Adrian Quesada and Sophie Hawley-Weld: Staying Healthy on the Road

On a cold December night at Boston’s TD Garden, a cheery audience sat waiting for tenor Andrea Bocelli to take the stage, the latest stop in an annual holiday tour that routinely zigzags the vocalist across the nation. But something seemed amiss when the 8pm showtime came and went, with no sign of the singer. 40 minutes later, Bocelli took the stage with his wife, Veronica. But he didn’t reveal himself to belt out a version of “Nessun dorma.” 

“Believe me, I did all my best to sing tonight,” he said into the microphone. “But I can’t.” 

Bocelli couldn’t escape the bane of touring musicians everywhere — a good, old-fashioned cold that rendered him unable to power up his iconic voice. With an intense lifestyle, lack of sleep and a constant drain of energy — not to mention a never-ending stream of people entering their orbits — how do touring musicians stay healthy when the world seems to be coughing and sniffling all around them? It’s an enduring question, one that has derailed artists like Bocelli, who canceled subsequent outings in Baltimore and Hartford, rescheduling dates into 2024.  

“When the doctors told me the other evening that it could be dangerous to my health for me to sing, we wanted to say in music: thank you, sorry, see you very soon,” wrote Bocelli on social media. In Philadelphia, he brought his daughter out to sing instead, but it was merely a consolation, for Bocelli was without the thing he relies on the most.

“It is definitely not an easy thing to stay healthy on the road,” explains Adrian Quesada, who makes up one half of the Grammy-nominated duo Black Pumas. “By nature, traveling constantly makes it hard to find consistency and you’re at the mercy of many factors. On top of that, the lifestyle revolves around working at night, and in places where people are often there to party.” 

A prolific touring act, Black Pumas just released their sophomore album, Chronicles of a Diamond. Quesada knows full well the pressures of navigating one’s health with a hectic schedule and audience expectations, which makes bailing on shows a tall order with numerous implications. 

“I’ve had to perform under the weather many times for sure,” Quesada recalls. “The craziest one in memory is when I got hand, foot and mouth disease, which sounds like some biblical plague, from my young daughter. It was one of the worst things I ever had, and they told me at the emergency room that my contagious period was over, so I may as well keep playing the shows if I could and no one would get it anyways.” 

With that, Quesada soldiered on. “I had so many things they prescribed and had to make a whole cocktail out of my promethazine, which had me in a daze. I barely even remember playing that show, but muscle memory kicked in and I somehow made it through.” Unlike singular acts like Bocelli, in some ways Quesada is lucky. When the musician came down with the coronavirus at the height of the pandemic, the show went on without him, with his Pumas partner, Eric Burton, filling in the gaps. 

Sophie Hawley-Weld, one half of another duo, the popular dance act SOFI TUKKER (who just released the single “One on One,” with the Knocks) grapples with the same issues. Her and musical partner Tucker Halpern are well known for treating their intense touring schedule the same way an athlete would when preparing for the Olympics.

“I do a thousand and one things to stay healthy,” says Hawley-Weld with a laugh. “You’re working against a lot of jet lag, flying and late nights, so we do everything we constantly can to thrive and share good energy.” 

Hawley-Weld, a yoga teacher before committing to music full time, uses a Zen mentality when it comes to the life of a touring artist. “It was definitely trial and error at first,” she explains. “You learn the hard way that if you don’t sleep, for example, it will affect you. I’ve seen a lot of both physical and mental illness up close, so I think I just started developing this passion for taking care of myself to make sure that doesn’t happen to me. I mean, we’re going out to clubs five nights a week.”

It’s sleep that poses the most complicated challenge. “The biggest thing for sickness is sleep, honestly,” says Hawley-Weld. “And there are no easy or quick fixes, but it’s about tamping down your caffeine intake or getting sunlight in the morning.”

Sleep is also a paramount concern for Quesada. “It is possible to get decent rest on the road, but it’s not consistent, so you take it when you can get it,” he explains. “So I’ll take naps during the day, completely resting on days off and sleep in whenever possible.”

The two also take preventive measures in the middle of touring.  “One easy and convenient thing we have on our rider is bottled shots of ginger and other combinations, like immunity and probiotic shots,” says Quesada. “Now that those are readily available almost everywhere, we usually have them backstage.”

Meanwhile, when it comes to Hawley-Weld, aside from hopping in an ice bath after their sets (they travel with an inflatable one), she’s also a fan of float tanks. 

“I go in one about once a week, and I’ve found them in pretty much every city we’ve ever been in,” she says.  “For me, a float tank is a very, very valuable tool for resetting and making sure that my cortisol isn’t too high.”