Welcome to Episode 23 of the Bandhive Podcast.

Ut is time for another episode of the Bandhive podcast. As always, I am one of your co host, James Cross and your other co host today is Aaron Gingras of Suburban Samurai.

How's it going today, Aaron? I'm good. I can't believe that we're already recording Episode 23. Yeah, time flies were almost at a quarter of 100 26 will be half year of releasing episodes, which is insane to me like that. We're almost 26 months worth of episodes by now. I can't believe that it's nuts, it really is. And it's really cool to see the responses that we've been getting people requesting topics and just giving good feedback and saying that it's helped them. There's been some great conversation and the like, the social media groups.

Yeah, definitely. You know, If somebody has a recommendation, our group is a great place to ask for a topic. So if anyone wants to go check that out, feel free to send a joint request. We accept everyone. We asked some questions upfront just so we could get to know you. But we do accept everyone unless you know, like you're a spammer from, like who joined Facebook yesterday from Russia. Like that's maybe not those accounts. But if you're clearly in a band and you're a real person, not a spam er, we will accept you like the questions we asked our just for our information, basically, because we want to know what kind of music you play and what you do and how much experience you have, but we don't deny people based on those questions at all.

So just head over to Bandhive dot rocks slash group or search for banned hive in your Facebook app or on the site, and you will find us. And once you're in, you can just joined the conversations, or you can lurk and read. Or you can request topics whatever you'd like to dio. So you're more than welcome to join. We'd love to have you there just head on over to band. I've got rocks slash group if you're interested. Erin, I think you had some news for us.

Yeah, I guess the, uh, my update is S o. My group had been working on a couple rounds of preproduction demos for some tunes for ah, new released A some point, probably closer to the end of this year, if not, maybe very beginning of next year. So over the last couple of weeks, we finished round two of preproduction demo. That was it around that we felt pretty good about. And so e think in the last week, couple of days, um, before days ago or so, we, um I sent them off the email.

I sent my little soldiers out to battle or whatever you wanna and yeah, So we're We were talking with a guy, um, who were, you know, listen to his music for a while and, you know, sort of I think the genre and tastes or kind of on sink, and, um, it'll be a opportunity to kind of learn anything that we'd be able to kind of soak up from him and sort of You know, we really need to if if we do end up going with this guy, sort of applying, uh, some of his thoughts and perspective to some of the way that we do.

Some of the stuff. Yeah, the new experience for us, but exciting and pushing forward. So Yeah, well, that sounds awesome. Congratulations. And I know of a few weeks ago on a previous episode, you mention that the pre pro has done so. I'm glad you guys are moving forward, you know, courting an engineer toe gauge his interest on, eh? So I look forward to hearing what it is, and, you know, we're not going to say on the podcast so as not to jinx it. But Erin has told me who it is.

And if everything works out, I think it's gonna be a really awesome release. So Well, I'm sure it would be awesome no matter who you work with. But especially if you team up with this guy like, it's gonna be really cool. Yeah. Stretching our legs and, uh, see what can happen, So yeah, exactly. Well, speaking of stretching your legs, I don't know if that was an intentional opening to a seg. That's a great theory. Only think about yourself, Dad. Banned pun. Oh, man. Well, the story so far, we're going to stretch our legs and walk from one venue to the next.

Because we're talking about now every episode. It's so good you brought her dad. That was really like you had that in your back pocket ready to go. Didn't you know? I literally just seamless band joke is like, Oh, the story so far. That's so good. Oh, so Maney Band puns. I don't know that popped into my head. It was good. It was so good. It was bad, right when he said it off. More of an obscure, I think. But yeah. Oh, boy, no, no, I I get it and set it off is I wouldn't even call them obscure.

They're just new. True, They've been around for, like, 10 years now to oh, God e. I know. I feel that we both had revelations of how old we are recently. I think in the Cy the disappointment in our voice. Yeah. Anyway, with tour outing, we're going to talk about a few different things and why it's important how you can properly set it up. And when you should start working on your Twitter outing, which is basically a soon as you decide to tour. Yes, There is no such thing as too early, just in terms of at the very least, thinking about how you wanna prepare and implement all these things. True.

Now, Erin, I might actually just say before we jump into the Y. Let's tackle the when, and I'm gonna ask you to break it down into a couple different steps. Okay? So one is gonna be when you were doing arena and amphitheater tours. How far in advance did you did your team start planning tourists? So basically, I served on the production team for a noticed two eyes, basically an arena artist. Um, he would, uh, scaled down for some events and and on, and then he would scale up for other events.

