Taking It On The Road - Part 1

How to plan your 1st (or 101st) music tour

(Seat with a view - on the top level of the UK tour bus with Brandy Clark)

Planning a music tour can feel like an enormous and overwhelming task.

Whether it’s your 1st or your 50th tour - there’s usually a moment where you’re staring at a blank browser window and wondering where to start.

In part 1 of this 2-part post, we’re going to discuss finding venues, best practices for pitching to get booked, and things to consider when planning your tour.

Next week stay tuned for part 2 where we’ll cover tour promotion, packing tips, merch, and how to have FUN on the road! Plus a few things you can do post-tour to make sure the next one is awesome too.

Rabbit Hole Research

You might already have a venue in mind as a starting point for your tour, but it’s likely at some stage you’re going to want to play in a country or city you’ve never been to before.

One of the best ways to find venues in new areas or when you’re starting from scratch is to research similar bands to yours in terms of genre, size, and experience, and see where they’re playing.

If you’re not sure where to start to find those, google “[city] [genre]+concert” or tour like this: “Auckland folk tour”, or “Chicago jazz concert”.

When you find a venue that seems to match your style and level, check out the bands who are playing there in the next few months, and then google “[band name]+tour dates”.

From those results, note down the venues that jump out as good options for you, check their show schedules, pick out similar-sounding bands, check their tour schedules, note down venues that jump out… rinse and repeat.

Following these steps, very quickly you’ll end up with a list of potential venues to hit up.

Making Contact

The best way to reach out is usually through a mutual friend, so if you know someone in one of the bands who is booked at the venue, ask them for an email intro if possible.

If you have to “cold-call”, start by seeing if they have a preferred method of communication listed on their website or Facebook page about info. If they say, “please email us about bookings” then don’t call, Facebook message, or tweet at them.. do what they’ve asked and email.

What should you say in this email? Great question, read on…

Pitch Perfect

So here are two examples of booking pitches you might use:

Option 1:

Hi there,

My band is booking a tour in Spring and we would love to play at [venue name]. Please listen to the attached MP3s from our latest album and let us know what you think.

Best,

[Your name]

Option 2:

Hi [venue owner name],

I’m booking the Spring tour for the acoustic folk duo, Hamilton Gardens.

We have a similar sound and energy to Swinging Bananas, who we see just performed for you, and believe we’d be a great fit for your audience.

We are looking at March 18th or 19th as potential show dates and have a full tour promotional plan I’d be happy to share with you.

Here is a link to our digital EPK including live performance videos of the duo.

I look forward to hearing from you, thanks!

[Your name]

So - can you immediately see the problems with option 1?

Here they are:

• No specific dates

• No style/sound reference to bands they would know

• No mention of a promotional plan

• Big attachments instead of links

• MP3s instead of videos

Best practices for booking pitches include the following:

• Always include links, not attachments. No one wants big files clogging up their inboxes and sometimes bookers even have filters set up to automatically delete emails with large attachments.

• Always have live video of the touring instrumentation, not studio MP3s - they want to see what kind of show you’re going to put on live, not hear your studio recordings.

• Be specific about the date you want them to check. If it’s not available you can always adjust, but they need something concrete to consider, not a vague request.

• Mention the promotion you have planned so they know, that YOU know it’s an important aspect of booking a gig. Even if you’re just going to do promoted posts, they need to see that you understand that being proactive about promotion is essential to the success of the show.

• If you’re brand new to them, you need to give them some sound references they will understand. Either mention other similar bands that already play at the venue, or more famous artists to give them an immediate impression of what you do.

• Be honest. Saying you can bring 250 people when you can actually bring 12 might get the gig the first time, but when it becomes clear you’ve lied you’ll never be asked back and you’ll probably end up with a bad reputation in the scene.

• Mention any notable selling points like crowds you’ve had in the region in the past, online statistics, or marketing ideas for the show.

Best Foot Forward

EPK stands for Electronic Press Kit and it’s all the things someone might need to book you or promote your band/event.

You can create an EPK through a service like Sonicbids but the easiest option is simply to create a page on your website.

