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By Leo Moraes

In over 30 years in this music, I’ve been on the road in nearly every capacity there is. Member of a band, solo artist, supporting musician, tour manager, sound engineer. I have slept on green room floors with my jacket as a pillow, in the back of cars, on the couches of strangers who became friends by morning. I have carried amplifiers and cases of every shape and size. I have driven vans across international borders at four in the morning. I have stuffed a compact Fiat so full of people and gear it would put circus clowns in a VW Beetle to shame.

Let me tell you something that’s true whether you’re a new band packed into a van or a pop icon on a private jet: touring is exhausting. And I’ve met people who have done it longer, and harder, than I ever have. Since joining Jazz Is Dead, I’ve had the privilege of touring with maestros in their 80s, musicians who were already on the road decades before I was born.

Sometimes, in the rougher moments, shuffling through airport security at dawn, checking into a hotel at 2am, I ask myself: why are they still doing this?

You could say it’s the job. That this is how they make their living. That’s true. But I have reasons to believe something deeper is going on.

Renato Massa, a drummer who has played behind some of the biggest names in Brasilian music, once told me that going on tour feels like going to war. You have a mission to accomplish. You leave your normal life behind. Your bed, your routine, the people who know you outside of soundcheck, and step into the unknown, into a string of cities you’ll only ever see through a bus window and a stage door. You don’t fully control the terrain. You adapt, you push through fatigue, you show up for the people beside you because they’re showing up for you. And like anyone who has been through something difficult alongside others, you come out the other side bonded to them in a way peacetime never allows.

That’s part of it. There’s a camaraderie forged on tour that’s hard to replicate anywhere else. A shared objective. A collective exhaustion. Going through all of it together pushes the limits of human relationships, you see people at their most vulnerable. Their quirks, their vices, the things they’d never say to someone who hadn’t earned it. They confide in you, and you in them, in ways only possible for people who spend that much time together, in a row, with nowhere to hide. It’s stressful. It’s also rich. There’s a lot to learn about yourself, and about coexisting with people who see the world differently than you do.

But that doesn’t fully answer my question. If anything, it explains why some people eventually get fed up with this life.

I think what I witnessed on the Ebo Taylor farewell tour gets closer to the truth. When the tour was cancelled in 2024 over visa issues, we assumed that was it: that Ebo would likely never tour again. But his sons pushed for us to try again the following year, when he’d turn 89. Their father, his kids told us, was at his best on the road. Even the prospect of touring, the planning, talking about the cities, the shows, was enough to lift his spirits. And once we were out there, the difference was impossible to miss. You could see it in his mood on show days. The excitement in his eyes as he put on his stage clothes. The way he lit up when the crowd sang back to him.

Here’s something I believe: the relationship between artist and fan is a two-way street. The audience gets songs that mark their lives: the soundtrack to a heartbreak, a wedding, a summer they’ll never forget. And the artist gets something back just as vital: proof that they’re not alone. That the intimate, private impulse they turned into sound resonates with people they’ve never met, who don’t speak their language, who live lives nothing like their own. That encounter can only happen through touring. No recording, no stream, no algorithm can deliver it. I believe, no, I know, that deep down, that’s why they keep going through all the hassle. And it’s worth it.

Earlier this week I was in Mexico City for the kickoff of Marcos Valle’s North American tour. Watching him in the green room after the encore, still buzzing from the crowd singing “olé, olé, olé, olé, Marcos, Marcos” back at him, was one of those magic moments you don’t forget. The tour continues through the US and Canada. In a few weeks, it’s Cortex’s turn, with Adrian Younge and J.Rocc on the bill.

Don’t miss the chance to be in the room for these. Go exchange some love. Know that the artist you’ve showed up for has come from far away for one reason: because they know you’ll be there.

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