So, you know, we would do, you know, some corporate events or promotional events? Arenas were sort of the bread and butter kind of right in the middle, and then we'd scale up to larger spaces to but basically, for any of those three production team, I can't really speak to exactly how far in advance ideas were formed. Um, you know, that sort of between the artist and their manager, But for easy math? Yes, pretend it's January, we would have a calendar of the entire year. Things come, things go, things get added to it.

Things get removed or shifted or changed around. But basically we had some idea of what was to come for the following year. Um, you know, and then, you know, you obviously break it up between which ones of these things you need to tackle instead of really working on and speaking about and then which ones you're sort of thinking that's probably gonna turn into something different or that's far enough away, where we know it's not going to stay like that or, you know, I guess it all depends.

But really short answer would be my answer toe. Any of the questions you're about to ask me, which is there's no such thing as too early to sort of start maybe doing a little bit of homework. Um, it could be a simple as a Google search or sort of educating yourself on like, Oh, what did these venues? What did these promoters like, what does it all look like? Where these places is this gonna be a really rough schedule or not? Uh, you know, what kind of production are we talking about?

Staffing. Just what it's gonna be is a huge. Is it really basic and simple? Um, or it could be a Z, you know, insane and intense. As you know, if you know some of these people, you know, if you're reading a memo and you recognize some of the venues or you recognize some of the promoters and you have like, what you know at some point could be considered like a personal relationship with them because you worked with them for so long, you know, you might jump in and start talking about things.

Assuming that, um, you know, that's not a no no, depending on like the work culture that you have with the artists and their team. But so no such thing is is too soon. Um, I would say on the Rena gig that I had a soon as we saw something on the calendar, we would bare minimum, educate ourselves on what the building looks like just so that way, you know, if there's something totally nuts about it, you know, and or, you know, require special travel. Or if it's sandwiched between two other events which are like on opposite ends of the country.

You know, um, we've picked up on that and we have plenty of time to prepare. Yeah, now. So since you were getting basically at that point, you would get a calendar date, which means the show is booked. You had the venue and all that more or less locked in, Yeah, at least a proposal or something that was being pushed forward. But at the end of the day, until something has happened and you're looking at it in the review of a mirror like you know could always change.

And so, typically, how far in advance would those shows pop up on your calendar? Like a year? 18 months? Six months? I would say, on average, between 9 to 12 months, 9 to 12 months. And to be clear, that's popping about my calendar, somebody who basically takes and again I was part of, ah, small team, but a team s Oh, I was just one piece of this. But by the time it reached our desk. It's basically Hey, we think we're moving forward with this. How do we implement it? So, just to be clear, there had before, there's been a lot of work put into it before it reached the point where we had our hands on it.

So probably comfortably add maybe six months to that 9 to 12 months for when, like the tour manager started saying, We're going to do a tour. This is where we the rough areas where we wanna play. I'd be careful with it and I'd sort of back up and say, Um, that's where it gets in tow just being like totally different, depending on the artist and who they're talking about, like maybe even like, what kind of artists they are like DJs or singer songwriters. Or you like the dub step thing that I may be or may not be still going on or like a band or like Or it might be, it would totally be different both how far in advance those people sort of work on their plans because, like it also, you should think about to management and then also to the label, like who puts these things together and, like you know, which artists on these labels or these managers like roster kind of like have priority.

So if you're, you know, if one of your clients Maroon five or some insanely successful, you know, top notch, um, organization, and then you have another group, which, you know, Group B. I don't know who it is, but like nowhere near as, um, you know, established or notable or recognized or whatever. Uh, nobody. Yeah, no. Nobody would ever admit there's some sort of a hierarchy, but they're totally is because the music business is a business. Eso again. With that, there's sort of varying timelines, depending on like what group you're talking about and who from that group you're talking about.

And then also, the structure from one artists group to another would varias well, eso in one artist group, like the tour manager, may in fact be the person who comes, you know, with the artist comes up with the initial idea and sort of births. The initial concept, Um, but many times it would be artist management or, you know, probably a business management. But artist management and the tour manager might sit one level below them. And so it may be tour management and production management, which at the same time would be handed this sort of roughed in concept from artists management, if that makes any sense so long, Long we need version of saying there's no such thing as too early, and it totally depends on who you are and who you have to work with and what you're trying to dio, whether we're talking about large scale arena stuff for, you know, bars and clubs and anything else which, speaking of bars and clubs, how far in advance do you aim like, What is the latest?

