#304 With Sam Feldt: Dark Side of the DJ Tour Life

And the sleep you get is like this on the plane. Right, so your next step.

Yeah, this is my side.

Yeah, that's.

Hey, what's up? This is Laid Back Luke, DJ and producer, and I'm out in the streets of Amsterdam today. I gotta beware of the car coming right here. I am out in the streets of Amsterdam today to go and talk to Samfeld at his place. He put out a series of tweets about DJ mental health, and I'm going to his place today to talk about it. All right, Sound veldt in the vlog. Super happy to be. We're in your living room or kitchen.

It's a semi living room slash kitchen. We're at the dinner table right now here in my house in Amsterdam.

Although this looks glamorous, I'm here to talk about the not so glamorous life of a dj. According to your tweets and your tweet thread that went viral. Tons of responses over there. And I feel we can't talk enough about these kind of subjects.

100%.

Let's dive into that. And I'm just going to look at my phone here. So you tweeted the real life of dj. It looks glamorous, but there's a hidden, darker side.

Yeah, I think a lot of people don't realize that. It's like I said, it's not just lonely when you're on tour, when you're on the plane, in your hotel room, you know, touring, waiting at airports, stuff like that, but it's also lonely when you get back. And a lot of people don't realize that because, you know, when I get back on a Monday, the rest of the world starts their work week and is unavailable from nine to five or maybe even longer. Lots of people have after work plans as well. So it's kind of hard to then figure out a way where your schedule lines up with their schedule. You can actually meet up with your friends, your family, sometimes even my wife. It's kind of hard. So you have to really look at, okay, how can we make this work? And on tour, I mean, I think it's kind of obvious. You're usually by yourself or you have a tm. Some people, they have the luxury of traveling with a team, but not everybody. So I know a lot of DJs that actually just go by themselves. They come into a new environment where they don't know anyone. They have to rely on the promoter to treat them well. If they don't get treated well, who do they have to talk to? Sometimes Happens on tour. It can be lonely and it can also be, you have to be very self reliant and also a little bit self confident because you can get into situations where it comes down to just you versus, you know, a promoter versus, you know, a hectic situation versus a flight change that wasn't supposed to happen.

Now let me just preface, this is not DJs ranting, it's raising awareness because we are truly grateful for what we do and what comes with it. We're highlighting the shadow side and you often see the positive side and it's just good to be aware of Reese.

Yeah, no, 100% and I saw that also after my Tweet. I mean 95% was very supportive and actually asked questions and you know, was kind of amazed with all these, these things that come up in a threat like this. But you also had 5% that said, hey, don't complain, you're living my dream. You know, all that stuff, which is all true. You know this. I would not trade this job for anything else. I love performing, I love traveling. Definitely not a rent, but, but a more educational piece of content right here.

I've been wanting to talk to you about this. So you wrote it's expensive. It may looks look like loads of money. Actually I just made a vlog about this. Make sure to check it out. What costs do you have as a touring dj?

Yes, I think a lot of people, they take into account things like, you know, you have to get there so flight. Often people assume that the promoter pays for it, which is not true in 90% of my cases at least. So you got a flight, you got a hotel, which is sometimes covered, but sometimes also not. You got things like ground transportation, ubers, food, you know, not just for you, but if you're traveling with a crew, you can multiply it by two or by three additional crew fees, production, marketing. You know, I always invest marketing into any show to help the promoters sell tickets. So there's a lot of things that get deducted from, you know, that show feed and everybody reads about in the media. It's a large sum of money for an hour, an hour half. But it's also not an hour, hour, half. It's two days at minimum to travel, to prepare, to make the tracks, to, you know, do all the branding around your profile to actually be able to do that one hour set and draw people to the venue. Overall, there's a lot of expenses that, you know, people just don't see and they can, you know, they can glamorize that, you know, 10k or 100k that you read about in the media or which ends up after taxes, after withholding taxes, after, you know, your agent's fees, your management's fees, with a lot less. Yeah.

Very much on point. Tweet number three. It's exhausting. And most people don't stay up for five days straight. If you're liking this interview, if you love what you're hearing right now, make sure to give me a like. And hit that subscribe button as well, also that notification button, because I love talking about mental health. Let's talk a little bit more. And I've always said DJ on tour sleeps about four hours on average per day.

I think that's kind of right. Yeah. There's days where you really don't see a bed and the sleep you get is like this on the plane. Right. So your next step, you're.

Yeah, this is, this is my side.

Yeah, yeah, that's.

That's.

Yeah. Yeah. I always like window that side.

But do you actually have like a travel pillow?

I have so many, but I always forget to bring them and I buy a new one and I. And I use it once and then.

I see for me, those don't even work. So what I did is.

