Rosebuds
The Rose Hotel Blog
Surviving business travel with the right music choices
Travel can be stressful and tiring, especially the incessant demands of business travel.
Long flights, layovers, changing terminals, crowded gates, delayed and canceled takeoffs, or getting stuck in a seat next to an undesirable fellow traveler. Maybe he snores. Perhaps she talks too much. Too many trips to the lavatory.
Those situations all contribute to frustration and fatigue. How do people who travel professionally cope?
One way is with the right music selections, as we learned from the show Marketplace, which airs on National Public Radio. Its series Road Warriors explores the music business travelers listen to on the road. Whether they’re in a car, stuck in an airport, or killing time at a hotel, something’s playing to help them successfully pound the pavement.
One example featured on Road Warriors is Edward Webb, a corporate restructuring consultant. There’s a special rock and roll classic Mr. Webb listens to that reminds him of the human condition. During a recent Road Warriors broadcast Mr. Webb said:
When I’m sitting on an airplane seat waiting to fly out to the next city, I listen to Sympathy for the Devil by the Rolling Stones. It’s a very human kind of song. Mick is speaking to how the devil – which is a very scary idea – is a part of all of us. And that has always made sense to me.
You know, the work I do in corporate reorganization and turnarounds involves me with a lot of bankruptcy, and a lot of people who are going through some pretty significant pain and discomfort in their business, and these are often pretty decent business people who may have made a mistake or maybe not. Maybe they just got caught and found themselves in a bad place. And so when I think about that song and you think about the horrors that it talks about, it’s easy to say, well that’s not me. I’d never do that. I’m not evil. I’m not a bad guy. But it’s human. It’s part of the human condition.
The thing that I find when I’m traveling is, I’ve got an agenda, I have things I need to accomplish. I’m going from point A to point B, I’m catching taxis. I’m having discussions. It is from one thing to another to another to another, and then all of a sudden, I find myself sitting in an airplane seat and I’m just with myself. I’m tired and I’m irritable and I’m beat and I need something to bring me back to people and relationships. Or otherwise, I’m going to snap the head off the guy next to me, ‘cause he’s sitting too close. And so that’s what the music does. It helps me get there. And I’m grateful for it. And meanwhile, it’s the greatest rock ’n’ roll. I mean, that band is rippin’.
Another example is Road Warrior Dave Kirby, a Minneapolis-based spa and hair salon consultant who shared the songs that help him keep balanced when he’s stuck in an airport when the weather throws his busy schedule off-course. Kirby told listeners:
I’m one of the owners of a company that does business seminars and consulting for the hair salon and spa industry. One of the songs that I listen to very often when I’m on the road is a song by Garth McDermott called Some Other Year.
There are some lyrics from the song that pop into my head frequently when I’m traveling. It’s the opening lines of the song: “I’ve got nothing up my sleeve that gets us out of here / Look at all these strings that don’t pull anything.”
You know, being a frequently flyer, I get a lot of perks and privileges, but there are certain situations where none of that stuff helps you – like when Mother Nature throws a hissy fit and there’s a big snow storm. Everyone’s kind of in the same boat, and in those instances, I use the music to kind of help me maintain equilibrium and equanimity, while the rest of the flying universe is going insane.
Lastly, who better to discuss this subject than a jet-setting music executive? That’s where Tim Westergren comes into play. He’s the founder and chief strategy officer of Pandora, the online radio company that’s made waves by using mathematical algorithms to guess what music you want to hear.
Here’s what the music man has to say about his tune of choice while on the road:
Late by Ben Folds, one of my favorite road songs. It’s a very contemplative, kind of moody song. Makes me kind of nostalgic. And when I travel, I feel that way generally – when I’m on planes or trains or when I’m kind of out and about and disconnected from my home, I find that that song is sort of a great soundtrack for me.
Images and things are passing you by, and I think it gives you some distance from your life. And for me, that tends to cause me to think about things sort of more broadly and think back and think forward. And it’s often private time, too. I’m mostly alone, sort of alone with my thoughts, so I tend to go there….
I started playing music when I was a little kid, very young … and I think it’s a unique art form that seems to be utterly universal, that has no respect for geographic, social-economic barriers or boundaries, and it has an ability to affect everybody in the same powerful way. It’s really fun to be kind of playing in that sand box now the way we are.
To read their lyrics of the aforementioned songs just click on Sympathy for the Devil or Some Other Year or Late.
You can also check out listener-submitted playlists and share your own on the Road Warriors website. We also invite you to submit your best travel tunes right here on Rosebuds. Just write in the Comments box.
