Wide open road. Clear sunny skies. You’re living your best life and are ready to kick off this tour with a smug, No-One-Manages-Tours-Better-Than-THIS-Guy attitude. You’ve got the equipment. You’ve got the AC set to precisely 72.3 degrees per your lead singer’s request. You’ve got the bassist’s bee hive. The guitarist’s dinosaur models. You truly didn’t miss a thing!

…except you truly, surely, most definitely did.

Things begin unravelling all around you.

You realize that your neck — it’s naked! The absence of a silky soft, full-color lanyard weighed down with an All Access laminate featuring your band’s sick album artwork leaves you shivering. You rush to find your luggage, prying through the piles and piles of similar looking bags. Your knuckles bloody as you frantically dig, deeper and deeper amongst the luggage-tag-less abyss. You have no identifiers, no sweet patch tag that sets your bag apart from the crew’s, all of whom are now standing around aimlessly, unable to locate their bag, shirts void of the satin stickie that would delegate their positions for the evening.

Chaos erupts behind you. You whip around to find adults and minors clamoring at the bar for drinks. But the bartender looks faint. You make eye contact. His lips move. Amongst the minors yelling for alcohol, you can’t hear him, but you’re pretty sure he was saying “Ty”. Or was it “Tri”? Of course. Full color trivek wristbands would have organized the growing crowd. But it’s too late. A 12 year walks past, beer in hand.

You can hear your boss’s voice in your head. If there’s anything you absolutely can’t forget, it’s the credentials. Don’t forget the credentials.

The show gets cancelled in order to regain peace in the neighborhood. Your boss’s boss is calling. And somewhere on the horizon, your bassist opens the lid to his beehive.

Don’t forget the credentials.