Putting together the tour puzzle

When you begin to plan your tour, research the venues in a certain city where you want to play. You might be appropriate as an opening act for bands that are already booked into those venues. Working as an opening act can open doors to larger audiences in areas where you’re not well known … yet.

As you reach out in the different locations, find out what’s available for you and what options you have. Tours are not booked by calling a town and telling them you want to play on this day or that night. Rather, tours are built from researching all the cities you want to hit and looking at what’s available and open. You then build travel plans around those openings so you’re not traveling too far each day, and also have the space between each city or market to have the best impact. Playing in Miami on a Thursday and having booked Nashville the next night means almost a 14-hour drive.

At the same time, if you have a point A and point B booked, like Miami and Nashville spread out over seven days, you could fill in those dates by playing your way up through Orlando, Jacksonville, Savannah, Atlanta, Chattanooga, then finally Nashville.

When calling cities or venues that are in between stops, up your marketing and draw more interest by mentioning you’re on a tour and want to fill certain dates. Talk about how you can market their city and venue, and how you bring a lot more to the table when you showcase that you’re looking to help market a show rather than just asking for a gig.

Beginning your database — your tour data collection sheet

For every city you want to visit, for every college you want to play, whether in the closest radius to the farthest distance from home, begin your touring data collection sheet composed of the following information:

• Name of the city or town
• Venues, websites, social media sites, contact points, emails, and phone numbers
• Local high-drawing bands that would work well with you
• Local radio information (websites, contact points, emails, phone numbers)
• Local TV stations and contact information
• Local newspapers/entertainment magazines and contact information
• Local entertainment websites and bloggers
• Local promoters, poster services, booking agents, and event promoters
• Friends, relatives, or personal contacts (a free night in a house will save on hotels)
• Local music shops/instrument repair/ rentals (never need it till you need it)

The contacts on this list can help you market in every town or city you go to as well as connect with people essential to your tour. Just because you book a gig on a tour and you might play a whole bunch of other shows doesn’t mean that you can’t promote and market every date the right way. This becomes part of a massive database you access and use for years to help with your bookings and even help when you have managers and agents that take over booking for you.

Additionally, add to the list after you get to a show or a location. Track the interviews you do, the places you eat, or the hotels or fan homes where you crash. The more detailed you are, the easier it is to budget the next time around.

There are websites and books that can help a great deal with collecting this information, but many of them are old and outdated. Your follow-ups and double-checking ensure that you stay on top of what’s what and who’s still involved when it comes to contact points and having the best information.

Share your database with other bands that are collecting this information as well. Working with other groups that can update this shared database can help you access more up-to-date information about places you haven’t been to as you’re helping those other bands that haven’t been to where you’ve gone.

Travel versus opportunity versus pay

Apply to festivals and larger-scale shows as a supporting act that pay a little more money and can help you fill out additional dates on a tour. For example, if you’re based in Boston and able to book a summer festival in Chicago, look for opportunities on the way such as Springfield, Albany, Rochester, Buffalo, Cleveland, and Detroit. Instead of driving 15 hours straight, see if you can leave four days early and hit Albany, Buffalo, and Detroit en route to the festival and then Cleveland, Rochester, and Springfield on the way back home to Boston.

Some days the money won’t be there, at which point you may have to drive straight for hours on end. Wherever there’s an opportunity to play one more place, however, and make one more connection with an audience, even if it’s for a little less (or even nothing) en route to a bigger opportunity, take it when you can. Use it to make that next stop one that pays that much better.

Take a day here and there

As you begin to build up recognition, there are times where filling in every gap can exhaust you and even make you sick. In turn, this may force you to cancel gigs. Make sure to take some days off to rest. You can still get out there and promote in a city you just played, pre-promote in a city you’re playing next, or stop in a city you don’t have on the tour to do some research and make some connections, but make sure to take a down day to rest and recover. This way, you maintain the energy and endurance to be at your best on stage.

