The Scent of Music
Country Music Association®
April 02, 2009
By Alice Berlow
Legions of beer can chickens stood at attention on the biggest, blackest and most extreme-looking grill you've ever seen. That wafting smell of sizzling birds cooking up all the juice from cheap beer steam and charcoal smoke was sweet and strong enough to dispel even the heaviest diesel fumes coughed during load-in by the semis, buses and vans into the cold concrete tunnels and all the way down to the dressing rooms.
Those chickens, so tempting to homesick sore eyes and big appetites, held their pose for the grillmaster, who stood with two spray bottles in hand, one filled with water to quell any flare-ups and the other filled with a secret marinade whose only ingredient he will admit to is "soda pop."
"What kind?"
"I'm not saying," he answered with a smile and then turned away. But he did admit that the catering company had rented this pit locally, which makes that the kind of company you want on your tour - one that knows the back roads and inroads of the culinary scene in every town on your schedule.
The highway tours of Country Music are like ships out at sea. Once you get onboard, there's not a lot of the real world to step back into until there's a shore pass - a break in the schedule. And as on ships, the food had better be good, healthy and interesting or the crew is going to mutiny, one way or another.
"The coffee has got to be hot and breakfast has to be ready; it makes or breaks a day for the road crew," said Bonnie Ingram, who has been in the catering business for 13 years, the last five as owner of her own company, In the Mix Catering.
She has obviously learned much during these years of providing food for Brooks & Dunn, Reba McEntire with Kelly Clarkson, and other tours, but among the most important lessons have been to give everyone, from the star to the bus driver, the kind of treatment they would expect when they have gone off the road and back with their own families.
To create that feeling of home and hearth, Ingram focuses on the small things - devoting time to concocting home-style desserts, for example, rather than fancy dinner plates. But she doesn't neglect the ambience, which is why her settings include fresh-cut flowers, candles, dimmed lighting and even quiet background jazz.
This attention to detail is especially helpful on large stadium dates, at which caterers feed anywhere from 250 to 400 people three times day and throw in a fourth post-concert meal at 2 AM. According to Mark Metzger of Tourcats Catering, whose clients have included several Country stars as well as Jimmy Buffett, Elton John and Trans Siberian Orchestra, he "set up and served 50,000 bottles of water, 30,000 cans of soda, 14,000 eggs, two tons of beef, chicken and fish and an unknown quantity of fresh fruits and vegetables," during Kenny Chesney's five-month "Poets & Pirates Tour" in 2008.
Beyond the sheer magnitude of all this, there's the question of keeping healthy and, nearly as important, interested. Chowing down throughout a multi-month trek, Metzger admitted, is "like eating in the same restaurant for every meal for six months."
Ingram savors this challenge and invites input from tour members to help deal with it - by keeping a suggestion box within everyone's easy reach, for instance. And not only does she rely on her GPS system to track down the nearest BJ's, Costco or Sam's Club for bulk grocery purchases at each stop on the itinerary, she also keys into the nearest local farmers' markets for the freshest possible produce, meats and cheese.
This approach is ultimately easier for the conscientious caterer than working with Sysco or another national food distributor. Even though the caterer could pass through the same city several times a year with different acts, the paperwork demands of regional accounts, combined with venue access, confusion over deliveries and receiving and non-negotiable deadlines make it easier to adapt a hunter/ gatherer strategy. This involves mobilizing scouts in upcoming stops on the itinerary to purchase and store durables, such as drinks, candy and granola bars. Then, when the tour rolls into town, the caterer buys everything else that's needed and hauls it to the venue to prepare.
There's another argument in favor of buying locally even on a mega-tour. As the cost of fuel rises, so does the price of food whose delivery depends on shipments exceeding 1,500 miles or more from source to stadium. Food obtained from community providers doesn't pass along those expenses. More of the money spent at farmers' markets goes into the pockets of the farmers themselves than when middlemen are involved. Plus, it also helps support the economies of each region visited, not to mention the fans who live in them and hope to spend some of their disposable income attending shows.
Beyond that are facts that don't translate easily onto spreadsheets: Because the food grown by family farmers tends to be harvested closer to home and thus nearer to ripeness, its nutritional value is higher. And it simply tastes better than food that's been trucked from far away.
The good news is that anywhere a tour travels in the United States, and at any time of year, local food can be found. A good way to start, before the musical juggernaut starts to roll, is to check online. Locally grown food in the Nashville area can be found at localtable.net, and for the rest of the country information is available at eatwellguide.org and localharvest.org.
Of course, despite all efforts to provide healthy and tasty cuisine in an agreeable ambience, the makeshift dining halls on tours are neither home nor restaurant. They are a hybrid of both, tempered by realities of life on the road. They are there to provide a functional necessity - essentially, to keep people fueled sufficiently that they can maintain their productivity from day to day.
Yet catering can do as much for the heart and soul as for the stomach. Whether set up in tents behind stages, in windowless basements below dripping steam pipes, or behind curtains hung to delineate some momentary sanctuary within a broader stadium space, these places are where a community gathers to break bread. Over tables draped in cloth as if to invite visitors to linger as long as they can, artists and crew come here to sit, eat, laugh, talk . to be, free for a minute from the cackling demands of walkie-talkies and ringing iPhones. These are islands in a relentless sea-cycle, from load-in through the last photo op in the autograph line.
"We've been driving since the winter. The destination doesn't change." So the story goes, as sung by Grace Potter and The Nocturnals in their lyric to "Stop the Bus." Touring is its own world. The food, the meals and the gatherings should be at least as good as the music. Ultimately, it's the road and all it encompasses that binds together the people who make it all happen.
