aaron
12-08-2005, 12:36 PM
So you think you can tour? Inside the mind of a tour manager.
I have been wanting to write this article for awhile now, just whenever I gather enough thoughts to talk about all the topics I wish to touch upon my mind tends to wander leaving my fingers not fast enough to type all the good information I would like to share with the readers of this website. But now I plan to do the writing in segments so I can make sure I include everything.
As some of you may or may not know I have ran Decoymusic.com for 7 going on 8 years now. It started as a high school project and later turned into something crazy I couldn’t have imagined. I remember close to the time I started the website I was out there trying to network and meet as many bands, webzines, labels, pr companies as possible trying to learn a little something. I remember one day while talking with punkinterviews.com (way back in the day) the owner mentioned how he was heading out on tour with Unsung Zeros, sure they weren’t that great, but hell I wanted to tour. And almost from that point on I yearned to strive to maybe one day get to tour and see the country with some of my close friends.
It took about 6 years but I finally met the band I felt was going to go places just needed to have the right people in line to bring out the best in them. I met Underminded shortly after moving to San Diego as I felt moving to a more “music scene” would greatly help my chances of my webzine succeeding and me maybe meeting more of my favorite bands. After hearing Underminded once I was completely hooked on their music and the guys later became some of my best friends. After being bed-ridden from back surgery I remember hearing the announcement that Underminded were going to be on the entire 2004 Warped Tour and it seemed like an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. I told them I wouldn’t take no for an answer and I wanted to head out on the road with them as their tour manager. They said that sounded rad and from then on we prepared for what we thought was going to be an amazingly fun summer. We were right in some sense but we were very wrong in thinking it was going to be easy and lacked a lot in the fun department.
Lets talk a little bit about touring. Not anyone can tour, you have to assemble the right pieces of the puzzle that fit together in a tight space for months upon months. You have to know one another, you have to be ready to give up everything you have known for your entire life and be prepared to eat, sleep, and shit in the same places as your counterparts. One of the hardest things is you all have to agree on everything together as a collective or else you’re just asking for trouble. The hardest part here is finding people who are ready to drop their lives, their jobs, and leave their girlfriends and wives at home while they’re out playing across the nation maybe stopping home for a day or two before continuing on. Believe it or not a lot of people can only make it for a few weeks before they can no longer handle what has been presented before them. In this sense I give a ton of respect to all the bands that continue to tour year after year just waiting for that big break.
Not everyone can just start a band and be signed. Most the time labels now days won’t even look at your band unless you’ve got a few tours under your belt because in all honesty who wants to sign a band who is going to get on the road and have their members realize they cant make it without their family or friends and are faced with replacing people. If I was to give any advice about trying to get signed or get on the road it would be just do it. DIY is the only way to start. I talked with Chris #2 from Anti-Flag one time about the best way to get your band out there on the road when kids are in school and trying to work around jobs and such and he said the only way to really get out there is to take out a map of your area. Use a compass and make a large circle around your city with say a 3 hour radius. From there mark all the cities with venues to play at and make it a point to play 2 shows every weekend in a different city. This right here could greatly influence your fanbase in and around your area and may lead to labels taking interest in you if you keep it up.
My first real touring experience was one that I will never forget as long as I live, and I’m sure I’ve explained the whole 2004 Warped Tour experience to people many times but this was something that really doesn’t get any justice by just using words to describe. The way Underminded (unsigned at the time) got the entire Warped Tour was they agreed to setup the Smartpunk.com Stage for the entire tour which entitled them to a spot on the entire tour. No money, just meal tickets (breakfast, lunch, dinner) Well it helped them get signed so it wasn’t too bad a deal at all. We drove up to Los Angeles a time or two to learn the just of setting up a stage so when we got to the first day of tour in Houston we would be ready to rock. We spent that day learning the in’s and out’s of stacking decks, putting up the top of the stage, the sound wings, the barricade, and then hooking all the cords into the right places, it only took us like 5 hours.