Stopping in cities you’re not playing

Touring is all about promoting you, your music, and your shows. While you are en route in between cities, if the time allows (and if you get up early enough, it should), stop in a city, at a school, or visit a location where you’re not playing and do some marketing.

Although it’s not for this tour, the connections you make, a little postering, or grabbing some of the local entertainment magazines or newspapers can give you a leg-up when you plan your next tour.

Every stop, whether for a show, a bathroom break, a bite to eat, a hotel, or a day off, is somewhere that you can connect to new people and opportunities. From putting up a postcard in a coffee shop, to adding a sticker to a venue wall, to making some direct connections at a music store, make every stop an opportunity for the future.

The path of a tour is never the same — at least not until you achieve a high level of recognition. Your creativity mixed with an assertive effort to reach out helps build the tour you’re planning in the moment, but also helps future tours and shows.

Just because a venue says no or the schedules just can’t click, play nice, stay nice, and stay in touch. Your professionalism and respect helps keep you in the back of their minds as both an option for a gig and a possible backup.

Touring as an opener is cooler than it sounds

If you can piggyback with a band as an opening act, you have hit the jackpot in many ways. A great deal of the responsibilities for booking, organizing, and solidifying dates, locations, and shows are taken care of. On top of that, by opening for a more established band, you get to play in front of larger audiences than if you were out there headlining.

Reach out to different management groups, record labels, and touring and talent booking agencies with a simple solicitation letter explaining who you are, what you sound like, information about your brand, and ask about future opportunities as a warm-up or opening act.

Solicit these organizations every day from labels to managers to booking agents to festivals and everyone in between. Get the word out that you’re both professional enough to take on the road and humble enough to be a great supporting and opening act.

Back up that band

When band members get sick and have to cancel a show, who fills in? Well, it could be you. As you reach out for opportunities to open and support other acts, also solicit and ask to be considered as a backup. This helps more on a local level for places you’re near, but sending requests to be a backup for an act that cancels may open doors to larger scale opportunities for shows, festivals, and additional gigs.

For example, if you’re on the road and have a down day in between Ft. Lauderdale and Jacksonville, reach out to venues you want to connect with in Tampa, Melbourne, Orlando, and Gainesville, and explain you’re available last minute and only a couple hours away.

The way you work on connecting and aligning with established acts, venues, booking agents, and management takes you worlds farther than just having a great show. Of course you want the music to be top notch, but the people on the booking side of things want work with professionals they can trust and the ones who can help their show or their venue every time.

Playing the cocky role, bragging, and telling booking agents and venues how you can show up every band and rock their socks off will only turn them away. They’ve heard it all before and if they get a sense that your attitude is going to hurt their venue or their headlining artists, they will pass on you in a second.

Early contacts make for later promotion

Open more doors by sending press releases to the local media and making contact with others from your database.

Reach out to local businesses that may help sponsor your event. Ask a local restaurant to pay for flyers as you promote the restaurant or give them some free merchandise to give away. Ask a local radio station to do an interview as you give them music, merchandise, and swag. Stay creative and look for those early contacts that can lend a helping hand as you cross-promote each other.

Don’t promote too soon and get your information lost and forgotten about, but don’t wait till the last minute, either. Look to that five-week range for a press release to go out prior to the show, and share highlights as you get closer to the show in their city.

Creating the touring information database as you book

As you get a booking in a new town or city that you don’t have information on, research as you solicit to that new venue. Also, reach out to other bands that have performed there as well as local bands, and ask for advice or tips on what helps to promote a successful show at that venue in that city.

Ideas can range from contacting a popular DJ to avoiding some hype guy that doesn’t have the clout he claims to. Other ideas can include knowing where to poster and where it isn’t worth the effort. Find out who sponsors shows or what type of companies or businesses like to be involved with bands. This can be great advanced information that can make that stop on the tour more productive and effective.

As you request information, offer up information about your home base or places where you have tips. The more you offer, the more you receive.