2009 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.
Legions of beer can chickens stood at attention on the biggest, blackest and most extreme-looking grill you've ever seen. That wafting smell of sizzling birds cooking up all the juice from cheap beer steam and charcoal smoke was sweet and strong enough to dispel even the heaviest diesel fumes coughed during load-in by the semis, buses and vans into the cold concrete tunnels and all the way down to the dressing rooms.
Those chickens, so tempting to homesick sore eyes and big appetites, held their pose for the grillmaster, who stood with two spray bottles in hand, one filled with water to quell any flare-ups and the other filled with a secret marinade whose only ingredient he will admit to is "soda pop."
"What kind?"
"I'm not saying," he answered with a smile and then turned away. But he did admit that the catering company had rented this pit locally, which makes that the kind of company you want on your tour - one that knows the back roads and inroads of the culinary scene in every town on your schedule.
The highway tours of Country Music are like ships out at sea. Once you get onboard, there's not a lot of the real world to step back into until there's a shore pass - a break in the schedule. And as on ships, the food had better be good, healthy and interesting or the crew is going to mutiny, one way or another.
"The coffee has got to be hot and breakfast has to be ready; it makes or breaks a day for the road crew," said Bonnie Ingram, who has been in the catering business for 13 years, the last five as owner of her own company, In the Mix Catering.
She has obviously learned much during these years of providing food for Brooks & Dunn, Reba McEntire with Kelly Clarkson, and other tours, but among the most important lessons have been to give everyone, from the star to the bus driver, the kind of treatment they would expect when they have gone off the road and back with their own families.
To create that feeling of home and hearth, Ingram focuses on the small things - devoting time to concocting home-style desserts, for example, rather than fancy dinner plates. But she doesn't neglect the ambience, which is why her settings include fresh-cut flowers, candles, dimmed lighting and even quiet background jazz.
This attention to detail is especially helpful on large stadium dates, at which caterers feed anywhere from 250 to 400 people three times day and throw in a fourth post-concert meal at 2 AM. According to Mark Metzger of Tourcats Catering, whose clients have included several Country stars as well as Jimmy Buffett, Elton John and Trans Siberian Orchestra, he "set up and served 50,000 bottles of water, 30,000 cans of soda, 14,000 eggs, two tons of beef, chicken and fish and an unknown quantity of fresh fruits and vegetables," during Kenny Chesney's five-month "Poets & Pirates Tour" in 2008.
Beyond the sheer magnitude of all this, there's the question of keeping healthy and, nearly as important, interested. Chowing down throughout a multi-month trek, Metzger admitted, is "like eating in the same restaurant for every meal for six months."
Ingram savors this challenge and invites input from tour members to help deal with it - by keeping a suggestion box within everyone's easy reach, for instance. And not only does she rely on her GPS system to track down the nearest BJ's, Costco or Sam's Club for bulk grocery purchases at each stop on the itinerary, she also keys into the nearest local farmers' markets for the freshest possible produce, meats and cheese.
This approach is ultimately easier for the conscientious caterer than working with Sysco or another national food distributor. Even though the caterer could pass through the same city several times a year with different acts, the paperwork demands of regional accounts, combined with venue access, confusion over deliveries and receiving and non-negotiable deadlines make it easier to adapt a hunter/ gatherer strategy. This involves mobilizing scouts in upcoming stops on the itinerary to purchase and store durables, such as drinks, candy and granola bars. Then, when the tour rolls into town, the caterer buys everything else that's needed and hauls it to the venue to prepare.
There's another argument in favor of buying locally even on a mega-tour. As the cost of fuel rises, so does the price of food whose delivery depends on shipments exceeding 1,500 miles or more from source to stadium. Food obtained from community providers doesn't pass along those expenses. More of the money spent at farmers' markets goes into the pockets of the farmers themselves than when middlemen are involved. Plus, it also helps support the economies of each region visited, not to mention the fans who live in them and hope to spend some of their disposable income attending shows.
Beyond that are facts that don't translate easily onto spreadsheets: Because the food grown by family farmers tends to be harvested closer to home and thus nearer to ripeness, its nutritional value is higher. And it simply tastes better than food that's been trucked from far away.
The good news is that anywhere a tour travels in the United States, and at any time of year, local food can be found. A good way to start, before the musical juggernaut starts to roll, is to check online. Locally grown food in the Nashville area can be found at localtable.net, and for the rest of the country information is available at eatwellguide.org and localharvest.org.
Of course, despite all efforts to provide healthy and tasty cuisine in an agreeable ambience, the makeshift dining halls on tours are neither home nor restaurant. They are a hybrid of both, tempered by realities of life on the road. They are there to provide a functional necessity - essentially, to keep people fueled sufficiently that they can maintain their productivity from day to day.
Yet catering can do as much for the heart and soul as for the stomach. Whether set up in tents behind stages, in windowless basements below dripping steam pipes, or behind curtains hung to delineate some momentary sanctuary within a broader stadium space, these places are where a community gathers to break bread. Over tables draped in cloth as if to invite visitors to linger as long as they can, artists and crew come here to sit, eat, laugh, talk . to be, free for a minute from the cackling demands of walkie-talkies and ringing iPhones. These are islands in a relentless sea-cycle, from load-in through the last photo op in the autograph line.
"We've been driving since the winter. The destination doesn't change." So the story goes, as sung by Grace Potter and The Nocturnals in their lyric to "Stop the Bus." Touring is its own world. The food, the meals and the gatherings should be at least as good as the music. Ultimately, it's the road and all it encompasses that binds together the people who make it all happen.
2009 CMA Close Up® News Service / Country Music Association®, Inc.