Eli Young Band Keeping Things Under Control::CMA Vocal Group of the Year Nominees Observe Some Rules During Pre-Show Party
There’s a popular rap song that boasts, “After the show, it’s the after-party!'” Forget the after-party. I’m more interested in the Eli Young Band‘s pre-show party.
By all accounts, that’s where the party really starts.
The Texas boys admit they have toned it down over the years, having discovered that a little bit of balance on the road is best for everyone. The group’s Jon Jones revealed recently the guys have a “two-hour guideline” regarding their festivities before they go onstage.
“That’s kind of the magic number of kind of having a couple drinks to relax before we go onstage without it affecting the show in a negative way,” he says.
However, Mike Eli admits, “We used to break the two-hour rule a lot.”
Count on his bandmate James Young to remind him, “That was back before there was more than 10 people at the bar.”
Oh, things are definitely a different now. The stakes are much higher, thanks to their chart-topping success over the last several years. And with that success comes pressures and demands that require you to say on your A-game and keep things a little more professional while you’re on the road.
“It’s like we’re at the office, and that’s about the time you can find us around the water cooler,” Jones says of the pre-show routine. “You can just kinda see us all at the bar in the bus, and that’s when we all start interacting.”
But rules are made to be broken — or at least bent ever so slightly — in certain situations, right?
Although the musicians keep it in check before hitting the stage, Eli assures us they still know how to let loose and have a ball — when the time is right.
“There’s not a bottle of liquor that I normally disagree with. … I’ll drink anything that’ll give me a headache the next day,” he admits.
The guys will take their pre-show rituals and rules on the road this week with shows in Kansas, Arkansas and Kentucky.