You would be comfortable with having a general idea of your routing when you're getting ready to put together a tour for like bars and clubs And like Sam, so the latest I would want to begin that figuring out her, adding, I mean, perfect world like I would already I'd have a nice file cabinet, and I'd be like, Do I want rounding A or B or C? And they would all be done. But eso if we were to like all of a sudden stumble upon, like time and maybe some funding, or like whatever we needed to, like, put a new thing together and get back out there.

And so I was like, Oh, let's start on this tomorrow. I mean, I think it just It kind of depends on where we're going. But again, just assuming it somewhere, like, you know, we're from New England. So New England like super easy places we've done before. We just need to, like, put it on paper, make sure it makes sense for the kinds of places we play. To be honest, I could totally force something to happen. It would be ugly, but I could probably force on. I guess it depends on how long to but like a week or 10 days or something, I could totally four something at like, I don't know, like, 10 or 12 weeks out.

So you know, 2. 5 3 months. But it would be really great if you didn't do What would you be comfortable with? Like how far in advance would you be comfortable for, like easy math? Say it's you know, December 31st, 2019. In the perfect world, we'd be gearing up for, you know, a week, a week and a half in January that had already been done and promoted, and we're just waiting for it to happen. I would be finishing up, maybe plugging a couple of holes in the routing or in whatever else something for maybe late February or March, you know, are, you know, at least like, you know, halfway down the playing field with that, like making good progress with something like three months out.

And I would be starting to figure out what the heck I wanted to do for, like, June s about six months. Yeah, so for sub Sam like clubs and, you know, small clubs like six months concept And then between six months and like three months, I would hope to be able to, like, have done all my research that I can And then, you know, between, you know, four months and like, 2. 5 months, all the bookings done, and that's the venues, the bands and everything. So, like, you know, eight weeks out, minimum six weeks out, like everything everything's done.

And then we can just kind of wait for it to happen. And then that way I'll have the bandwidth to, like start thinking and, you know, coming up with the next idea for something that's three months after that. Okay. So, total, I think in, like, a cyclical. That's straight word. Um, you know, about to do something, finishing up the next thing, planning just starting to plan the thing after that. So, in general, I guess having six months lead time and as soon as the six month tour becomes the three month tour six months out is a near tour on your horizon and it just like yeah, Okay.

I like that. You put it that way because that shows that bands shouldn't just be thinking of 12 or six months from now, which is e. I mean, we're talking about with the routing. If you're a band similar to errands, probably about six months ahead is a good time to start planning. But you might need to remember that if you're booking something six months out what you have three months out once What? Your booking now, three months from now. What's coming up six months from that point. So nine months from now I'm nodding my head for those of you who can't see me, yeah, and it's That's a great way to like.

At first, it's kind of like a, you know, a slow start, because you gotta wait for that first one toe happen. But, like, once you do that, um, you know, we did probably between, you know, five day and, you know, 12 day runs or, like, 5 to 12 show runs. Um, uh, to be clear, I'm totally, like, no days off. If we could help a 10 or 12 day run show runs? Um, probably every other to every third month for about 2. 5 for three years straight. Super tired, super tiring on. But we ran our band into the ground.

So now that we've talked about the when, let's go ahead and talk about the why. And I know some bands were just like, Oh, you know, let's play in Boston, New York and Philadelphia and then come home and they just kind of pick those cities arbitrarily, and they don't really think about what they're doing. But they are making a tour routing, but it might not be the best one. Now, if you're in Vermont playing Boston, New York and Philly, that's actually not a bad routing. But then you got to drive back from Philly, which is like a seven or eight hour drive, so that's not ideal.

It works, but there might be things you could do to make it better. For example, you could save time and money by instead of doing Filly just hit Albany on the way home. So you'll have saved potentially you half a day of driving. Because from Albany, toe up here is only three or four hours instead of seven or eight, and you also save money because you're spending less money on gas. You might be more comfortable because you're gonna be home half a day sooner. It's more convenient now.

This is where it gets to be a little more complex, which is venue availability and having a good Twitter doubting. You have to build in some flexibility for venue availability because if you go to venue and say, Hey, we wanna play on April 23rd and they say, Well, we only have the 22nd or the 24th, but on the 22nd, 24th year in a different city, you either will have to skip that venue and find a different venue in that city or a different venue in a different city, or switches to the 22nd and 24th and do a little bit of a zigzag.