Yes, same.

I stole a pillow from business class once and that's my dedicated travel pillow now. And I just like put it against the window.

Yeah. And then I'll just 100%. So the neck pillows, they're, well, in my opinion, pretty. Pretty horrible. So glad you find a solution to that. I also bought this Apple watch recently and that tracks calories. And people also don't realize that in a one hour set you burn a thousand calories. If you're. At least. I do. I'm active, I jump around.

Hey, that's all the climbing up and down the DJ booth.

And then screaming. But like even just like being in the booth and dancing, like, I mean, it is, it is, it is like a workout. So you add those, burn calories on top of the fact that you don't get a lot of energy from sleep. So you turn to things like snacking, sugar, unhealthy eating, because you want to make up for that loss of energy. So I think it's not just exhausting. It also that exhaustion pushes you to other behaviors that are not good for you, like sugar, caffeine, whatever. Maybe alcohol to numb that feeling of, you know, exhaustion. So I think it has different facets this one as well.

Time zones. I don't know if you've Ever had a jet lag? Flying to another country, trying to recover for two days, but try and do that in a lot of different countries over a weekend.

Right.

How do you do that?

I cancel the word jet lag out of my dictionary completely. I'm just here in my body feeling whatever I'm feeling and I try to listen to that. I mean, you've got jet lag apps and like you got all sorts of tools. I don't think they work if you're constantly going from time zone to time zone. They work if you go from one time zone to another and they help you adapt more quickly. But last weekend at four shows in the U.S. that was a lot of traveling, it was very little sleep and it was also cross time zones. Now I'm back here. Tomorrow I'm in Ibiza and then Saturday I'm playing Jakarta. So there's no app that can work with that schedule. So I think the best solution for that is just listen to your body. If you need to sleep and it's 3pm and nobody is sleeping, go to sleep. I mean, you're not living a normal life, you're not living a normal lifestyle. So adapt to it and don't try to conform to, hey, okay, it's night, I should be sleeping. Sleeping or it's day, I should be awake.

I like that. Yeah. Wow, that's a, that's a really good tip number four. I thought it was interesting you had written about the lack of home cooked meals. Physical and mental health. Do you make a conscious effort on tour to maintain those?

I think there's a couple of pillars to it. I think sleep is the most important one because if you don't sleep well, you can exercise and eat well all you want. You're still going to feel like any sleep is wholly on tour. So I will go to Vegas and then go to bed after an early dinner at 5 and then wake up again for the show and then sleep again. I've got an OURA ring just to be able to meet my sleep demands for that day. That's number one. I think on top of that is nutrition. So making sure that you have the right foods, you eat at the right times and also that you don't get tempted to buy, you know, snacks on the airport. To be able to make sure that you're well nourished enough to not be tempted to go for those things. Exercise on top of that. I mean, a lot of DJs, I know they make a conscious effort to go to the gym. I did that and it cost me more stress than it did me. Well, so I looked at, like I said, my apple watch. I saw, okay, I'm doing four workouts already this weekend. I do not need to push myself on tour to go to the gym. So for me, I rarely go to the gym on tour. I always go to the gym when I'm back home. I'm a personal trainer and, and recharge. So I think those things on top of that, of course, things like meditation have a place in, in that schedule. Things like supplements, perhaps vitamins for some people, medications as well. So there's a lot of things that you can do to stay healthy, both physically and mentally on tour.

This is really good advice. But I can almost hear a couple of you young viewers watching this thinking, wow, that's not a fun way to live. What happens if you don't look at those things?

Well, if you live the fun DJ lifestyle, I think you can do that for a couple of years. I think everybody has done that. 90% of the DJs I know that start to go on tour fall into the same kind of traps. When there's free alcohol every night, even during the day, when there is lots of temptation, you know, lots of girls, lots of drugs, lots of after party. There's always an after party, right? You really don't need to go to bed and it's always fun and always, there's always people there that like you because, you know, you're the dj. So I think that it's very easy to volunteer those temptations and then just forego of any sleep and drink all the alcohol in your rider and go home with a girl, a different girl every night. Maybe that sounds like fun to you guys. I've found that it just drains me and it's not sustainable. So I think it's a matter of, hey, do I want to be a party boy and live that life and possibly not live a very long life or a long career, or do I want to reduce professionally and see it as what it is, a career?

Spitting the truth right here on this vlog. Sam Felt, thank you for your wisdom as we continue to number five right here. It's a grind and I really felt you on that. So you're only as relevant as your last performance. That's heavy, man. That's mentally heavy as well. So you have to keep pushing for.

