It sounds like an old joke: how do you get a group of people to do what you want?
Easy, pay for it.
I’m on the road playing drums with a singer/songwriter named Jesse Marchant, driving across the country from New York in a big, black, creeper van—Jesse, me and two other musicians. In the months leading up to the tour, I never bothered to check the Reds’ schedule against ours because I didn’t think we’d have any time, and because my three companions are not sports fans. But sure enough, we had a small warm-up show Monday night in Rock Island, IL before a day off on the way out to Denver, CO.