agents, Osborne insists on being involved in every detail from the outset. “I like to figure out how the tour will lay out,” he says. “I like to have all that in mind before I give it to the booking agent.”

Mapping out tours is a passion for Osborne, something he’s been doing for years, right down to planning stretches of time and even hypothetical scenarios to see how they might work out. “It’s a lot more work than people think, sitting down with a map,” he admits. “But I like that kind of stuff. I like to plan it out and think about it.”

Osborne is so attracted to the planning side of touring that he has mapped out a theoretical 104-show U.S. tour without repeating a single city. Although Osborne says he hasn’t carried out the ambitious plan, the Melvins did pull off another logistical feat: In 2012, the band — its Melvins Lite incarnation — played all 50 states plus Washington, D.C., in 51 days.

One of Osborne’s keys to happy touring is mapping out manageable drives. While an agent might view a 300-mile stretch between two shows as trivial, he disagrees — especially when difficult terrain or heavy traffic is involved. “New York to Boston is the longest three-hour drive in the entire world,” he notes. And rather than travel straight through a stretch between Houston and New Orleans, Osborne prefers to stop in Baton Rouge or take a day off. “It’s a horrible drive,” he laments. 

Because Osborne doesn’t like buses, short trips also allow the band to stay in hotels. “We had a 30-mile drive to the hotel [after the Philadelphia show] and a 29-mile drive from the hotel to the venue tonight,” Osborne says about the travel for back-to-back shows in Philadelphia and Allentown, Penn. “We left the hotel at noon. It’s just not that hard. Tomorrow, we have a 100-mile drive to Brooklyn. Wow, you know, how will I manage?” he jokes sarcastically.

Properly planning for the seasons can also make touring more enjoyable. Osborne explains that in the winter, artists can easily travel a swatch of the Western states filled with viable markets. “If you just draw a circle from just above San Francisco all the way out to Tucson and back down, you could do at least two or three weeks of shows in that area without ever running into bad weather. People would love it. You don’t have to just play San Francisco and L.A.”

Another piece of advice from Osborne: Don’t be shy about playing B and C markets. Melvins launched a warm-up tour for its run with Napalm Death by playing California cities such as Bakersfield, Fresno, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, San Luis Obispo and Pioneertown — places that may not fit neatly into a traditional A-market strategy, but make sense for bands willing to follow Osborne’s lead. 

Of course, four decades of making music and touring help, too. “You have Melvins fans pretty much everywhere,” Osborne boasts. 

Listen to the entire interview with Buzz Osborne in the embedded Spotify player, or go to Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeart, Podbean or Everand.