That's my favorite, because usually if it's like one day off, like maybe it's a little easier to make it work. But I think you know when it's like three days or two days difference, it's like, Oh, no, like what? You or Or like you said the zigzag, which totally cuts into your point about, like time, money, comfort and convenience. You know that happens. I see a lot of bands who will try to do a tour, and they have the venues they want and they'll talk to the venue and say, Yeah, we want something this week And then they basically just fill in that week, throwing darts at a dartboard and then say OK, here are dates.

Oh, we're driving from Albany to Buffalo to Boston. to, Burlington, Vermont, to New York, to Philly to Western Massachusetts and then back to Albany, where we're based. It's like that's all great and it's gonna look so fun and cool on a poster on Facebook. But like doing something like that like you're you're gonna not be of, like, able to afford to do it again in three months, like you're going to shut yourself down if you keep doing it like that. I wish that wasn't the case, but, like that's just much more difficult than it should be Now, I don't know if I can remember all the cities in my head that I just mentioned, but from memory, here's how I would do it.

If you're starting in Albany, get up Burlington, then Boston or Worcester, Massachusetts doesn't matter which one. Then the other one. Then go down to New York, then Philly than from Philly, up to Buffalo and then back to Albany. And you've basically made a big circle with just a little bit of a zigzag in Massachusetts. But it's not bad because Boston and Worcester like a now hour and 15 minutes apart. It's not far. It's much better than basically making a spider web in New England. That is not what you want to Dio, and I would even go so far as to say, like I'd be greedy and ask for availability from the rest of my band or whoever I need you for, like, an extra three days and, like, try to gig my way towards Buffalo to assuming the buffalo isn't like, you know, 450 people sold out going to be an amazing show.

Well, I mean, if from Albany, Buffalo is what, like four hours? I think so. It's not so bad. Whereas if you're in Burlington, Buffalo is gonna be, like, 77. Yeah, Okay. So yeah, but I get what you're saying, and I would totally agree. If you can fill something in or maybe do Buffalo Day earlier and have something else after that, who knows? But so that's really where venue availability comes in and messes things up because you do the ideal routing. Like I said, you know, going basically in a big circle, and then all of a sudden, the venue in Philly is like, Oh, well, we can do like, you know, the first date or the last date, but not in the middle.

So then you'd end up driving to Philly and then to Burlington, Vermont, because you've already booked all the other shows, or from New York to Buffalo and then to Philly and then home to Albany, which is also a mess. But that just kind of happens. You have to roll with the punches, and as long as it doesn't happen with everything, it's OK. Now another thing. And this is probably only the case for much bigger events. Is scheduling conflicts for your attendees, for example, I know worked or at one time rescheduled to date because they found out that there was a major event going on where they were playing a show and it would have been a conflict.

And another time they realized that the school was gonna end later than they expected in that area. And so if they were gonna have a show on a weekday, nobody could go because it was like final this week. So the kids were all gonna be in school, so they rescheduled that one. And that happens. Like sometimes you'll have a show book to realize. Oh, we gotta move this, like from Friday to Sunday. So we don't have a conflict like that or different things happen. I know a tour manager who played in Boston at what was it?

Access in Avalon, which is now House of Blues for any of you who know House of Blues Boston. It's across the street from Fenway Park. They played a show there, This tour manager. I don't know what band he was tour managing. They played a show there the night the Red Sox won the 2004 A LCS, which was wasn't the LCS. Maybe they didn't win because I think they won both the L. C s and the World Series on the road that year. But it was during, like, a nail CS or World Series game in 2004.

So either they were playing the Yankees or the Cardinals, which is for Red Sox. This was the first time in forever that they had a chance, and Boston is very, very, very, very, very sports friendly. We're talking mobs of people, and they just apparently could not leave the venue at their scheduled time to get to the next city because the streets were so full of people they couldn't drive away in their bus. And so they ended up being late to the next load in, and there's nothing they could do about it now.

Obviously, you shouldn't base your tour routing around what teams might be in the world. Siri's six months from now. But that's a good point, though, like is what you're saying is kind of related to something that I'd argue like wherever possible. Band should again if they think of it, should always do, which is like, Be wary. You be wary of other events and for us, like band folks like that definitely includes, you know, not playing when, like, a much larger, very similar band is in town. Um, you know, unless you can get on the show unless you get on the show, which would be red.

