Tour Planning Advise - Put your 2 cent here.

[Evil7]

Please list as much as you can about your experience planning / going on tour.

I need to know as much as possible about your tips and lessons you have learned.

I am planning a summer tour for my band with no label backing and I just want to cram my brain with as much info possible from experienced knowledgeable people.

Please give any tips about the business side and the survival side...
Mostly the business side... Booking the shows / getting paid etc...

Hopefully the information shared here will help others as well..

 

[ByDesign]

Quit now and get a real job, skip those few years of being poor and putting in effort and get nothing in return.

 

[Evil7]

^ not helpful Im perfectly fine with the current and projected returns. Sounds like a perfect summer vacation to me.

 

[ZXIIIT]

When you book shows by yourself, contact the venue and establish/agree on a door cover that goes SPECIFICALLY to the bands playing that night (or a split to the venue & bands), that way you don't get screwed when you show up (happened to us)

Take advantage of local malls and indy records stores to drop off your music or promote the show, do this for every city you play.

I survived mostly on vegan bars and water when we did a small tour, it was fun.

 

[samincolour]

The beauty of social networking is the staggering amount of promoters that use it these days. Why wouldn't they? Over 100 million people at their fingertips at any one time! This is why I don't understand bands who don't use Facebook to promote their band...

...ANYWAY first thing to do is get your band to agree on some dates. Make sure everyone AGREES FIRST and makes sure they can get the time off work etc; trust me this is probably the most important point of tour booking, is making sure your band can actually do it!

Once your have your dates, start planning a provisional route, i.e. places you'd like to go where you know the scene is big, or where you know friends that can bring people to shows, or places where the scene isn't really that big but you have a place to stay etc. Make it so it fits together in a logical way. While you're doing this, go onto Google Maps and search for directions from City A to City B. Maps gives you an estimated petrol cost which nine times out of ten is correct to the nearest pound (or dollar in your case).

So now you have a rough plan of where you want to be at each date. Now you need to absolutely RINSE Facebook, and if you Americans use MySpace, tan that as well. Go onto bands pages you know are playing city A. Who's the promoter for that show? Go onto their page. What other bands are they putting on? Go onto that bands page. What promoter are they using for City B? City C? What other promoters in City B are working (or have worked) with that band? Networking is the absolute key in everything to do with a band. That guy who puts on local shows might be getting a new job as an A&R guy next week. You don't know that, so be polite to everyone involved in booking. My dad always used to say "Don't piss anyone off going up the ladder, because you don't know who you'll meet on the way back down". Speaks for itself really.

You'll probably find that the tour won't go in the route you originally planned. Never mind though - remember you now have contacts in the places you weren't able to book!

So now you have promoters interested in your band. You need to discuss your guarantee. Here's what we asked for on our first tour:

- £40 guaranteed (I guess somewhere around $65?)
- Some cheap ham and/or cheese (if possible)
- A floor to sleep on (if possible)

When you ask for a guarantee, you can't ask for too much, but don't let them pull it down too much. Don't think "Well, this dude wants to pay us £20, but we could ask this dude for £60, so it's even out". This never works! Also, remember they are doing you a favour by putting your band on; you are not doing them a favour by playing (unless it's a last minute booking). Bearing that in mind your petrol/diesel costs should be your priority. Your guarantee is a written agreement, meaning the promoter knows he/she has to pay it. DO NOT let them rip you off. It is THEIR fault if they can't pay you at the show! A good promoter can advertise any band and ultimately make their money back at the show.

Anyway don't ask for too much. We bought a loaf of bread every day and lived off ham/cheese sandwiches, and any spare money we spent on Pot Noodles and crisps (potato chips). In the UK we have pubs called Wetherspoons, they do a great breakfast for dirt cheap, so every three or four days we'd get up early and go and get an early breakfast. Make sure you're fed and healthy! It's a good idea before you go to top up on chocolate bars and microwave food etc, anything you can get to keep you going. Some venues may offer hot food too. Doesn't matter if it's good or shit, accept it, it's still food!

