Before Nightwish, Kai Hahto spent five weeks crossing North America in a van with ten other people.
"There was 11 guys sitting in that fucking van for five weeks," he told Chaoszine. "There was not even place to go to sleep." He was filling in on drums and sharing the vehicle with Insomnium, and the venues on that run had no backstage rooms, no showers, no crew and no drum technician. The musicians carried their own equipment and watched it themselves.
On one tour, he says, the entire band was paid two hundred and fifty dollars a show. Split enough ways, that is not a wage.
He now tours with a production that travels with its own kitchen and chefs, and the reason he tells the story is the comparison. Having done both, he says, he does not take the second one for granted and has stopped minding small inconveniences. Most musicians who reach the second version never describe the first one this plainly.