Every dj they have their last show in mind and how well it went and if it went or it was, it wasn't good or you made mistakes or there weren't many people, you always have that in your mind going into the next show, and that's something you have to live with. And that sometimes also can haunt you. Like, if you have three or four shows in a row that are just not great, immediately there's. There's thoughts in your head, hey, am I still relevant? Is there something wrong with my set? Is there something wrong with my music? Don't people like me? Am I good enough? Like, all those thoughts come into. At least into my head. So, yeah, I think it's a grind in the sense that you're constantly battling those thoughts. There's always somebody else there to take your place as well. There's so many DJs or people these days that want to be a DJ, that wanted to come and steal your spot. In that sense, you have to stay relevant. You have to make sure your sets are relevant and your music is as well.

I do honestly believe that it's always a grind. I had a couple of years that I grinded a little less. If you want a career, you need to keep on going full force.

But I mean, that also links to the. To the one before. I mean, it's exhausting. And it's also not a creative mindset. I think there's different mindsets you can be in. And, you know, when you want to create and be creative, you have to be in a flow where there's no pressure, where there's, you know, room for inspiration or experimentation. But if you have that grind in the back of your head, like, hey, I need to release this track, or, hey, there's this guy that's popping off and, you know, I want to. I want to be as good as him or as popular as him or her. It's conflicting, right? Because if you're grinding, you're not creative, right? If you're creative, you're not necessarily grinding. You're just, you know, letting creativity have its place. So you find the right balance between grind and flow.

I love it. It is competitive. Well, there's a constant influx of new talent as well, right?

That's always been the case. But with the new technology and with, for example, labels no longer being a gatekeeper of what gets released and 150,000 songs being uploaded to Spotify every week, it's definitely gotten more competitive, you know, in the sense that there were less people and less songs to compete with. So if you still want that playlist to support your track, they now have, you know, 10x many songs that they could choose from. Same counts for venues, promoters, maybe There is a local guy that can pull in a bigger crowd than you, that's cheaper than you. Yeah, I mean, in the end it is a money making game for them. I see that a lot. For example, right now, the German festivals, they're booking a lot of German acts that I've never heard of, but they're extremely popular in Germany. They pull a crowd and they literally cost maybe a tenth of what an international DJ would cost. So I think that's, you know, that's the competition that we face every day. That's also, you know, the reason why the grind is important.

And then we're here at number seven. I'm still reading up from my phone. Right. It's not what it seems. And what you see is traveling and performance and what you don't see is. And I thought it was fascinating because you actually, a lot of times you don't really see the studio stuff that's going on. You don't see the networking stuff. Thinking about marketing, prep work, management stuff and meetings. This all doesn't get shown on social media. I don't know if people would want to see this. What I encountered when I used to party back in the day was so you have a hangover on Monday and you're still exhausted or jet lagged on Tuesday. Throughout the week, the office where the management is or the record label are trying to reach you, trying to have you email them, trying to have you be involved. And it's a ton.

It is. And it's also once again two different mindsets or actually three. So one is, you know, creativity, being in studio making stuff. Two is performing, which is very different from, I think from being in a studio, which is, you know, like giving it your all, your energy, very high energy, very high adrenaline. And then you've got the boring stuff, you know, accounting meetings, which also needs to happen. But it's a different mindset, like looking at your quarterly numbers versus DJs versus making music. So you have to wear three different hats in one week while also dealing with all the above, you know, like with the jet lag, with the exhaustion. I think in general, like the performing part is maybe 5% of the work that you do as a DJ and the rest is all trying to do things that get you to that point. If you don't make the music, you're not going to play that show. If you don't do your marketing, you're not going to play that show. If you don't communicate with your record label, you're not going to do that show. So there's a lot of things that are a prerequisite of you doing that show while the show is all that people see, which is the tip of the iceberg.

Wow. Wow. Yes, this is true indeed. Do we want to demotivate new talent that's watching?

I mean, it would be less competition for us. Don't become a dj. No, it's great. Like I said in the beginning as well, it's always been my dream. I started DJing when I was like 8. Had my own drive in show, played for €50 the whole night. I mean, everybody kind of started, I think, like that, begging to perform in empty bars. I know what you guys feel like and I know what the passion is that drives a lot of young talent and young DJs. And I would say go for it. Like if this feels like you're calling, go for it. But be aware of all these things that we've mentioned and hopefully we can prepare you a little bit better than I prepared myself.

I think this is a wonderful closing for this vlog. Sam, thank you so much for sharing. Thank you for being here and hopefully bump into you again soon.

Cheers.

I really enjoyed that. Sam Felt spitting wisdom right here. If you enjoyed that as well, make sure to give me a like right now. Hit that subscribe subscribe button. I did also do plenty more of DJ Mental Health videos. Make sure to check them out. I'll be back and I'll catch you back here for the next one. Until then, hell's up.