Kaffeine Buzz reviews independent and foreign films,
in addition to reporting the latest buzz behind Colorado's film festivals.

Armor For Sleep – A Comprehensive Guide To Touring

If you’ve ever thought being in a band is glamorous, you’re about half right. The stuff you see – the playing, the drinking, the laughing and accolades with fans – is the glam half. And then there are the realities of life on the road and in a van, packed with people and boxes of food, day in and day out. In support of What To Do When You Are Dead, which includes a fabulous guide booklet, Armor for Sleep hit numerous gigs.

You get to see more personal sides of each band member after they get off stage, along with their tour manager and his string of bad luck. In order to practice their acoustic sets the boys invade the weight room at the hotel, surrounded by exercise machines they sing and play while burning some carbs on the Stairmaster. The highs and the lows raise their head, from drunken after parties to hassles with security guards in New Orleans, who threaten to keep their gear locked up.

From the arduous process of seven people ordering food through a drive thru to hearing their songs coming from a car driving next to them on the highway, lead singer Ben Jorgensen sums it up this way, “I guess the best part of being in a band is to travel around and meet so many people from across the country…and now the world.”

Make sure to check out the Extra Features, which include music videos, bonus footage, a slideshow (that’s way better than your parent’s summer vacation of ’72), and even a pseudo MTV Cribs sequence with tours of each of their rooms, which pretty much look like what you would expect of band members who live on the road, except for P.J.’s room, which has wall to wall bulletin board material. Go figure.

www.armorforsleep.com
www.equalvision.com

-Kim Owens, December 16, 2005