Yeah, that's the kind of thing that you know. It happens, But you do want to be at least somewhat aware. And there are other sporting events like the Super Bowl is announced really far in advance of where it's gonna be. Probably don't want to play the same city is the Super Bowl that whole weekend because it's just gonna be a mess hotel. Is there gonna be crazy? Expensive. If you make enoughto get hotels for your band, it's gonna be really expensive that night, and people are gonna be distracted.

Traffic's gonna be a mess. It's just not generally gonna work out well for you. Any big event, like if the Olympics, we're gonna be anywhere near you gonna say a whole two weeks and probably quite some time before because of all the people who are coming in tow work on it. Just don't. One point I wanna make is, uh, making sure, you know, if, for example, you reach out to again for easy, easy math or I guess, easy geography. In this case, for all of you Vermonters out here, um, well, for all of you Non Vermont tras Vermont is a small state, so that's all you need to know.

But for all of you Vermonters out there, like, definitely don't consider, you know, Okay, like if if you're doing just, like a regional or like a in state, you know, a bunch of gigs at the same time. Like we're definitely not suggesting, you know, if you have Rutland, which is, you know, in in Central Southern and then Burlington, you know, and then something in northern Vermont Don't kill your whole long weekend worth of shows. If, like, you have to drive from Rutland to ST Albans or northern Vermont and then go back down to the middle like we're definitely talking about figured out what scale your tour or your Siris of events, or like operating on and then, you know, if it makes sense, because I've I've definitely had, like, I've booked pockets of New England shows or I've done like the Boston and Providence and Wister shows like three in a row really didn't hurt us.

You know all that much like, you know, as long as I could get it three days in a row somehow. Like what order it shook out in. It was fine. And then I knew that, like, Okay, the next day would be spent driving toe like Long Day be spent driving toe like Nashville. And then we do like to Tennessee shows and then or whatever so like, definitely figure out what, like scale you're operating on. And then, like, um, definitely don't be afraid to be like, No, we're totally doing it.

And here's the reason why, because I think we've covered something similar to this in a new earlier episode, which is do what works for you. And if you got like, a unique opportunity that you think would work really well for your band. Um, you know, go for it and work hard. And perhaps whatever you got going on is worth investing in. Yeah, basically, you know, take this as an advice buffet to borrow a term from the six figure home studio podcast. Do what makes sense to you.

We're just saying things that for most people will make sense for many people. Sometimes the things we say makes sense for a few people. It's up to you to realistically reflect and see what makes sense. This topic about routing is honestly one of the topics. I would say that is not an advice buffet. It should work for everyone. But some of the parts that we're talking about into a routing might not work for everyone. So, for example, should everyone who's doing a tour make a routing? Absolutely. Because it's going to save a lot of trouble for you down the road.

No pun intended. That was honestly unintended. Yes, but what you're saying is like put thought into it. Whatever it ISS exact some amount of thought and to get really into how to do a Twitter outing, there's really just three questions. You have to ask yourself, Do you want to take care of the first one and then how long? Yes. How long is the tour gonna be? Let's say, for a D I Y band, probably anywhere between a weekender of three shows. to up to two weeks would be comfortable and realistic for a D i Y band, especially if you've never done a tour before.

I would not do longer than a week. Yeah, that should be pretty comfortable. Yeah, so let's say five shows over a week with two days off, just for some flexibility. Because if you playing days off, yeah, and if you plan in days off, you have more wiggle room. So if the venue tries to say, Well, we don't have this table, we have this one. Well, guess what? You could just move it around because you have a day off, so that's a little helpful for routing is having flexibility with days off.

Whereas Aaron, you like to have everyday booked. That takes away some of that flexibility because you can't say, Oh well, that's an off day. We'll just switch it to their and that's totally the result of like my, you know, having started the process by throwing everything I had against the walls. You know what stuck and then going back and like, tightening some stuff up. So but yeah, at first it was totally like, whatever. However it shakes out, it shakes out that way. So I think that's a great idea, especially if it's your first for one of your first you know, trips out and you're doing it yourself.

And you're learning. Yeah, you know, like five shows over seven days. That flexibility is definitely gonna come in handy. So five shows over seven days. Let's say we're starting here in Vermont. Actually, no, let's say we're starting in the tri state area, New York, New Jersey, just to make this more applicable to people. But it's gonna be the same thing wherever you are, Really. But you is the listener. If you're you know, wherever you are, The next thing is to say how far and to me I would just look on a map or if you have ah, like a map in your head like idea.

