When you’re in a band, you think you’ll remember it all — the flyers, the sweat-soaked basements, the name of that kid in Boise who gave you a place to crash and a bag of trail mix. But you won’t. Life steamrolls memory. Years pass. Bandmates move. Hard drives crash. Suddenly, that weird but perfect Tuesday show in Tulsa might as well have never happened.
Unless you keep the record yourself.
Scrapbook Your Noise
Every band needs a historian — someone to keep track of the chaos, the progress, the growth, the stupid stuff that makes the whole thing real. Not for nostalgia. Not for Instagram clout. But because you won’t know what mattered until long after it’s gone.
So document it now:
- Save every setlist
- Screenshot every flyer
- Take photos (even if you hate being in them)
- Write down the name of every city, venue, and person who helped you
- Archive your songs — demos, voice notes, everything — before your laptop dies in a rest stop parking lot
It doesn’t have to be pretty. It has to be real.
Start With the Venues
Want a quick way to start your scrapbook? Head to TourOrDie.com, search for the places you’ve played, and hit that “Save” button. Make a Collection called:
“Venues I’ve Played At Before”
It’s simple. It’s useful. And one day, when you’re looking back wondering “Where the hell was that warehouse show in Oregon?” — boom, there it is. With a map, contact info, maybe even a photo.
If nothing else, it’s proof you did it. You went. You played. You showed up.
Save the Music Too
Put your songs somewhere you can find in ten years — and maybe your fans can too. Don’t count on Soundcloud or Spotify to exist forever. Back up your files. Create a Bandcamp. Post to Archive.org if you have to. Future-you will be grateful when you want to press that lost EP to vinyl or send a song to your kid and say: “That was me back then.”
Music fades fast in the digital world. Keep a copy for the analog one.
Why This Matters
No one’s going to hand you a gold record for driving 900 miles to play to twelve people in Des Moines. But if you show up, night after night, year after year, it adds up. And if you don’t preserve it, no one will even know it happened.
So write it down. Save it. Screenshot it. Name the files. Make the folder. Tag the venue. Keep the story alive.
Because you’re building something.
And stories — real ones — are rare these days.
Tour or die. Document or disappear.