So you have it all booked now, and you need to start promoting it. Make an event on Facebook that has all the dates on it with links to the individual event pages for each show. Make a poster for the tour that is eye catching or interesting - something that people notice. Invite all your friends to every date including the event that has all the links on it. You need to post links to this event pretty much every day off everyones profile, this page needs to be everywhere! Pull in some favours from people who have webzines or blogs, get them to post the dates and hype you up. Make a Tumblr page, announce it as a tour diary. Make a YouTube pre-tour video. Make your presence known everywhere and that this tour is the best thing to happen since man discovered sex. Remember, there are 100 million other bands doing exactly the same thing, so give people a reason to come to your shows.

Now your tour is booked, you have guarantees, and the online hype is growing and everyones stoked as hell. You've stocked up on food, got your van. What else?

Four more points:


Money

Make sure you take money with you. This is the first and foremost point anyone should make. If you don't get paid one night and you don't sell your merch and you spent all of your money on McDonalds, you're not getting to your next show. If your van breaks, you'll need money to fix it. You'll want to buy stuff to remember your tour by, or you'll want to buy other bands merch, or you'll go buy some new jeans, or whatever. (In fact on that point, take over double the amount of clothes you'd normally take anywhere. Tour is seven days long? You take fifteen tees. You get the idea.)

Remember, your band is your business, and if you don't treat it as such, you will fail. If you make money on merchandise, don't spend it on shit. Record all of your ins and outs. When you ordered your merch, record how much it cost. When you start selling it, make sure you record how much each tee was sold for, how many you gave out free (for whatever reason).

So your standard accounts book for one night would read something like:

IN
$50 - Guarantee payment

$10 - Tee sold
$10 - Tee sold
$10 - Tee sold
$10 - Tee sold
$10 - Tee sold

TOTAL - $100

OUT
$70 - Petrol

You get the idea.

This way, there'll also be no arguments on who spent what, it will all be recorded. Exactly like a business.

Merch

Merchandise is your best friend on tour. Take more than you think you need just in case. Sell it at a reasonable price; not too high so people don't buy it, and not too low, because you won't make your money back for what you paid for them in the first place. Get a merch board and have your name in big letters across the top. Put lights on it. Make it stand out. In a dark venue it will draw attention.

Take a merch guy on tour, and have your merch set up from the start of the show until after the last band. Your merch guy, as well as selling stuff, is responsible for handling all of your money made from merch and is also in charge of recording what tee was sold in what design and size. Build up a spreadsheet and record everything sold, and at the end of the night tally up your merch sales to your accounts book and make sure everything matches and adds up.

I'm also a big fan of bands who have unusual merchandise, or more precisely unconventional products, such as shot glasses, iPhone covers, bags, bottle openers, zippos etc. Every band does t-shirts. Think of something different!

Backups

The sad reality of touring is that something WILL break. Your guitar string will snap. Your head will blow a tube give up. Your trusty tuner pedal will die. Cables will go quiet. Someone will steal something off you. Don't moan, shit happens, get on with it. Check and service everything before you go, make sure it all works the way it should. Try and take backups for everything you can, I know this is a stretch cos every band is skint but it not only pulls you out the shit when you need to be but it also makes you look much more professional too. Restring guitars and check every few days too as your guitar probably won't be used to the constant thrashing night after night.

Van is your home

This says it all!

Take a look at your van. Is it clean and tidy? Does it smell? Now take a look at your flat/house/apartment. Is it clean and tidy? Does it smell?

Your van is your home for the duration of your tour. You'll likely spend more time in it than anywhere else. Remember that there are five dudes living in a space less than half the size of your living room, all eating five different meals and drinking five different drinks, so you'll soon get five different lots of garbage. Tidy it up as you go!

The van will cause arguments even if the guys are your best friends. Small enclosed spaces (i.e. the van) bring the worst out in people, so when you argue, just take it on the chin and forget about it, or your band will break up. Save arguments until after tour.

Make sure the van works too; learn basic engineering, learn how to change a tire, learn how to fix shit. Taking it to a garage costs money (and more money than it should).


I think I've covered just about everything here, I'll edit if I've missed anything out, or you can PM me.

Good luck!