So we began our 26hr drive a couple days before the tour was set to start, they wanted us to be out there a day before so we could learn the stage and get it all set and ready to go. On the drive out we talked about what we had in store for us, how we understood this wasn’t going to be some walk in the park. We were driving our own van and trailer, we didn’t get a tour bus, it was all up to us to make it to show after show. If we missed a day we would be kicked off the tour we were told so the rules were strict and we were ready. What followed were probably the three hardest weeks I’ve ever gone through in my life. Each person on the tour invested $500 of their own money into buying gas for the tour and anything else the van may need to make it through the summer. We all made some serious sacrifices to make this go over without a hitch. Pretty much we all expected this to be hard but we had no idea that it was going to be taken to a new level. After the first day of Warped was cancelled due to bad weather we had to pack everything up and goto Dallas. Within the next three weeks we realized a lot as a band. We weren’t ready for this kind of work, we prepared ourselves for something tough but it turned into its own thing. After trouble with finding a semi to take the stage from show to show we soon were told we needed to be at the tour stops by 6:30am everyday to unload the semi trailer. For the first two weeks we would setup the stage and then Underminded would just load their gear up and play their 30minute set pretty much before anyone had even got through the gates yet. This accompanied with driving all-night every-night with lack of sleep, lack of food, lack of showers, made for some bad moods and made tensions run high. I remember when they rescheduled Houston for our day-off drive to Las Cruces I had to drive back to Houston from San Antonio and around 3am as I’m closing in on Houston I’m smacking myself in the face trying to stay awake just so I could make it, park, and sleep. After about 3 weeks of this we finally realized something different had to be done. We needed to compromise, everyone wanted to kill one another, we were playing first everyday so we’d do all the labor.. then when everyone finished playing for the day we would take the entire stage down and pack it back up in the semi, did I mention we weren’t being paid? We thought we were just setting the stage up we didn’t realize all of this extra work we had to put in.
I would setup the stage again if the opportunity came about. I think for one it was a huge growing experience for myself as well as the members of Underminded. Since it was the first real tour we were on it took everything out of us and required us to look hard and deep to realize this was really what we wanted to do. We learned to compromise. We had someone sleep during takedown and they would drive first until they were tired then someone else could takeover in the morning and take us in and then sleep while the stage was being setup. We matured so much in this time that it’s amazing to me to look back on the last 1 1/2years and see how far we have all come. Still being on the road with the same group of people makes you appreciate everything everyone has sacrificed to be in this situation and to call their “job” being on the road doing something they love every night and meeting those fans who buy the albums because the music means the world to them.
So you think you can tour? Maybe you can, but it isnt as cut and dry as it sounds. Sure you’re going to be on the road but you’re going to be playing small venues, with maybe no one at them. One of the best examples of this was my first tour (before Warped Tour) that I don’t even consider a tour since an entire week of it fell thru in the middle of it. But Underminded played The Starlight in Ft Collins, CO with Chiodos (The Chiodos Bros then) and a band from Spain called No Children. Not a single person came to the show. The bands played for the other bands, but I love thinking back to that show now and thinking, who knew. If you’re ready and willing to put forth the hard work it can pay off I mean hell look where Underminded and Chiodos are now and look where they had to start. The road to success doesn’t just happen overnight unless you’re lucky enough to have some bigwig at your first show and you’re revolutionary but that really doesn’t happen in this day and age. You have to put in your dues, you have to spill blood, sweat, and tears to make it in this industry in this age. I guess if you wanted to just go into your moms makeup cabinet and throw on some eyeliner and paint your face white you may be an overnight success, I wouldn’t want to go that route, but hey you can do it.