Be newsworthy. The more you market to your tour’s strengths, the more you entice the local media to want to do more for you. Getting a booking on the momentum and promotion of what you are doing on the road is a lot more exciting than “Another band coming through town tonight…wee hee.” Excite the media to exploit and promote you.

Laying out your costs

The first step is to look at all the costs and create some simple math that considers where you’re going and what you can save on each trip. The following list shows the top 15 costs and issues that your budget needs to address:

Note that this list doesn’t take into account serious medical injuries occurring on the road, which are worsened if a band member doesn’t have medical insurance. Theft or gear being broken beyond repair also needs to be taken into account, both situations big reasons to spend a little more on securing your vehicles or bringing gear into hotel rooms or homes as extra measures of security.

Calculate the higher side of the mileage your vehicle gets with average gas prices to get a ball-park figure on what you need for gas.

Life goes on, even when you’re on the road. And that means you still have to pay your personal bills, such as rent, utilities, car payment, insurance, and so on. Create a total budget, figure out how long you’ll be on the road, and that should tell you how much you need to make per week to maintain your home life.

Figure out how many loads of laundry need to be done each week. You can figure an average of two dollars for each wash and two dollars for each dry to get an idea of laundry expenses.

Figuring out your routes in advance for driving can tell you about tolls and bridge fees. This can also include ferries if they need to be taken to play on islands.

As you go over each cost and figure out each day first, you get a clear understanding of exactly what has to be made or what’s required to get you on the road, performing and playing, while still sustaining and living.

By understanding and justifying the expenses first, you get a much clearer idea of what needs to happen for revenue and for sponsorship or investment support.

Sponsors for touring support

When you’ve set up the tour outline, with cities, venues, and other bands as well as a basic budget that considers all your costs, look to sponsors for touring support as a solid option and good approach to take.

From the larger sponsors of hotel chains and car manufacturers to the smaller ones like restaurant chains and even clothing lines, there are a ton of companies to pitch to. Many of these pitches for sponsorship that showcase an exclusivity of products or services that you already use in some way can help connect you that much easier. Finding simple ways of promoting these companies — such as on posters, stage banners, your website and social media — can become mutually beneficial.

Consider graphic wraps or large stickers around your vehicle or vehicles to promote your sponsors. You can also use postcards and promotional materials that showcase a given venue or event is being presented by or partially presented by a sponsor. Using sponsors like this can help build up your tour revenue that might not come in as quickly through your performances.

Sponsorships that range from vehicles to gas to places to eat can help reduce your costs while you get out there to reach that many more people.

Complex costs and simple savers

Figuring out in advance the cities and the distances can help you look for couches to crash on or places to stay. Offering prizes and rewards for cooking the band a meal, giving them a place to stay, or filling up a few tanks of gas can excite fans and help you dig into their network of people.

Visit coffee shops that offer free Wi-Fi to avoid adding that charge in a hotel room. Join a rewards program for gas or hotels to earn points toward fill ups and free rooms. And as mentioned earlier in this chapter, pack a cooler full of snacks and bottled water to save hundreds of dollars in food costs, which in turn helps implement simple savings into your budget and allows for more money to be made and eventually pocketed from touring.

Pre-Op for your tours and working from the road

While you’re still at home, start building up an arsenal of items you need on the road — strings, drumsticks, extra hygiene items, merchandise, and so on. While you still have your day job and some income coming in, it’s a good idea to stock up.

Save for back-up gear or put money aside in a separate bank account for devastating emergencies, such as gear being stolen. Also look into both medical insurance and instrument insurance to help make a horrible event become much more manageable.

Anderson Musical Instrument Insurance Solutions LLC is a great company to look into for insuring your instruments. Although it might seem like an extra cost, the sanity, security, and safety of having that coverage/policy, especially while you are on the road, can save you a fortune. More about Anderson at www.anderson-group.com.

