Anyone who has frequented metal concerts or festivals over the past ten years or so has likely seen Dutch guitarist Kevin Storm perform at least once. As a touring musician for bands whose own guitarist can’t join them on tour, Storm’s resume includes bands as varied as Kalmah, Equilibrium, Shining and Vulture Industries. Storm gives us a glimpse into the challenges and the daily routine of being a touring guitarist.

Session work for Storm tends to always start the same. “Pure panic”, he says with a laugh. “That’s how it usually starts, at least. The process is usually that I get a phone call, I listen to the music, then say: cool, let’s do it. After that, I get acquainted with the music by listening to it. At this point, I’m not playing along yet, just listening to it on my way to work or whatever.

In most cases, I think I’ll be able to do it. Then I start playing it, and that is when I come across all these little things that makes me think: how the hell do they do this? Once I start rehearsing seriously, I often end up wondering what the hell I have done. But that always goes away eventually.

Last year, I played with Saor, who play in a downtuned DADGAD tuning. And that was something completely new to me, an open tuning with completely different chords. That caused quite a bit of trouble: where do I even put my fingers? But things usually turn out fine.”

Storm also doesn’t always have the luxury of rehearsals with the band. “Recently, I did a tour with Gaerea, a Portuguese black metal band”, he explains. “We had maybe half a rehearsal, and then the first show was at Wacken. Shining was a similar situation. They had a sold-out show in London opening for Mayhem, and we had never played together prior to hitting the stage. On stage was more or less the first time I met the band. I’ve never been so scared in my life, haha!”

Emotional and Dynamic

“What often happens is that I end up being asked for the type of bands that I happen to play with at that particular time. After I had played with Shining, I was asked to play with extreme black metal bands almost exclusively for a while. And when I was playing with Vulture Industries, I got approached by a lot of bands on the more avant-garde side of the metal spectrum.

My own style is basically what I do with Fleetburner: a combination of extreme influences – black metal tempos are allowed – but it has to remain emotional and dynamic. That’s what I like. But when it comes to playing, it really doesn’t matter what kinds of bands approach me. You can call me to play power chords for a punk band. As long as I can travel the world with that, I’m fine with that.

In all honesty, there have been bands that I played with whose music I simply don’t enjoy. What I do enjoy, however, is the act of playing music itself. Playing gigs, interacting with people, seeing the world… That is why I chose to do what I do.”

All in This Together

Interacting with people is a part of the job that should not be underestimated. “One thing you will learn as you are doing this is figuring out whether you want to spend a month in a bus with any given group of people”, Storm emphasizes. “The extreme black metal scene in particular has its fair share of extreme people. Whether or not you can handle that is a choice you have to make.

I can more or less work with anyone, but things have to remain civil. That has largely influenced the criteria I employ: do I know these people, where will we be going, what’s the tour budget? I don’t drink, I don’t use any drugs, I’m a vegetarian, so my focus is completely on playing. That is what I have been asked to do.

I have been wrong about people before. People whose big egos have gone to their heads. And if that happens, a tour can feel like it has been going on for much longer than it actually has. This may sound arrogant from my end, but I have experienced many different types of tours, so I have come to know how things have to be done. Everyone on the tour is a family, everyone is equal, there is no hierarchy on a bus. Everyone is simply taking care of that tour, and if one person drops out, everybody suffers.

That is the atmosphere I always try to establish myself. Sometimes I tour with bands that aren’t very experienced, who spend a prolonged period of time in a tour bus together for the first time. And when the egos start to boil over in such a situation, I always try to act as the father of the group, so to speak: ‘we’re all in this together, people won’t like you if you let your ego take over’.

You have to deal with many different types of people. The scene of internationally touring metal bands of a certain segment is a very small world, and most of those people know each other. If you behave poorly, that news will travel extremely fast.”

The Luxury of Choice

How to deal with people is not the only challenge for a touring musician who works with various bands. Equipment is a different story altogether. “Different bands prefer different monitor set-ups”, says Storm. “Sometimes the other guitarists demands that he can also hear his own guitar when he walks over to my side of the stage. If I had to choose, I’d rather just hear myself and a little bit of the rest of the band.