An EPK should include:

• Biography (3 versions: 1 sentence, 30-50 words, 150+ words)

• Press quotes

• Live videos (embedded or links to Youtube or Vimeo)

• Links to your studio releases

• High-res, downloadable press photos that you have permission to use (i.e. you’ve had the photographer sign off on the usage)

• Stage plot (use a stage plot program or simply draw it and take a photo)

• Input list (describing what lines would be plugged into the sound system)

• Contact information (yours or your manager or production manager if you have one)

Go Fishing

When you first start planning a tour you’re essentially fishing for interest, so keep your plans fluid at first in case you need to re-route to accommodate availability with your venues.

When you’re first reaching out to a venue, try to give people a couple of options to choose from or ask them if they are open to hosting shows on all days of the week.

Some venues will only do concerts on particular days of the week and/or month - and this is especially true if you’re working with folk or acoustic clubs. You can often figure out what these venues’ club dates are just by looking at their posted show schedule so make sure you pay attention when you’re researching.

If you get a no - don’t sweat it! Use it as a chance to ask for feedback, request to try again next time, and/or ask them for suggestions of other venues you could try.

Dealing With Crickets

The simple fact is, your show isn’t going to be anywhere near as important to anyone else as it is to you.

A polite follow-up email a week after your first email is not only acceptable, you should expect to need to do this almost every time.

I usually just say something short and sweet like, “Hi [name] - just wanted to check in to see what you thought about those dates?”

If you don’t hear back after the second email, I would recommend waiting another week and then sending one more saying something like, “Hi again - I’m firming up dates for this tour so I just wanted to check in one more time to see if you’re interested in being included. Thanks!”.

If you don’t hear back after 3 emails, let it go - it’s their loss!

Road Tripper

Now that you have expressions of interest from the bulk of your venues, it’s time to map out your tour route.

Some things to consider as you plan:

• Drive time - the kinds of roads you’re going to be driving on impacts how long you can reasonably drive each day before a show. For example, in the States, a 7-hour drive is generally pretty easy because you’re on nice big straight 4-way highways for most of it. In New Zealand, by contrast, most of the roads are 2-lane highways often filled with winding stretches through mountain passes that are far more mentally exhausting to drive on. Think about the hours of drive time between places but also the kind of driving it will be. If you’re sharing the driving you can probably also manage more distance before a show because you can switch out and take a break for part of it. My duo - for example - can usually do 4-5 hours every day with no trouble, with a longer 7-8 drive every few days as needed.

• Sleep - if you schedule too many long drives, late nights, and early mornings in a row you will end up either exhausted, grumpy, getting sick, wearing out your singing voice, or all of the above. There is a certain amount of tiring schlep that is just par for the cause with touring, but it’s still important to schedule in enough rest that you stay capable of doing your job and making it to the end of the tour!

• Free beds - try to find free places to stay in as many towns as you can. Sometimes venues will offer to host, sometimes kind locals will offer, and sometimes you can find a friend of a friend. Pro tip from someone who sleeps in a lot of random places on tour and is actually a terrible random-place sleeper: bring your own pillow if you can and, if you don’t have the space, even just your own pillowcase can help make it feel enough like home to get you off to the land of nod.

• Sponsorship possibilities - try to get free stuff wherever possible! We’ve had everything from free poster printing to coffee bean sponsorship and regularly receive free passage on ferry crossings in return for performing. Be creative with the things you ask people for - if you don’t ask, you never know who might have said yes! As with booking, try to pitch people by reverse engineering it and telling them what’s in it for them - whether it’s the promo of their brand or free music for their customers.

• Days off - when Tattletale Saints tours New Zealand we tend to do 5 or 6 shows a week and we can sustain that for about 4 weeks before we start to look like shadows of our former selves. If you’re doing a 3 show tour you probably don’t have to worry about days off, but when you hit 5-7 shows you should consider a day off in the middle to give your body, voice, and spirits a chance to reset!

So now you’ve found your venues, created a perfect gig pitch, chased up for a reply, got your “yeses”, and mapped out your travel plan.

Next week look out for part 2 where we’ll cover how to promote your tour, my all-time packing tips, the kind of merch that works well, and how to make sure you’re having a good time out there!