Last night Shaun and I brought my oldest son Blue to Shaun’s show in Lebanon, TN. Ever since I have worked with bands, Blue has been able to come to at least one show a tour, and walk around with me. Then he goes home, blasts the music, and jumps around on his bed with his electric guitar, and claims to be the singer in whatever band he saw the night before.

Last night he helped me unpack the CD’s, the Compassion packets, listen to the sound check, and set out the bottles of water. He watched as I talked to the staff at the church about volunteers, the Power Point slides, and parking. Then later, he helped me run the slides with the lyrics to some of the songs Shaun was playing, and helped me pass out the Compassion packets to people that were considering sponsoring children.

Later in the show, fighting sleep in a dark room and two hours past bedtime, sitting in my lap, Blue looked up at me and whispered, “Being a road manager is better than being in a band”.

“Really? What makes you think that?”

“Because you just walk around for a while, and then you just sit and watch.”

I started to explain to him all the things that needed to be done before the concert could even happen; the booking of flights, reservations of rental cars, booking of hotels, packing of merchandise. I tried to explain to him how I had to talk to everyone that was involved in putting the concert on to make sure that there were tables set up, and water was there to be put out, and sound men were there to sound check. After that I needed to make sure I knew how many CD’s were sold and make the money match. I needed to know how many Compassion children were sponsored and mail in the paperwork for that. I needed to keep track of where we were and how we were going to get home to see our families, and keep us safe the whole time too.
I realized about halfway into my “rant’ of all the stuff I did for my job, that sleep was getting the better of him, and more specifically, he didn’t care. He had already mentally moved on to something else.

This morning my wife and I were talking about how much I travel, and how so many times it can be so harmful for families. How so many times children of traveling fathers grow up not knowing what their dads do for a living and not understanding why they need to be gone so much. We talked about how so many times the relationship between a traveling father and his children drift further apart and can be harmful for the child’s future. I asked her if she thought that was happening to us. Before she could answer Blue walked into the kitchen with our middle son, Aiden saying,

“You can be the singer, and I will be your road manager.”

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