With that said I wouldn’t have this any other way. The amount of friendships you develop can last a lifetime. Warped Tour alone got Underminded so many solid friendships with so many bands that everyone always goes out of their way to make sure they hangout when they come through their towns. I myself have been able to meet many labels, publicity people, producers, and bands that I would have never ever dreamed of being friends with. Hell, I was flipping out the first time I played poker on the bus with The Vandals in Europe. They’re like one of those revolutionary punk bands that you would never in your wildest dreams be thinking you’d be talking with, let alone hanging out on the same level with. They still don’t know my name but that’s really besides the point, I had some nickname with them and that was enough for me.
Also, don’t expct just because you’re on a label with an album coming out that you’re set. You need a good manager, a booking agent, and a publicity company to really get your name out there to the point that other bands and booking agencies may find your band valuable to take on the road. I wish it was still completely like that also, you meet a band, you’re friends with that band, they like your music, they take you on the road. Today so many factors play into who gets tours and who doesn’t. Usually it comes down to bands being submitted and then their labels getting like an “offer sheet” asking how much they would put into publicity of the tour, so it’s kind of like “how much money would you pay to buy your band onto this tour?” It’s become a business inside of a business and with this going on so many bands who are out there year after year headlining their own tours through coffee shops in Nowhere, Arizona just can’t seem to catch a break. My only advice is to never give up. Even after Underminded were signed and did Warped Tour and had their album come out they weren’t offered anything. So they set out for the next 8 months on tour with themselves. Having friends jump on here and there but more or less just grabbing on any show they could that make sense within the driving time. They went and did their own Canadian Tour (which I highly recommend to any band that can afford to get over there to do); play the small towns, buttfuck nowhereville, and watch how many kids come out because bands just don’t play there. Underminded’s Canadian Tour featured some Canadian bands but they played places like Medicine Hat, Alberta and Lethbridge, Alberta.. in which both shows soldout and the band made close to $1,000 in merch each show. Who knew right? There’s definitely markets out there that bands just need to discover and hit. Canada seems to be way easier than the US to break into so get your band up there, make yourselves some money, it will make touring much easier later down the road.
Finally after two years of touring their assess off, playing hippy shops, coffee shops, friends’ houses, train stations, beat down bars, and after-hours hangouts people are finally starting to recognize Underminded as a band that has paid their dues. Once people hear the Warped Tour story they’re amazed the band made it through. While we were on Warped Tour certain labels that were on the road were taking bets as to how long the guys would last as no one figured they would make it through the entire tour. But that just became added motivation to make it. And we made it, and it was one of the best summers of my life. I made lifelong friendships that I cherish and I still keep up with many of those friends I met so long ago even though I rarely see them.
Touring is a good time. You get to see the country with some of your closest friends, but its hard to assemble a solid team that is able to be gone for 3+ months at a time. We all know each other now, we know what makes one another tick, we know how to push each others buttons, and we know when we’re taking each other just to the point of breaking. We know when to talk to one another or when to not. What to say to make someone happy or to piss them off. It’s almost like a big family where one second we’ll be choking each other and the next we’ll be laughing prank calling people. I couldn’t imagine not having taken this opportunity and even though I feel as if I want to get out of tour managing and more into managing I still will have a itch to hit the road again.. to get away from the stress of real life and to get on the road. I now consider this my vacation, after months and months of hard work at my day job I find this as a release and that’s what it should be. Sure its hard work sometimes but it’s more a lot of driving that anything else, a lot of down time… which is why you find me online more often than not. I wouldn’t trade them memories for anything and I encourage anyone and everyone who has the itch to get out on the road to do it. Email your favorite bands, see if they need a merch guy/girl, maybe they need a roadie to help them load in and out, or maybe you’re skilled at guitar and can help them in more ways than one. Just network, whether you’re trying to get on the road with a band, or in a band wanting to tour.. NETWORK. Find bands on myspace, trade shows with them in their town for putting them on shows in your town. Every little bit goes a long way and never take anything for granted. It’s not an easy path to be in a band who gets on good tours. Only after you have put forth your dues will things start coming around, and that is more respectable than anything else and people take notice to those bands that have worked to get where they’re going.