You can prepack certain gear and clothes and have it sent to you while on the road. Too, you can send clothing and items home (such as a winter coat if the weather turns warm while you’re out or souvenirs that you collect) to save space and help you travel light.

If you don’t have the cash for pre-op items like insurance, or you haven’t started a small savings account, you might consider postponing the idea of touring until you get more financially stable. You don’t want to get out on the road and run out of money, or lose all your equipment and not be able to fulfill bookings.

The more you can prepare for touring, the less it costs you when you get out on the road. Buy items like makeup, Listerine, toothpaste, and other hygiene necessities in bulk. Stock up on drum heads, strings, batteries, cables, and other gear and items that will need to be replaced. Buying them in bulk saves you a fortune over needing to pick them up at a rest stop or music stores around the country.

Compress, compact, and consolidate

If you’re out for a week, instead of bringing along a big bottle of shampoo, a large tube of toothpaste, and all those other space-taking hygiene items, pick up those travel-size bottles and compress your stuff into the most compacted form.

For those longer runs in bigger vehicles, have a hygiene box and a laundry box (sealed for your lack of smelling pleasure) so that it’s less to carry in and out of a hotel or place where you’re staying. The lighter and tighter you can pack your hygiene items, clothes, and everything else, the easier it is for transportation and for space.

It’s okay to wear the same thing

Don’t bring that much on the road. It’s not like people see that you’re wearing the same thing two days in a row or three times in one week. Budget to do laundry rather than carry different outfits and clothing all over the place.

Comfy clothes

Remember to pack your comfy clothing. When you’re on tour, you spend the bulk of your time on the road and in between the gigs. Make sure to pack the comfy jeans if you’re a guy, the leggings if you’re a girl, and whatever makes you feel relaxed and happy. It makes much more sense to be comfortable when traveling than wearing adaptions of stage clothing that doesn’t allow you to relax.

Left behind

Leave the bulky stuff when you can, and avoid bringing high-maintenance items — those that require dry cleaning only add more to your on-the-road expenses. Think about how you want to present yourself for tours with the clothing, makeup, and the accessories that are easiest to carry and clean.

Look up clothes-folding videos online to keep your suitcase compressed and tight. From underwear to T-shirts, pants to jackets, and everything in between, there are a series of clothes-folding videos that help you keep things looking that much better while you make a little more space for a couple extras.

Google maps only deliver so much detail

With the Internet, just plugging in the drive time is not enough. At the same time with the Internet you have the ability to check local traffic and find out info that Google and Siri might not know yet.

Every morning, check the basics for time frames from Google or Siri, but take an extra second to find out about roadwork on your route. Reach out to the venue and ask if there are any issues in the area; also ask about short cuts, free parking options, and other tips as you come into a new town.

A rest stop or in-between city can be an opportunity

From rest stops to stopping at a couple coffee shops in a town that’s between two destinations you can allow for extra promotion for future shows on future tours.

Grab a local entertainment magazine or a free paper, stop by the local music stores, and find a few places where you can put up a postcard, a sticker, or some flyers to get a little visual interest.

It’s not always about instant conversion and someone taking a picture of a sticker or looking you up immediately on their iPhone. A great deal of conversions for interest in products, bands, services, and people come from that consistent recognition — that person who saw a sticker, saw you on a friend’s social media page, remembers a passing ad on Twitter, or an array of other places. That consistent recognition over time can set up for them to see you in just one more place to finally get them to click through or look you up. Get those branded elements out everywhere to go after those who might need to see you in a number of different places before they convert to fans.

Detailed tracking results

When you understand the sales of physical items likes CDs, T-shirts, and other merchandise in each location to how many people came to the show, signed up on your email list, and in turn connected with you online, you have a better sense of how to build an audience in a given town or city as well as know exactly who you can reach out to for a little extra help.

By engaging at and connecting with people at each show, as well as knowing what worked, what sold, and what didn’t, you can get a better feel for a town or city. Talk to those who attended to find out if there were other events happening, what the best nights are in that area, and how they might be able to help bring people out to future shows.