And I'm sure you do as well, Erin, from all the traveling you've done ish Yeah, I've something in my head. I e you will you definitely have something in your head. Otherwise you wouldn't be sitting here co hosting this podcast. Thank you. Eso, Let's say theoretically, if you wanted to do Ah, five show tour starting in New Jersey, how far would you want to go? Like, what's the furthest city out you would want to hit? I think from Jersey. Let's use we've got, what, seven days? Yep, Seven days, five shows.

Let's go to Cleveland and back. Cleveland. Okay, so theoretically speaking on the way there you would. Then, if you're sticking to just major cities, hit up Pittsburgh, Columbus, Cleveland and then on the way back, go through upstate New York, hit Buffalo or Rochester and Albany, and they'll be back in nature. On there's your five shows now. That's just how far kind of tells you where you want to play. And you can decide if you want to do major markets, tertiary markets or secondary markets with, you know, major markets being like the cities we mentioned.

Although I might I might say some, like Columbus might be a secondary market, but it's still a major city, especially for like, if again with the example. If it's like your first tour, something Columbus will for your huge exactly. But then, if you wanna play tertiary markets, that would be like maybe State College, Pennsylvania, Burlington, Vermont. It's like a New York. It really depends on how you want to do this, and this will tie into what types of venues you wanna play. And thankfully, for D. I Y bands, most cities with more than probably 5 to 10,000 people are gonna have a small club, maybe even a large club.

Pretty much every city anywhere in the country is gonna have a bar and a coffee shop. And so the next thing you want to decide is what type of venues do you want to play? And for a D. I y band, you're probably gonna be looking at bars and coffee shops or small clubs. Realistically speaking, that's the limitation. And we're defining small clubs as up to 500 cap above that you have large clubs, which is 525 100 and theaters, which is about 2500 to 5000, and then above that arenas and amphitheaters.

Now these air just kind of ballpark figures because there might be an amphitheater that's smaller than 5000 ordinary A. That's more than 5000. There might be a theater that's smaller than 2500 or larger than 5000, but just kind of for a rough sense, you're going to divide it up in these general ranges. You're going to say, Okay, you know, where a d I y band and we play indie music. And, you know, we have a cone, an acoustic guitar and electric bass. So we fit well with coffee shops. We're gonna play coffee shops to Cleveland and back.

Now, if you're doing coffee shops, you might do some tertiary markets, because why not? And you're gonna have a lot of options exactly. But if you were more of a rock band and a coffee shop isn't your thing and you know, maybe you're straight edge and you don't want to play a bar, you're gonna be looking at small clubs. Well, that's gonna limit because a town with five or 10,000 people probably doesn't have a club. They'll have a bar in a coffee shop, but they probably don't have a club.

You might have to get into a college town or a place that has, you know, like 15, 20 30,000 people to find somewhere that has a club kind of like Burlington, Vermont. Barry, where I live or Montpellier. Those areas don't have clubs. We actually we did have a dance club that closed after like a year, but again, they just dance stuff. They didn't have rock shows, for example. Now we do have a new arena here, where they do major shows very rarely. We also have a theater called the Barry Opera House, where they do shows and we get some great names through here.

But not really the genres that are most popular with the younger generations. They end up being, you know, more like old school country acts or old school rock act. We had Jackson Browne came through a few times. That's a great one. Yeah, that was cool. His God daughter lives in the area, so that was the connection. She got him toe come and do a benefit concert for a nonprofit she was running, which is also good for us. Um, and eso he came through and man, there's a band I can't remember who they were opening for, but a band I really love called Civil Twilight from South Africa.

They came through Barry and played opening. They played the Barry Opera House. Now, unfortunately, I was in Boston in college at the time, so I missed it. But it would be cool to say, like, Hey, I actually saw a band I like in my hometown of, like, 7000 people. That would have been pretty awesome and I've seen local bands, and that's great. But it's cool to say, Hey, you know my non local band that I like came through on tour and actually played here. Now I've seen them in Burlington, about an hour away.

I've seen lots of bands I love in Burlington at a great club that holds about 7 50. That's awesome. That's actually technically a large club. 7 50. Maybe I would call it medium if there was a medium category. Anyway, you decide what type of the venues and then you get going. Look at the map and pinpoint the cities that you want to play during your tour, which is how long is the tour and you've already established how far you want to go and then just open up Google maps. And if you go to the directions option, you can actually put in multiple stops, and that's going to help you decide what the most efficient route is because you can look at it on the map and say, Hey, look, there's a zigzag here.