-Aaron Yarborough
I have been wanting to write this article for awhile now, just whenever I gather enough thoughts to talk about all the topics I wish to touch upon my mind tends to wander leaving my fingers not fast enough to type all the good information I would like to share with the readers of this website. But now I plan to do the writing in segments so I can make sure I include everything.
As some of you may or may not know I have ran Decoymusic.com for 7 going on 8 years now. It started as a high school project and later turned into something crazy I couldn’t have imagined. I remember close to the time I started the website I was out there trying to network and meet as many bands, webzines, labels, pr companies as possible trying to learn a little something. I remember one day while talking with punkinterviews.com (way back in the day) the owner mentioned how he was heading out on tour with Unsung Zeros, sure they weren’t that great, but hell I wanted to tour. And almost from that point on I yearned to strive to maybe one day get to tour and see the country with some of my close friends.
It took about 6 years but I finally met the band I felt was going to go places just needed to have the right people in line to bring out the best in them. I met Underminded shortly after moving to San Diego as I felt moving to a more “music scene” would greatly help my chances of my webzine succeeding and me maybe meeting more of my favorite bands. After hearing Underminded once I was completely hooked on their music and the guys later became some of my best friends. After being bed-ridden from back surgery I remember hearing the announcement that Underminded were going to be on the entire 2004 Warped Tour and it seemed like an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. I told them I wouldn’t take no for an answer and I wanted to head out on the road with them as their tour manager. They said that sounded rad and from then on we prepared for what we thought was going to be an amazingly fun summer. We were right in some sense but we were very wrong in thinking it was going to be easy and lacked a lot in the fun department.
Lets talk a little bit about touring. Not anyone can tour, you have to assemble the right pieces of the puzzle that fit together in a tight space for months upon months. You have to know one another, you have to be ready to give up everything you have known for your entire life and be prepared to eat, sleep, and shit in the same places as your counterparts. One of the hardest things is you all have to agree on everything together as a collective or else you’re just asking for trouble. The hardest part here is finding people who are ready to drop their lives, their jobs, and leave their girlfriends and wives at home while they’re out playing across the nation maybe stopping home for a day or two before continuing on. Believe it or not a lot of people can only make it for a few weeks before they can no longer handle what has been presented before them. In this sense I give a ton of respect to all the bands that continue to tour year after year just waiting for that big break.
Not everyone can just start a band and be signed. Most the time labels now days won’t even look at your band unless you’ve got a few tours under your belt because in all honesty who wants to sign a band who is going to get on the road and have their members realize they cant make it without their family or friends and are faced with replacing people. If I was to give any advice about trying to get signed or get on the road it would be just do it. DIY is the only way to start. I talked with Chris #2 from Anti-Flag one time about the best way to get your band out there on the road when kids are in school and trying to work around jobs and such and he said the only way to really get out there is to take out a map of your area. Use a compass and make a large circle around your city with say a 3 hour radius. From there mark all the cities with venues to play at and make it a point to play 2 shows every weekend in a different city. This right here could greatly influence your fanbase in and around your area and may lead to labels taking interest in you if you keep it up.
My first real touring experience was one that I will never forget as long as I live, and I’m sure I’ve explained the whole 2004 Warped Tour experience to people many times but this was something that really doesn’t get any justice by just using words to describe. The way Underminded (unsigned at the time) got the entire Warped Tour was they agreed to setup the Smartpunk.com Stage for the entire tour which entitled them to a spot on the entire tour. No money, just meal tickets (breakfast, lunch, dinner) Well it helped them get signed so it wasn’t too bad a deal at all. We drove up to Los Angeles a time or two to learn the just of setting up a stage so when we got to the first day of tour in Houston we would be ready to rock. We spent that day learning the in’s and out’s of stacking decks, putting up the top of the stage, the sound wings, the barricade, and then hooking all the cords into the right places, it only took us like 5 hours.