Tour costs

Larger cities are more expensive all around than small towns. For example, some venues have free parking, whereas others don’t and you’re on your own. And parking fees are costs that you should track. Tracking the touring costs for each individual stop helps to deliver more accurate numbers and costs for each location.

By planning on the higher side for cities and locations you’re unsure of, the details and tracking you collect allow much tighter numbers for locations. Everything from free parking to staying with a family member are costs that can be shaved off of this location and placed somewhere else or saved and not needed all together.

Track and take pictures of the places where you stay, the restaurants where you eat, the venues where you play, and the bands you perform with. Not only does this give you great material to use for social media, future content, and extra posts, it also enables you to build up images to include in proposals for future sponsorships.

Tour profits

Tracking what you are paid and what you make is only the first step in figuring out tour profits. Add to your database about how much you make and how each venue pays to better estimate profits for your next visit. Note if they pay a flat fee, a percentage of the door and bar, or if you’re required to sell tickets; note also if they sell your merch and if they take a piece of your profit to help you make projections for coming tours. This also enables you to have a clearer understanding of payments like flat fees over varied payments such as percentages and attendance-based profits.

Even when a tour is exceeding expectations and profits are coming in strong, stick to the budget. Money that is re-invested into marketing delivers the best conversions. Don’t turn into a diva overnight and start to book more expensive hotels or eat more expensive food. Keep on track to allow for profits to grow even more and have a cushion in case emergencies pop up.

Time on your side in the hotels or lodging

Keep your hotel time to a minimum and use it for rest. Bands that sleep in till the last possible hour lose daylight marketing options that help the promotion of the show that night, the next one, and the one after that.

You can still have that weekend sleep-in on the road, but adjust it between members if you’re in a band so that someone is always being effective. The more consistent marketing and promotion going on, the more results and conversions you can achieve.

On the road again time management

Having that wireless card so that work can be done on the road helps to keep you in touch while you’re on the drive. This is also a great time to make calls and do band interviews as long as you’re in a good reception area.

You can confirm arrival times for that night, research last-minute places to post or add that evening’s show, research the following night’s location — obviously, a great deal can be done on the road and while you are driving.

If you’re a solo act, bring someone along to work the tour with you. Two is better than one. It makes driving easier, getting work done easier, and having an extra person to control the merch table while you’re on stage can make all the difference. When you’re touring even as a solo act, don’t go it alone!

Sitting on the loading dock of a stage

Don’t just bring in your gear and wait your turn. Make contact with the other bands and talk to their managers. Introduce yourself to the venue staff and exchange information while you see about upcoming events where you might be able to connect again. The before and after show period can be a great networking time. Just as you’re out there during the show engaging with the audience, make sure you’re engaging with the staff and the other bands, too.

Work to arrive at the venue a few hours early to give yourself the time to do a little additional postering around the venue and connect with local music stores or media outlets at the club before you do sound check.

Avoid being the antisocial band that’s slowly dragging in their gear. Get that gear inside and after the show, get that gear packed up and out of the way so you have the most time for connecting, engaging, and networking. Learn more about loading in and out in Chapter 5.

Fueling up on gas, coffee, or food

Even at rest stops gas stations, or coffee shops, make the time to promote and market at least once every stop. Whether you hand a sticker to a waitress in a restaurant, put up a postcard on a bulletin board in a coffee shop, hand off a free CD to someone pumping gas next to you, or any other giveaway or marketing stunt you can pull off, make the time to make every stop, every place, and every situation an opportunity for a few more people to know about you.

Limit the partying and the really late nights. Have your fun and enjoy the road for all it’s worth, but allocate the time to allow every stop to be the most promoted, productive, and profitable.

By writing down or having a list in your phone of the tasks you want to accomplish each day, you can manage your time on the road to be as productive as possible with the time you have and the places you go.

For more time management hints and tips, check out Successful Time Management For Dummies, 2nd edition by Dirk Zeller (John Wiley and Sons, Inc.).

