Photo by Joshua Lawton

Scott Anderson, manager of the Winter Park-based band One Time, pulls away from the back door of the Fox Theatre in Boulder Tuesday night after unloading the band's equipment. The high cost of fuel is making it hard for touring bands to travel for gigs.

Photo by Joshua Lawton

William Murphy and Shawn Astrom, both members of the Denver-based band Swayback, play at Rock Bar in Denver during the band's weekly "Jinxed!" Wednesday night session. The high cost of fuel is making it hard for smaller bands to travel for gigs.

For Colorado bands, the most recent -- albeit slight -- decline in gas prices is music to their ears.

The summer tour, the van, nightly shows and traveling from city to city are all staples of the typical life of a touring band, but the high price of fuel has forced a few local and regional bands to do it a little bit differently.

Chris Williams, a guitarist in the Winter Park-based band One Time, said his band will keep its gigs more local than usual this year, opting for shorter trips throughout the mountains and along the Front Range.

"It becomes a losing venture with gas prices they way they are," he said. "We've reeled it in specifically because of that."

One Time opened for New Orleans funk rock band Bonerama at the Fox Theatre in Boulder on July 29, a show that Williams said his five-member band would be lucky to break even on.

"Driving to Boulder costs $80 in gas," he said. "A couple of years ago that number was half."

Williams, who answered the phone in between grilling orders at Fontenot's Cajun Cafe in Winter Park, said all the band members work at other jobs during the week. Playing shows represents a secondary income, he said, adding that his band is not looking to necessarily always be out on the road touring trying to make it big .

"We've all grown up a bit, we can't just drop everything and go for it," he said. "Guys have mortgage payments and families to consider."

Though Williams' 1995 Dodge conversion van helps the band move equipment, getting to shows usually requires at least two cars.

"Pretty simple math is all it is," he said. "You're just driving up your overhead."

But One Time is not the only band feeling the squeeze this summer.

"It's obviously having a impact on the entire concert food chain," said Gary Bongiovanni, editor of Pollstar, a concert industry trade publication.

Bongiovanni sees the larger acts of the summer possibly scaling down, but because they have the cash flow to absorb some losses, he said he sees smaller bands being most affected.

"It really impacts developing bands touring at the subsistence level. They don't have the clout to raise ticket prices," he said. "Basically, the only way to cut back is to scale back down the number of dates they play."

Making it work

One Boulder act making it big this summer is not scaling back at all.

Boulder's own 3OH!3 will be growling its ironic crunk rock lyrics in nearly 50 cities between June and August as part of the 14-year-old Warped Tour.

Nathaniel Motte, who with Sean Foreman makes up the entirety of 3OH!3, said he believes that because the duo can share a bus with others on tour, they are able to budget it. Motte said the two also rely on catering provided by the tour for meals when there are not too many people waiting in line.

"I'm a bit of a pack-rat, I horde stuff, and Sean and I go to WalMart and get granola bars and stuff," he said.

Though recent successes have brought the Boulder natives management help and even a modest travel budget provided by their record label Photofinish Records, T-shirts and merchandise sold during stops on the tour are a serious financial boost for the band.

"It's really all about 'merch'," he said. "It's crazy, we sold $8,000 in Boston and something like $19,000 in Denver."

Boulder-based Rage Unlimited produced thousands of T-shirts with the band's hand-signed, three-zero-three insignia, and while many stops around the country have been good for sales, none was as profitable as the Warped Tour's Denver stop.

"That pretty much brought us home," said 3OH!3's manager Mike Kaminsky. "Most bands don't do that. They're really connecting out there."

With its new CD "Want" rising to the top 10 albums on iTunes, a brief appearance at No. 89 on the Billboard Charts, and a recent interview with Rolling Stone Magazine, 3OH!3 is one of the tour's success stories.

For others, the price of gas has forced them to stop touring.

"Warped Tour actually pulled a bunch of bands aside and gave gas cards away," Motte said. "It's pretty much the most precious commodity on tour."

Eating ends meat

Another group of Boulder natives isn't letting the price of gas take away from their successes on the road this summer. Local power trio Rose Hill Drive currently is touring their sophomore album, "Moon is the New Earth," for seven stops along the East Coast --though not without a few budget adjustments, said Rose Hill Drive guitarist Jake Sproul.

"It definitely crunches our budget, so we have to make decisions," he said. "We're out there trying to find the cheapest stuff."

Getting there is the hard part, the band's 35-foot-long van and trailer rig costs about $120 to fill up, Sproul said.

"It all used to kind of level out," he said "Food, hotel and gas we're all about the same. Now fuel has completely taken over."

As a result, Sproul said, the band tries to really think about where to eat and sleep.

"Chipotle is the cheapest food I know about. Six bucks and you're completely full," he said.

When they're not on the road, brothers Jake and Daniel Sproul often work at their parent's restaurant in Boulder -- The Buff Restaurant. Any income from touring just goes right back into insurance and van payments, Sproul said.

"It's definitely subsistence," he said. "We're not getting rich out here."

But like 3OH!3, any hardships Rose Hill Drive experiences while on the road seem to be eclipsed by the band's recent successes. An interview with Rolling Stone Magazine two weeks ago and a performance on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien" on July 29 are enough to keep the band happy on the road, Sproul said.

"This is one of the best weeks our band has ever had," he said. "We're riding high right now."

Working for the weekend

With a couple road trips to California in recent months, and another planned for the fall, Denver's The Swayback isn't letting gas prices impact its band.

"We're not taking gas prices into consideration mostly because we all have jobs," Swayback bassist Eric Halborg said. "We've done multiple trips across the country. If there are shows we'll go out to them."

Guitarist William "Billy" Murphy sells advertising for Westword, keyboardist Shawn Astrom and Halborg are both graphic designers, while the band's drummer, Martijn Bolster, is a leading engineer in the reconstruction of the Minnesota bridge that collapsed last year, said Halborg.

Though other bands work while home to supplement time on the road, Halborg said the band members take their work with them.

"It's a balancing act; I sit in the van and design," Halborg said. "It's easier now that truck stops have wireless Internet."

Bolster, the engineer, was able to find a balance too.

"He basically laid down an ultimatum: 'I won't be there, but I'll be available,'" Halborg said.

So far, the band has only embarked on short stints on the road, working and touring simultaneously, but Halborg hopes that will change soon.

"Hopefully we can make this music thing all we're doing," he said. "That's the goal, multiple nights in succession.

"I can't wait till that happens."

Fortunately for music lovers in the Boulder and Denver areas, local industry experts don't see things changing all that much.

"Bands really need a place to stop when making the trip across the country, and Denver is so centralized," said Brian Carp, general manager of the Fox Theatre in Boulder. "I don't see the market being affected."

Carp reiterated what many bands suspect: because of the state of the economy, small venues like the Fox can't increase their performance fees for bands, he said.

"There's only so much a venue can do," he said.

One thing is for sure, when some of the local bands come home from the road they can count on a warm greeting from their hometown fans.

As Rose Hill Drive prepares for a couple of Colorado festival dates to wrap up the summer, 3OH!3 is getting ready for back-to-back sold out shows at the Fox in late August.

3OH!3 manager Kaminsky sees building a local fan base as the key to a band's eventual success.

"It's that hometown base that will kickstart everything for a band," he said. "It all comes from somewhere, it doesn't just appear."