Meatloaf’s old tour bus is on the move, and Iowa band the Nadas is behind the wheel.

Pulse managed to pull Nadas guitarist/vocalist Jason Walsmith, who was touring the country on Meatloaf’s bus like a bat out of hell, aside to discuss the tour, writing and the difficulties of being in a band.

Paul Nemeth: How’s the tour going?

Jason Walsmith: It’s going well. It pretty much is wrapped up except for the People’s show. That’ll be the end of the road; 42,000 miles in 2 months.

PN: How do you keep yourself entertained on the tour?

JW: We travel around in an ’85 Eagle tour bus that used to be Meatloaf’s tour bus. It’s got a couple of lounges in it, with a couple of entertainment centers. We watch tons of movies over and over and over again. I think “Super Troopers” we watched about 58 times on both televisions before we gave up and moved on to something else.

PN: How do you prepare for a show?

JW: Well, it’s pretty much the same routine every day for 200 shows a year for 10 years. It’s just you show up, you load your stuff in, you sit around for a while, you start up, you sit around for a while, you check it, you sit around for a while, maybe have a little dinner, have a little break and then play a show with variations of that going from one extreme to the other, where you have to load in at 6 in the morning because there’s something going on there all day that you can’t disturb, or loading in during your set time, having to set up and play immediately. Generally, we like to have at least two hours to set up, check and get comfortable, and make sure everything sounds good. But we’ve done it in the past where we set up and had to go right away.

PN: How do you write a song?

JW: Well, it comes every different way you can think of. I’ve had songs that I’ve worked on over the course of a few years. I had an idea that has just kind of grown into a song eventually. I’ve had songs that I write in the morning before I get out of bed, before I even make a cup of coffee. Usually, it’s just some sort of thing that happened to me or something someone said that stuck in my mind; maybe I was fortunate enough to write down and eventually becomes a song.

PN: What is the biggest hurdle you’ve had to overcome?

JW: We’ve been through several different members. We don’t have the same people that we originally started with, and every time we lose a member that’s been with us for five, six, seven, eight years, it’s been a pretty big blow to take. You have to reintroduce someone to a group of people – like I consider fans kind of like a family. They take our wins and losses in stride and they’re there to support those things, but every time you have a new person, you have to introduce them to a family and hope that they’re accepted and hope that it doesn’t change people’s perception of the band.