 

[ByDesign]

^ not helpful Im perfectly fine with the current and projected returns. Sounds like a perfect summer vacation to me.

I know mate, just stating the obvious

 

[Leuchty]

Wow, samincolour...

Just wow...

Thats some cool info, thanks for sharing mate!

 

[Lagtastic]

Cardio. Get in shape now.

If you don't have a backing label, you're probably taking on lots of roles. Driver, promoter, roadie, selling goods at shows, meeting fans, beer drinker, performer, etc. It takes its toll when you just had a 12 hour day of promoting, unloading, setting up, soundcheck, playing, tearing down, loading back into the truck, trying to sell CDs, and acting as security guard for your truck. Then you have to drive 3 hours while your buddies sleep or feed shots into some brunette they met at the show. Have fun, do it while you're young!

 

[samincolour]

Cardio. Get in shape now.

If you don't have a backing label, you're probably taking on lots of roles. Driver, promoter, roadie, selling goods at shows, meeting fans, beer drinker, performer, etc. It takes its toll when you just had a 12 hour day of promoting, unloading, setting up, soundcheck, playing, tearing down, loading back into the truck, trying to sell CDs, and acting as security guard for your truck. Then you have to drive 3 hours while your buddies sleep or feed shots into some brunette they met at the show. Have fun, do it while you're young!

Everything this dude said too!

 

[Loomer]

Some very solid advice here so far. I'll chip in with what me and my band have learned so far. I'll state immediately that this is some stuff that we don't necessarily all live by, but just something my "old fogie" sensibilities tell me.

- Don't drink. Touring is not a party, it is work. Regardless how fun it might be, you still need to think of it as a job. Not as a party. What happened with my band's summer tour was, that it was treated too much like a party and that ended up with a member getting a skull fractured and the last week of the tour cancelled, with our final account firmly in the red because of that.

Also, if you can't put on a good show stone cold sober, then you have no business playing in front of people who actually paid to see you. It's as simple as that.

- Eat what is served. Now, if you're vegan/vegetarian and are served meat, then of course that is a whole different thing. However, if you're served a perfectly fine meal that you don't like, then don't act like a 5-year old and don't eat it and go look for pizza or whatevs later. Eat what is served, even when it's shitty. It's still food, and without it you'll burn out. Don't "drink dinner" either. I have an unfair advantage here, since I will quite literately eat everything and smile There are very few foods that I don't like, and that is certainly a plus on tour.

- Don't get too blabby about your opinions on stuff.
Now, this applies mostly if you're touring the whole DIY circuit like I have, and still am. At least in Europe, many (if not all) punk squats and DIY venue are run by people who are heavily politically involved and passionate about it. That means; Get used to some seriously extreme leftist views being crammed down your throat, and accept the fact that if you think differently than these people you WILL be thrown out.

It's sad to say, but these people are enormously intolerant of views differing from their own, so clam up if you're right-wing, or even just a moderate liberalist like me. Don't shit the bed you sleep in.

- Be thankful for everything. Seriously, no one owes you, or your shitty band band anything at all. No, you do not deserve a bigger hostel room or your own private room to sleep in just because you're the singer of a mediocre band that has 400 likes on facebook. Get over yourself. Don't ever act entitled in any way, even when you feel it's right, because chances are it's just you being immature.

Only in extreme cases should you speak up. Stand your ground if someone (a promoter, stage manager, whatever) is treating you like shit, though. Everyone has a limit, but be accomodating. Most of the people organising shows are clueless amateurs and kids, so cut them some slack.

 

[petereanima]

Lots of usefull infos in this thread, especcially pay attention to James (7DT). some of them saved my ass because prior to this thread, i didnt pay attention to it:

http://www.sevenstring.org/forum/live-performance-and-stage-sound/52286-touring-advise.html

 

[Evil7]

Is it a good idea to speak as if you are the manager of your band instead of just a member? Well i guess i am both in our case.. but will our band seem more professional to venues / promoters and will we be taken more serious makeing calls?

" Hi, I am the manager of Spine Extraction"
instead of
"Hi my band is on a tour and can we play at your show / venue"?