Let's not do that. You just play with it and just have, like, have fun. Honestly, if you're just starting out like and you're figuring out what's working for you like super exciting, there is no wrong answer exactly. One thing to remember is that Google Maps will Onley let you input up to 10 stops. It used to be 25 then this was six or seven years ago. They changed it to 10 when Google Maps updated, which is really unfortunate because 25 was great and I've put together towards with, like, 40 shows on them.

So I had to do to is like, Okay, now with 10, you're gonna have to do five essentially because the first day in the last date are always gonna overlap with the next set of shows, so you're gonna have to do multiple maps, but you can still get a general idea and make building blocks. Once you've done this, you're gonna want to assign an ideal date to each stop. And with those dates in mind, start reaching out to promoters and venues to see what they have. Now, at this point, we're going to get a little bit into booking, which I'm going to throw Ah, wrench into our outline here.

One thing that I forgot is when you're reaching out about shows you're not just gonna book the shows right away, you're gonna have a hold placed on them first. At least if the promoter knows what they're doing, they're going to give you a hold, which basically means you have the option for that date. But if somebody else reaches out and enquires about it, you then have 24 hours to respond and confirm that you are taking that date or you are not taking that date. And if you don't respond, they'll give it to the other artist if they want it, or they might give the other artists ahold, and then you can come back and challenge their hold and try to get your date back, but in general, he wanna get holds for the dates on your tour for the ideal dates that you've set with your routing and commit to them.

Now it's possible that annoy ideal date you want has a hold on it. And then you wait a couple days and then email back and say Hey to the other artists confirmed No. Okay, I want it. Or if the other artists did confirm you have to find a different venue or a different city or moving around like I was saying earlier, those were just some of the options. But no route will be ideal. There will be backtracking in zigzags. That just happens. But, Erin, I think there is one good way to try and alleviate those pain points.

Do you wanna talk about that a little bit? Yeah. So one thing that you can dio is try to establish a relationship with a promoter. Once you figure out where you're going to be aiming to play somebody who wears a promoter, half you're not doing it. Yourself will be much more knowledgeable about the different locations that may be available to host the show in their respective area um, and so you can basically, I mean, in the perfect world, you, maybe is lucky is to be able to consider, um you know, Rochester, New York.

You've got a Rochester person, and they're you know, they're to work with you. Uh, no matter where the show is, of course. Rochester, New York is an example. Uh, has more than one person who's interested in promoting shows and probably more than one person who's interested in promoting the kind of or genre of show that you're gonna be putting on. So it's not quite a simple is that, um, but if you're able to do that and sort of established that connection, uh, that's gonna make your life a lot easier because that's gonna be instead of you trying to do the research on your own, uh, you Google or social media or talking to other bands figuring out you know what places even exist.

You know, if you've never been to a city, are they still around or they okay, what? You know, some in some places don't have websites that air up today or, you know, some places are amazing and they don't have a website. It all local promoters are gonna be able to, uh, you know, be your quick and, uh, you know, easy access to information about local infrastructure. They'll probably have a head start on who the local bands are in the area, too. So with that tying back into James what you're sort of reaching for, uh, if you're able to establish a relationship with a promoter in any if not all other places you're working towards playing that's going to kind of help you with your Tetris a little bit.

And if one venue comes back and says we can't do this date, we've got to do this state chances are that persons you know already also speaking with, you know, a backup venue or a different venue or the issue isn't either isn't going to reach your plate at all, or if it does, you're gonna have options, and it's gonna be a lot easier to align things. You're just gonna you know, um, you're going to identify, you know, the couple issues you have, and, you know, in one fell swoop, you're gonna be able to make decisions and kind of, you know, put Humpty Dumpty like, back together again.

Basically, Yeah, absolutely. And it's just in a way, it's easier toe work with the promoter. And granted, you might get paid a little bit less if you're working with the promoter rather than acting as your own promote and working directly with the venue. But they'll be doing a lot of the work for you. So it has pros and cons, but it really depends on your situation and what you're comfortable with. If you are OK, giving up a small share of your profit to have pro to run the show for you.

By all means do it. If you have the knowledge and skills like you do Aaron to act as the promoter and book directly with the venues, then go for it. You know you can put together your own package. So basically to wrap things up before you start booking any shows, you want to go through these steps and have an idea of when you are going to play each city with an ideal date, give or take a day and you want to do this about 4 to 6 months before the shows are to take place.

