What have you had to sacrifice in order to make touring work FOR you?

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August 4, 2010{ 5 Comments }

van What have you had to sacrifice in order to make touring work FOR you?Life is full of little compromises. And life on the road can be doubly so.

Here are a few examples:

* Left the full band at home to hit the road as a solo/duo act?

* Slept in your van instead of a motel?

* Lived on a steady diet of trail mix and water?

* Crammed 7 people into one hotel room?

* Begged the audience for a last minute floor to crash on?

* Booked your act at less-prestigious venues in order to earn more money?

Have you had to make some serious compromises in order for touring to become economically viable? We’d love to hear your stories in the comments below.

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  • http://www.weracketeer.com Isaac Priestley

    We are not sure yet, because although World Racketeering Squad has been around 3 years, we’ve just booked our first out-of-town gig, with the Cocker Spaniels in Denton, TX, in October.

    Cocker Spaniels (www.cspaniels.com) is a one-man band who is in the middle of booking a massive tour all over the country, and I’m pretty sure he does it by sheer force of will.

    In fact, he played a song last night about an experience on tour called “I can’t believe he tried to steal my guitar”!

  • http://roamingroyalty.com/ todd

    I’ve sacrificed my sanity trying to book shows. It’s ridiculously difficult to break through to a club booker in a new town because, as they will all tell you, they are swamped with e-mails on a daily basis from bands who want shows.

    On the other hand, I have run into an interesting booking practice in a couple of places. The club gives your band the night and it is up to you to flesh out the bill, which can be especially challenging if you’re from Seattle and the club is Bozeman Montana or somewhere where you don’t know any bands. But it shouldn’t be that hard because there are soooooooooooooo many bands who want shows, right? That’s what the bookers are saying.

    Wrong. In Spokane WA the response rate from nearly 20 bands was nil. I don’t mean they couldn’t do the gig or whatever, I mean they flat ignored multiple attempts to contact them and give them a show. One or 2 had the courtesy to say ‘sorry can’t do that night’ but the rest…..nothing. Silence.

    So the booker can’t get you in ’cause there are so many other bands ahead of you, but bands won’t even respond when you offer them a legit show, so how do shows even happen? Like I said, I lost my sanity trying to figure it out.

    When I aired my frustrations to one booker about the lack of follow through from bands he said “Bands will be the death of music”. Classic.
    todd
    roamingroyalty.com

  • http://www.myspace.com/azevedosilva Luís Azevedo Silva

    I’m Portuguese and touring here, if you’re not a big band, is almost an impossible task. Mostly because it is a small country (even though we have a considerable number of venues) and it’s hard to find the money to pay the smaller bands. It’s a risk for the owners to pay you and then have 10 people seeing the concert. That makes it complicated to ask for some money in advantage and most of the times you have to split the ticket’s profits. If you have a band with 4 musicians it’s almost certain that you will lose money.

    So while I was recording with my band, I decided to start a solo act to perform more often live. That way we only needed a car, some guitars and that was it. We never asked for specific hotels or fancy backstage stuff. It was ok for us to sleep in people’s houses or some youth hostels. Usually every booker pays the meals and that way we did some money to keep touring and recording.

    We often explain this situation to the audience and sometimes it becomes easier to sell CD’s. This way some of them understand that we’re just asking for money to keep offering music to our fans.

  • http://www.jeffmichaelsband.com Jeff Michaels (band)

    I don’t consider anything I do with my music career to be a sacrifice, because that means there is at least someone out there interested in listening to the music I create… and that’s what keeps us going.

    That being said, I actually formed a second band on the East Coast and for the past several year have flown back and forth between the two bands to combat the high costs of keeping a band on the road. Took a while to get set up, but it’s been great.

    Good luck!

    Jeff Michaels (band)

  • http://hillbillyhellcats.com Chuck

    I used 5 bassists and 6 drummers to be able to play our 100 gigs last year. We slept in the van, at peoples houses, whatever.