So we began our 26hr drive a couple days before the tour was set to start, they wanted us to be out there a day before so we could learn the stage and get it all set and ready to go. On the drive out we talked about what we had in store for us, how we understood this wasn’t going to be some walk in the park. We were driving our own van and trailer, we didn’t get a tour bus, it was all up to us to make it to show after show. If we missed a day we would be kicked off the tour we were told so the rules were strict and we were ready. What followed were probably the three hardest weeks I’ve ever gone through in my life. Each person on the tour invested $500 of their own money into buying gas for the tour and anything else the van may need to make it through the summer. We all made some serious sacrifices to make this go over without a hitch. Pretty much we all expected this to be hard but we had no idea that it was going to be taken to a new level. After the first day of Warped was cancelled due to bad weather we had to pack everything up and goto Dallas. Within the next three weeks we realized a lot as a band. We weren’t ready for this kind of work, we prepared ourselves for something tough but it turned into its own thing. After trouble with finding a semi to take the stage from show to show we soon were told we needed to be at the tour stops by 6:30am everyday to unload the semi trailer. For the first two weeks we would setup the stage and then Underminded would just load their gear up and play their 30minute set pretty much before anyone had even got through the gates yet. This accompanied with driving all-night every-night with lack of sleep, lack of food, lack of showers, made for some bad moods and made tensions run high. I remember when they rescheduled Houston for our day-off drive to Las Cruces I had to drive back to Houston from San Antonio and around 3am as I’m closing in on Houston I’m smacking myself in the face trying to stay awake just so I could make it, park, and sleep. After about 3 weeks of this we finally realized something different had to be done. We needed to compromise, everyone wanted to kill one another, we were playing first everyday so we’d do all the labor.. then when everyone finished playing for the day we would take the entire stage down and pack it back up in the semi, did I mention we weren’t being paid? We thought we were just setting the stage up we didn’t realize all of this extra work we had to put in.
I would setup the stage again if the opportunity came about. I think for one it was a huge growing experience for myself as well as the members of Underminded. Since it was the first real tour we were on it took everything out of us and required us to look hard and deep to realize this was really what we wanted to do. We learned to compromise. We had someone sleep during takedown and they would drive first until they were tired then someone else could takeover in the morning and take us in and then sleep while the stage was being setup. We matured so much in this time that it’s amazing to me to look back on the last 1 1/2years and see how far we have all come. Still being on the road with the same group of people makes you appreciate everything everyone has sacrificed to be in this situation and to call their “job” being on the road doing something they love every night and meeting those fans who buy the albums because the music means the world to them.
So you think you can tour? Maybe you can, but it isnt as cut and dry as it sounds. Sure you’re going to be on the road but you’re going to be playing small venues, with maybe no one at them. One of the best examples of this was my first tour (before Warped Tour) that I don’t even consider a tour since an entire week of it fell thru in the middle of it. But Underminded played The Starlight in Ft Collins, CO with Chiodos (The Chiodos Bros then) and a band from Spain called No Children. Not a single person came to the show. The bands played for the other bands, but I love thinking back to that show now and thinking, who knew. If you’re ready and willing to put forth the hard work it can pay off I mean hell look where Underminded and Chiodos are now and look where they had to start. The road to success doesn’t just happen overnight unless you’re lucky enough to have some bigwig at your first show and you’re revolutionary but that really doesn’t happen in this day and age. You have to put in your dues, you have to spill blood, sweat, and tears to make it in this industry in this age. I guess if you wanted to just go into your moms makeup cabinet and throw on some eyeliner and paint your face white you may be an overnight success, I wouldn’t want to go that route, but hey you can do it.
