Vol. VIII
June 2005

Understand and accept the purpose of a tour. You’re doing it to make money. If you have fun doing it that’s cool but it’s not the real goal. You make money two ways on tour; getting paid for performing and selling CDs (and other band swag). In reality you’ll be lucky if what you get paid for performing covers all your expenses. This means your main focus should be on selling CDs. This also means you shouldn’t go on tour unless you have a CD to sell. In fact you should take this one step further. You shouldn’t go on tour unless you have both a CD to sell plus a website to sell it from once you’ve “left the building”.

This next item is very important--take care of all the legal stuff. Register your band as a business and designate a manager (you). You can set up the band as a partnership (what’s usually done) or as either an S-Corporation or as a Limited Liability Company. These last two give you some protection if something goes wrong—it makes it harder for the motel owner to put a lien on your car if your band trashed one of his rooms. Next, register all your song copyrights. This is easy to do and not really expensive. You can register all your songs together as a collection; paying the copyright office just one $30 fee. Finally, make sure no one in the band has any outstanding traffic tickets (or other stuff) that might get them a trip to jail if you’re pulled over.

Finally, and this is a no-brainer, practice. Actually, practice, practice and practice some more. You need to get to the point where you can put on a good show in your sleep—which you might have to do.

There’s very much a chicken-or-egg problem when trying to book a tour, especially the first time you’re going into an area. Club owners want bands that draw crowds. If you’re new to the area, you won’t have a local fan base to draw from so they won’t want to book you. But if you don’t get booked, you’ll never be able to build that fan base. A couple of suggestions: Check the websites of area clubs. Find out what local bands play the clubs and then contact the bands. Find a good match and make nice; offer to open for them and let them know that when they’re in your town you’ll return the favor. Be sure to keep your promise. Now contact the owner and lay out the plan to him/her. Often you’ll end up playing for a small percentage of what the main band will get, but it’ll give you a chance to build a local following. And if you’re good, the next time through maybe you’ll headline. By the way, expect to give up some CDs here; clubs won’t book unless they’ve heard you. Next, both you and the club owner should sign a contract laying out how much you’ll be paid and when, how long your set will be, when you need to be there and what sound equipment you’ll need. Also, include a playlist identifying who wrote each song and that person’s performance rights affiliation. Many clubs, but not all, have their own standard contracts.

Once a number of dates are set, it’s time to think about promotions. You should make a list of local radio stations, newspapers, music stores, area high schools and colleges (if the music is appropriate for that audience). You should also have plenty of band fliers and posters on hand. Bands touring Texas have a great resource, http://www.governor.state.tx.us/music/ lists contact information for much of what’s needed; newspapers, venues, music stores, radio stations—all searchable by city or town. Once your list is made, work it. If you can make personal contact, that’s the best, but if not then work the phones. After the initial phone contacts, send each DJ or press person a personal letter and CD. Very important, be aware of submission times for newspapers and magazines as well as lead time for scheduling on-air radio interviews.

You should begin a promotional push a couple weeks before each play date. Posters should go up first then fliers or handouts next. This will also be the time to start getting airplay on local radio stations. It’s really not hard to do at local “mom and pop” stations as long as they know you’ll be playing the area soon—a box of donuts also helps out. If the club has a website, make sure you’re listed on their calendar and make sure your website is up to date. You’ll want to time any press interviews or reviews for the week of your gig and any on-air interviews a day or two before the gig.

Get to the club early enough to setup your merchandise table and complete the sound check all before your start time. This is not an article on stage presence, so we won’t deal with that here but… you do want to interact with the crowd as much as you can. Get photos of your band at the club and with the crowd--photos you can post on your website. Distribute any “give-a-way” band swag from the stage.

Let people know you have CDs (and maybe other stuff) for sale. You might want to price merchandise a bit below what you sell them for online—and round off the prices to the nearest dollar. Having the means to accept credit cards usually increases sales by about 20%, so you might investigate that possibility; sometimes your online distributor can help here (we do). Also, the person working your merchandise table should periodically walk the room pushing the CDs. One more thing, collect email addresses. Have a fan signup sheet at the table and collect names, addresses and email addresses.

At the end of your set, breakdown and load up as quickly as you can. Don’t leave anything behind and don’t come away with more than you brought. Keep the merchandise table open at least until the middle of the next band’s set and mingle with the crowd. Don’t forget your pay (if you’re to get paid right after the gig). If there’s a discrepancy, don’t deal with it then. Get a signed receipt and, if you can, revisit it in the light of day.

Remember when mom forced you to send Thank-You cards to everyone who came to your ninth birthday party? Learn the lesson. Maybe not cards but at least call everyone involved and thank them; DJs, radio station owners, newspaper interviewers, club owners, the band you opened for, beer distributors, the twin cheerleaders…

Finally, update your website; post the show’s photod on your website, enter your newly collected email addresses (and send out a “thank you for coming to my show” emailing).

One last thing, log all relevant data about the gig; room size, crowd size, number of CDs sold (and other stuff sold), number of emails collected and so on. Like I said at the top, this is a business.