They know what you did last summer

Hotels or motels where you stay have the Internet now. Your reputation management is crucial if you want to not only come back to the place you stayed at, but stay at other places in their chains as well.

Many of these hotel chains are networked together and have a warning system for certain names; it can go both ways for you. You can receive both good reviews and bad reviews. Make them good ones by staying professional. When it comes to some of the family, friend, and fan houses where you crash, a good review or reference can go a long way to helping you get another night in another house or apartment for free.

Extra courteous steps take you far and get you invited back

For that reputation management, it’s simple! Tidy up. Whether you’re at someone’s home or in a hotel room, bring the trash cans to the front of the room, or bunch all the used towels together in the bathroom. Don’t leave wet towels on chairs, beds, or rugs. ’Might sound silly, but those simple acts show a great deal of respect.

In someone’s home, ask if you should do a load of towel/sheet laundry in the morning. Get up that much earlier so that you can help to leave the place as you found it.

Be quiet, and be courteous to guests in the hotels or the people that live in the house. Realize not everyone is on your schedule and that some of the homes are in family neighborhoods.

In the cases of a fan house or a friend of a fan’s house, bring a bottle of wine, some flowers, even some basic groceries to show your appreciation — along with some of your music and merchandise, of course.

Rewards, points, and sponsorships

Look to different rewards programs for hotels and motels, and think of how you can save a great deal of money over ten stays instead of worrying about getting the cheapest place for a single night. Look at touring from the angle of how to save as much as possible over the length of the tour, instead of how much you can save on a single day.

With reward programs, points for different stays, and an exclusivity to a certain brand or conglomerate of hotels that fall under the same chain, free stays, reduced costs, and heavy discounts can help. By staying true to a given brand, the ability to pitch for future sponsorships and support also becomes an option.

Sanity on the road

Spending a great deal of time on the road can suit some people very well, but it can wear on others. As fun as touring is, the constant change in locations, the different beds, long hours traveling, and nonstop pace can tax you both physically and mentally. By taking care of yourself both physically and mentally, your endurance and energy levels stay up as you keep the exhaustion and depression down.

As amazing as the highs of being on the road are, a great number of musicians on tour suffer intense depressions. You’re on stage for one hour and rocking a crowd; a couple hours later you’re in a hotel room planning out the next long day of driving and handling business issues. The see-saw of it all can be dramatic. Keep mentally fit to avoid mood swinging from a super high to a super low.

Phys ed for touring

You don’t have to take four laps around a track, but if you’re a runner, make the time to run. Even just walking and stretching every day can help keep your body in motion and a little more physically in check.

Even loading in gear each night can be a little bit of a workout with weights if you lift that tom tom case up and down a few times with each arm. I recommend adding at least a 30-minute walk in every day, whether it’s on a treadmill in a hotel, around a city, or even if it’s cold, doing one of those grandma mall walks inside a nearby shopping mall. (You can skip the awful yoga pant patterns and the shake weights, though.)

Bang your head — mental health on the road

Do you like the Quiet Riot reference? Good mental health is crucial for the road. Simple tricks like taking time alone and going for that walk by yourself can help. Try not to drink alcohol to a crazy excess, and avoid drinking, drugs, and other bad things to maintain the high you achieve from performing. External substances like that always lead to a crash.

Take time to do something completely non-music related, like going to a movie, playing a round of mini golf, reading a book in a coffee shop, or other things that have nothing to do with music. That separation — even if for a moment or a couple of hours, and at least once or twice a week — can make all the difference in the world to your mental health; it can also inspire your creativity and keep you fresh while on the road for those longer hauls.

Adding the physical fitness of sorts and the mental breaks into your busy schedule is just as important as scheduling all the work you have to do to promote, market, and sustain a tour. Just as you have to work to sustain and maintain your tour, it’s crucial for you to take the time for you, so that you keep the endurance and energy to do what is required.