sosaveme/SONS tour | sosaveme

So it’s definitely been a while since we’ve posted on the blog and for this we all apologize. It’s always a balance between making strides toward keeping the band functioning and growing, living life with our families, and staying connected to all the wonderful people we meet along the way.

For those of you who don’t know, during the month of January we had the extreme pleasure of touring with a band called SONS (http://sonsofficial.com). Over the course of 2 weeks we got to travel, play, and live with the four guys in SONS. All of them have their different perks and characteristics, but all of them share a tremendous depth of heart and character that we felt honored to be sharing the stage and road with them.

This tour was set up to be different from the very beginning. For the first time sosaveme implemented an internship program and, our first intern Corey, met up with us in Fort Wayne, IN to travel, learn, grow, and serve in the life of a touring musician. sosaveme in no way considers ourselves to be masters of the music industry and touring, but we’ve been at this for over 6 years and have an insight into things people who simply haven’t toured might not know. We feel strongly about passing along any information we’ve gained by experience to those who are willing to learn; especially the younger ones. Of course, our usual Merch Guy named Mathew Pimental went along with us to sell merch but also to create some tour videos for the blog DigitalTourBus.com. Another difference on this tour was Austin had to stay home to work so we had our friend Caleb drive from Virginia to come learn the songs, practice, and tour with sosaveme. So on January 7th all of us loaded into our van with an astounding 320,000 miles on it and faced the open road.

This particular tour had so many great experiences and took us to some really unique and fantastic venues, even venues sosaveme has been trying to play for a long time (to name a few Murray Hill Theater in Florida and The Channel in South Carolina). We got to meet some great people along the way and were once again humbled by all the people who opened their homes to us. It’s amazing that a touring band can travel the U.S. and not stay in a hotel or sleep in their van because so many people are willing to let 6 guys sleep in their house.

Jon's Interview @ Sole4Souls

While in Nashville we got to tour the headquarters of the Non-Profit Organization Soles4Souls that has distributed over 17 Million pairs of shoes to date (1 pair every 7 seconds) to people in need. It was great to hear from the staff as we toured the facility and hear how each member of the team contributes to meeting the needs of strangers. What particularly struck me was the organization’s methods and ideas of sustainability. They not only give these shoes away to places in need, but through a micro-enterprise development system they teach people how to generate income and distribute shoes on their own. They don’t just give continual hand outs, but equip people to generate income that will benefit their local community and society. Soles4Souls is looking for ways to inform and connect with a demographic of people that bands like sosaveme reach at every show. We were happy to sit down with them and talk about ideas and methods of how we can work together to meet the needs of people who don’t have the simple necessity of shoes.

For more information or to get involved, visit: http://www.soles4souls.org/

Cleaning the Van

sosaveme is looking forward to March/April where we already have another Mid-West follow up tour in the works. We are excited to announce we will be visiting Texas on this tour and possibly Oklahoma and Louisiana. We will be sure to announce the full tour dates with info soon. Part of this tour will include some more shows with SONS and a few other bands to be announced.

If you are interested in seeing some video of this past tour, be sure to check our 3 VLOGs (video blogs) on Digital Tour Bus’ Website.
Update 1 of 3: http://digtb.com/ssmsblog1
Update 2 of 3: http://digtb.com/ssmsblog2
Update 3 of 3: http://digtb.com/ssmsblog3

Here are a few pictures from our journey in January. Enjoy.