With that said I wouldn’t have this any other way. The amount of friendships you develop can last a lifetime. Warped Tour alone got Underminded so many solid friendships with so many bands that everyone always goes out of their way to make sure they hangout when they come through their towns. I myself have been able to meet many labels, publicity people, producers, and bands that I would have never ever dreamed of being friends with. Hell, I was flipping out the first time I played poker on the bus with The Vandals in Europe. They’re like one of those revolutionary punk bands that you would never in your wildest dreams be thinking you’d be talking with, let alone hanging out on the same level with. They still don’t know my name but that’s really besides the point, I had some nickname with them and that was enough for me.
Also, don’t expct just because you’re on a label with an album coming out that you’re set. You need a good manager, a booking agent, and a publicity company to really get your name out there to the point that other bands and booking agencies may find your band valuable to take on the road. I wish it was still completely like that also, you meet a band, you’re friends with that band, they like your music, they take you on the road. Today so many factors play into who gets tours and who doesn’t. Usually it comes down to bands being submitted and then their labels getting like an “offer sheet” asking how much they would put into publicity of the tour, so it’s kind of like “how much money would you pay to buy your band onto this tour?” It’s become a business inside of a business and with this going on so many bands who are out there year after year headlining their own tours through coffee shops in Nowhere, Arizona just can’t seem to catch a break. My only advice is to never give up. Even after Underminded were signed and did Warped Tour and had their album come out they weren’t offered anything. So they set out for the next 8 months on tour with themselves. Having friends jump on here and there but more or less just grabbing on any show they could that make sense within the driving time. They went and did their own Canadian Tour (which I highly recommend to any band that can afford to get over there to do); play the small towns, buttfuck nowhereville, and watch how many kids come out because bands just don’t play there. Underminded’s Canadian Tour featured some Canadian bands but they played places like Medicine Hat, Alberta and Lethbridge, Alberta.. in which both shows soldout and the band made close to $1,000 in merch each show. Who knew right? There’s definitely markets out there that bands just need to discover and hit. Canada seems to be way easier than the US to break into so get your band up there, make yourselves some money, it will make touring much easier later down the road.
Finally after two years of touring their assess off, playing hippy shops, coffee shops, friends’ houses, train stations, beat down bars, and after-hours hangouts people are finally starting to recognize Underminded as a band that has paid their dues. Once people hear the Warped Tour story they’re amazed the band made it through. While we were on Warped Tour certain labels that were on the road were taking bets as to how long the guys would last as no one figured they would make it through the entire tour. But that just became added motivation to make it. And we made it, and it was one of the best summers of my life. I made lifelong friendships that I cherish and I still keep up with many of those friends I met so long ago even though I rarely see them.
Touring is a good time. You get to see the country with some of your closest friends, but its hard to assemble a solid team that is able to be gone for 3+ months at a time. We all know each other now, we know what makes one another tick, we know how to push each others buttons, and we know when we’re taking each other just to the point of breaking. We know when to talk to one another or when to not. What to say to make someone happy or to piss them off. It’s almost like a big family where one second we’ll be choking each other and the next we’ll be laughing prank calling people. I couldn’t imagine not having taken this opportunity and even though I feel as if I want to get out of tour managing and more into managing I still will have a itch to hit the road again.. to get away from the stress of real life and to get on the road. I now consider this my vacation, after months and months of hard work at my day job I find this as a release and that’s what it should be. Sure its hard work sometimes but it’s more a lot of driving that anything else, a lot of down time… which is why you find me online more often than not. I wouldn’t trade them memories for anything and I encourage anyone and everyone who has the itch to get out on the road to do it. Email your favorite bands, see if they need a merch guy/girl, maybe they need a roadie to help them load in and out, or maybe you’re skilled at guitar and can help them in more ways than one. Just network, whether you’re trying to get on the road with a band, or in a band wanting to tour.. NETWORK. Find bands on myspace, trade shows with them in their town for putting them on shows in your town. Every little bit goes a long way and never take anything for granted. It’s not an easy path to be in a band who gets on good tours. Only after you have put forth your dues will things start coming around, and that is more respectable than anything else and people take notice to those bands that have worked to get where they’re going.
-Aaron Yarborough