Gas prices give touring acts the highway blues

"We used to budget tours at about 30 cents a mile for gas, and now we're up to about 60 cents a mile," says music business manager Jamie Cheek, certified public accountant at Flood, Bumstead, McCready, McCarthy. "If I have an act that's about to go on a 40-day tour and they've got five trucks and five buses, and a 40-day tour could be over 20,000 miles, that's almost an additional cost of $6,000 a vehicle. So if I have 10 vehicles, that's an additional $60,000."