But you don’t always have that choice, because bands have their own methodologies. Some of them work with in-ears, and you don’t always have the luxury of choosing what you are going to hear. Sometimes you literally only hear a kick drum on your in-ears and the rest goes straight to the front of house.

However, the biggest challenge is the difference between what you rehearse at home, which is usually playing along with the cd, and what you’ll be faced with on stage. And that difference can be considerable. You have to reach a point where you can go: as long as I have a click, I can play the entire song on my own. You must have that certainty, otherwise it won’t work out.

Once I did a tour with Kalmah, truly a last-minute job, for which I learned the set, and then I got on stage with an enthusiastic drummer who played everything nearly twice as fast. Those are the types of things you run into once, and then you know it might happen at some point.”

Back-Up Equipment

“I have about twelve guitars at home. And I’ve learned to play with many different set-ups. I can play with amplifiers, I can play with Kempers, I can play with Fly Rigs… What I will be playing on completely depends on the sound of the band and what they are looking for. Not just sonically either; I’m not going to play a super flashy white guitar when I’m playing with a pure death metal band.

Tech 21 Fly Rigs are very convenient. You can send them straight to the front-of-house and to yourself – your amplifier or wherever you like it to go. They’re also very small and lightweight, so I always take those with me in my suitcase. So that is kind of my back-up equipment. The advantage of that thing is that I at least know how to set it up myself.

What often happens when a guitarist isn’t able to do a certain tour, though, is that his equipment is still available. If that is the case, what often happens is that I will simply play the gear that is there.”

A Very High Bar

While playing with bands as a last-minute tour replacement is a large part of Storm’s life as a musician, he does also write and play his own music. He is a member of post-black metal band Heretoir, as well as the guitarist and songwriter for progressive rock/metal band Fleetburner, which released its incredible self-titled debut album in late 2020. Prominent international musicians, such as former In Flames bassist Peter Iwers and former Arch Enemy guitarist Christopher Amott, contributed to the album.

“It wasn’t supposed to be as big a project as it eventually became”, Storm admits. “I just started writing some music for myself, and within two months, I had finished writing the album. Also, I really believe in people who put something of themselves into the music. People who play in service of the music. ‘Fleetburner’ is an album I already poured so much of myself into. If you add ego to that mix, you’ll never be able to finish it.

Quite quickly after the release of the first Fleetburner album, I wrote the second one. The story will continue. The fixed members of Fleetburner for me are Kalmah’s Veli-Matti Kananen, the keyboard player, and Tomas Myklebust, the drummer, who now plays with the likes of Kampfar. Those are the two people I want involved no matter what. They are my writing buddies.

Veli-Matti is very busy though. He is making his own music and he’s also working with Kalmah. He might have some time to work on things during the summer. But if it takes four more years to complete the second Fleetburner album, that’s fine by me. It just needs to be good. The bar for Fleetburner is set very high. And that’s not even a musical bar, but purely how it feels. If it doesn’t feel right, I won’t do it.”

Unfortunate Fact

“I’m always open to session work. I kind of expected things to be over for good once to coronavirus came around, but as soon as tours were possible again, my phone started ringing once again. The unfortunate fact is that there is so little money to be made making music at the moment, that it has become incredibly difficult for people to try and make a living out of it.

There are basically two different levels of touring bands. There is the level of bands that think it is fun to play and treat a tour like a kind of vacation. And there is the level of: we have to play this tour and I have to quit my job for it, but I don’t make enough money as a musician, so that’s not really an option. Often, there is quite a bit of friction in those bands that would love to tour, but not everybody is available.

Those are generally the bands that approach me. They want to go on a big tour, but their guitarist is a doctor or something and therefore, won’t be able to leave. In a way, it’s a shame that there’s so much work for a touring guitarist like myself. I don’t mind standing in for someone who is sick, but it happens too often that I have to stand in because someone can’t join the tour, as they won’t be able to make ends meet when they do.

I have my own company, I’m a freelancer, so I have the luxury of working whenever I have the time. I have made the choice to be flexible, but for a lot of people, that simply isn’t possible. And that’s such a shame, because most of them are incredible musicians who have to watch other people play their shows, more or less.”

An edited version of this interview appeared in Gitarist 387 (June 2023)