Some venues book more than six months out, smaller venues might only need one or two months, but you should not rely on that. And as Aaron was saying at the start of this episode for major tours like arenas and amphitheaters, you're looking at over a year for some artists that they're booking out these venues. Which means that if you're late to the game, yeah, you might find availability. Like if you look at any big amphitheater, they don't have shows every night of the week. They have, like 223 maybe four shows a week.

But you never know if you're going to be able to get the ideal date or if you have to go a day or even to before after your ideal date. What's just throws a wrench in the rest of your routing? So basically, if you start early a. You're giving yourself and every piece of the puzzle plenty of time to like mess up and you know you're giving the train plenty of time to run off the rails and get back on. And if you start early and then somebody says as you were saying, some venues won't even entertain the idea of you know they don't have the bandwidth or the staffing or capacities smaller places to deal with, like booking four months out.

They just can't think about it. That's fine. You still have the ability to come back to them when you get a little closer. But if you wait until it's too late, like there's no way that you've just missed the opportunity. Yeah, three Onley chance, then would be to put you on somebody else's show. That's not ideal. Yeah, because you might not know who you're playing with or you might have a package you might have to other bands. With you, you might be a three band tour, which, to be honest when you're small up and coming band, I don't really recommend that that's a topic for another episode.

Tour packages air great for major tours, but for D. I. Y bands who are playing, you know, probably toe less than 200 people a night. I would absolutely say tour by yourself and play with 2 to 3 local bands. You will get more people through the door on a four band bill with three locals. Then you will on a four band bill with one or two locals and chances are I mean, obviously, it's not that simple, But you know, you have the chance for that event that you're playing, that you're the only out of town band.

For if you plan it right, it could be like you're getting the whole scene together. All of those bands, you know, hopefully like each other, and it's like they're happy to see each other, and so they're all in a good mood. The venue sees that and they're in a good mood. And then that, just like the excitement spreads and people come and it kind of forces you to, like, mix and mingle with the local people while you're there because there's no other choice, absolutely. And one last note, which is kind of a side effect of what you're saying is if people see that one local band they like is playing, they're like, Okay, maybe I'll go if they see that to local bands, they like they're playing, They're like, Oh, that's pretty cool.

I should check that out if they see that three of their favorite local bands are playing together on the same night, they're going to go. That's just how it ISS. So maybe we'll have to do an episode on that at some point. But essentially, if you're playing toe under 200 people a night, you should probably tour on your own rather than with another artist. Unless you're like a solo acoustic actor, something in which case, sure, take somebody else with you and split the costs. But for a band, it really doesn't make any sense to play small shows with other touring acts.

If there's a book in crowd like a bar, something that's popular, you do. You bring two or three other bands that you like on tour with you. But if you're playing clubs where there's no building crowd because there's a cover charge, just go play the shows with the locals because you're gonna be better off. You're gonna sell more tickets. You can have more money in your gas tank, and you're gonna get the next city hopefully without paying out of pocket. That will force you to practice all of this stuff, and practice makes perfect yeah, or something close to it.

On that note, if anybody is working on a tour outing and you want to get some feedback from it, we'd be happy to take a look at it. And if you want to share it, just head on over to our Facebook group, which is at Band. I've dot rocks slash group and post there, and we'll take a look at it for you. No obligation if you feel like it. Awesome. If not, good luck on the road. Well, that's it for this episode of the Bandhive podcast, and I have some good news for you.

We've finally gotten through our backlog of episodes. This was recorded sometime in February or very early March, and it is airing on May 5th. So next week on May 12th, I will be chatting with Matt about a topic that we have not yet decided on because it's still only April 15th when I'm recording this outro. So we're still a way ahead. But it will probably something about the future of the live music industry and how coronaviruses going to forever change what we need to do as musical artists who traditionally got paid for live performances.

So we aren't affected as strongly if this were to ever happen again, so keep an eye out For that, we'll figure out the exact topic of what it's gonna be. But I can already assume that it's gonna be something about overcoming Cove it and getting to the new future of the live music industry. So, as always, thank you so much for listening. We really appreciate it. And, you know, do you keep in mind that this episode was recorded a while ago? So take what you learned in this episode and apply it to what happens in who knows how long and just keep it in your back pocket and be ready to get back on the road when it's safe to do so.

So thanks again. Have an awesome week. We'll be back next Tuesday at 6 a.m. Eastern. And, of course, as always, keep rocking.