One Small Change

Learning to love touring with autism

I’ve been thinking a lot these past few weeks about what has sometimes felt in the past like a fundamental incompatibility of certain aspects of the music industry and being a person with autism.

Touring can be an especially challenging aspect of this clash of “ways of being” because of the daily Russian roulette you face with travelling, unexpected changes in every venue, and the general lack of routine.

Of course, not every person with autism faces the same challenges or needs - I can only describe my own experiences here but I hope that in doing so it might help illuminate what is an often unspoken corner of the industry and perhaps even encourage other neurodiverse musicians who are struggling to seek out some more workable solutions that fit with their own needs

During the recent tour I had to negotiate something unplanned for nearly every single day: a stolen car that threw a major spanner in the works, the van parking bay being closed at another venue (and no car park being able to accept a vehicle with our height restriction), no rider at another venue, dropping a keyboard on my foot at another. The list goes on.

As someone who finds even the smallest change to what I am expecting to be a huge amount of information to process, life on the road is certainly not comfortable for me when these happen.

I thrive on routine and a clear expectation of how something will be, what it will look like, and how it will work. It can be hard for neurotypical people (who I’m told can even enjoy surprises) to appreciate just how much of a challenge it can be when things don’t go to plan. I have created an everyday life that caters to and meets my needs as someone that likes familiarity, routine and the comforts of working alone.

In the past, one of the biggest daily stresses for me on my own tours was having to negotiate a different and new sound person every day. Meeting a new person, adjusting to their communication style, trying to anticipate if they would be able to deliver what was needed turns out to have been a huge factor in my previously finding playing live to be unbearably stressful, to the point where I just didn’t feel I could do it as The Anchoress.

As someone who operates as a perfectionist, a live show is already a compromise in comparison to the “safe” and familiar confines of the studio where I can control my environment and am fully in control of everything that happens. Add into the mix a stranger who may or may not even be familiar with your music, and let’s face it, historically can often end up speaking to the men in the room and assume any women is either a backing singer or girlfriend of the band, equals a high stress environment for a female solo artist negotiating the live circuit.

Add in malfunctioning equipment in ill-maintained venues. Alcohol. Lack of sleep. And you can have a recipe for ASD meltdown.

So, for these recent live dates it wasn’t even a choice to opt for the incredible “luxury” of taking my own sound engineer to take a way a huge proportion of the uncertainty and change that has previously been so stressful for me.

Having the safe hands and ears of Felix (our sound person) on the road with us means that I have the consistency of the same setup every day and a trusted and known presence behind the desk every night.

I can’t tell you what a difference it has made to my mental health. My anxiety. My enjoyment of playing live again.

No more second guessing if the sound person will ignore you and talk to the bass player instead. No more worrying about whether or not you’ll be able to hear yourself on stage. No more over apologising just for asking for what you need to do your job.

I’ve been very lucky to have experienced the luxury of high-level touring with both Simple Minds and the Manic Street Preachers and the calm and confidence that come with having a brilliant crew around you to support the show.

Touring with Simple Minds for four years meant I was able to understand that it wasn’t in fact that I wasn’t cut out for playing live, it’s just that I needed a different set of circumstances to be able to function as a autistic person in music.

I adored the entire experience of working with the fantastically talented FOH engineer GG (Olivier Gerard) and the brilliantly precise Vince Barker (keyboard tech). They made me feel safe, looked after, and confident that I could deliver consistently each and every single night. They changed my entire outlook on myself as a performer. I started to see that I actually loved playing live, given the right set of circumstances.

I’ll be forever grateful for this years for opening my eyes to what was possible if you were supported on the right way with brilliant people around you to make you sound and look as fantastic as possible, every night. The calm and confidence that came with the familiarity of the same brilliant monitoring, setup and sound each night was a complete revelation for me. All I needed was routine and consistency.

With that came a new experience for me: actually enjoying playing live rather than dreading it. Along with an insightful MD (thank you Andy Gillespie) that understood my autism and need to walk through the stage route each night and orientate myself on stage before doors opened, I can’t say what a cumulative difference this made.

There are certainly many small things that venues and show reps might be able to do to help people like me negotiate touring. Any information in advance that helps the planning process is invaluable. The venues that provided a visual of what the load-in looks like were my some of my favourite on the tour. Knowing how you can get from the dressing room to somewhere quiet or go outside without walking through the crowd was another brilliant element that some provided in their advancing information. All these tiny things accumulate to make a huge difference at the end of a long travel day.

While I’m by no means at a level where I can afford to take full crew on tour with me, we did make the decision when planning the shows for The Art of Losing that having our own dedicated sound person on the tour would be the single biggest factor in making it something I could negotiate with my mental health in tact.

While we could not have foreseen that Covid would mean the tour ended up being rescheduled twice, the extended planning time meant that I was able to call upon the financial support of the Help Musicians Touring Fund to mean the I could afford to employ Felix on these dates and finally tour in a way that made it both enjoyable and bearable for me.

It has been a revelation. For the first time I have completed a run of shows at The Anchoress with a smile of my face and calm in my head. I am not burnt out and retreating to my bed for a week, feeling that I’m not cut out for this.

All this time all I needed was this small adjustment to accommodate the different way that brain functions. It makes my heart hurt to think of all the other musicians that might have walked away from their careers or written themselves off as “broken” because the industry has not traditionally recognised the workplace adjustments that would, in any other field, be deemed entirely reasonable.

If you recognise yourself in any of what I have written I would urge you to think about what it would take to make the difference: What small changes would make it manageable for you.

Let’s talk about our neurodiversity not as a barrier to working but as an incredible gift that can also offer us access to unrivalled creativity and different ways of seeing the world, as well as occasionally offering us challenges in a world usually built for neurotypicals.

I am forever grateful to the Simple Minds crew for showing me there was a different way, and to Help Musicians for making it possible for me to do my job again.

I can’t wait to get back out for the autumn run of dates and do it all again now.

I never thought I’d be typing those words but yes, for the first time, I’m actually looking forward to it!

The autumn tour dates are on sale now: theanchoress.co.uk/live