Welcome to Episode 14 of the Bandhive Podcast.

It is time for another episode of the band. I've podcast. My name is James Cross, and I'm here with Matt Hoos of Alive in Barcelona. How are you doing today, Matt? I'm doing wonderful, James.

Thanks for having me on. And how's your day going so far over there in Vermont? You know, it's a pleasure to have you here as always, and things were pretty good here. It's December, though this episode doesn't come out till March because we plan ahead as every single band out there should do as well. It is the coldest day of the year so far, at least of, you know after summer. I'm sure it was colder in like February, but it was negative six when I woke up.

Yeah, and for those of you who are international, that's Fahrenheit, so I don't know what negative six is in Celsius, but that's probably like negative 15 negative 20 cells use something along that range. So yeah, it's cold. What about you, Matt? How's Colorado? So far? It's actually, it's pretty wonderful. We haven't had as much snow as we were expecting. The wind has been real bitey, though. It's definitely, you know. Yeah, in the sunshine. It's nice, but then you like, walk around the corner and get that nice, uh, cold mountain wind, and it's definitely chilly.

Yeah, the wind chill factor is a pain and can give you frostbite. So on that note, if you have not listened to Episode four, which is called How to Survive Winter Tours and not hate them, you can go check that out. Just go to Bandhive dot rocks slash four. Just the number four No letters, just one digit for go. Check that out and hear how you can survive winter tours this week. We're going to talk about something else because I don't want to remember winter any more than I think anyone else does.

And since this is dropping in March, winter is almost gone so we can celebrate that I think the best way to start this off is Matt. You had a story about a certain company and what they dio. So why don't we go ahead and, uh, go through that story and then we can reveal to people what we're talking about if they haven't already figured it out by that point? Absolutely. So there's this company. I'm not sure if many of you have heard of it. It's called McDonald's.

They employ millions of people around the globe, and each and every single one of those millions of employees all have a specific duty now, whether or not that duty is being a cashier bagging food, cooking food, working the drive through window, or being a person that cleans up the dining room each and every person has their own integral role in the company. This is really, really important because without each and every single one of these pieces of the puzzle, something would fall short. I'm sure a lot of you have heard the time old phrase You're only as strong as your weakest link.

This is absolutely true. In a case like McDonald's, if you have one employee that is running around and taking in order, and then they run over to try and cook the food, and then they come up and bag the food and then they bring it to that customer, and their responsibility is taking care of everyone while the other employees stand around. That business is going to fail. Not only will the customers be upset at the fact that they're not receiving quality service, but also that one employee is going to hate his other employees and they're going to get burnt out incredibly quick now.

The reason that I'm starting with this story is because I really want to hit one single point home. That is, everybody has a job. Everyone in your band needs to be doing some form of work that is contributing towards your end goal. Now this starts by determining what your end goal is and working backwards from there, and then you can figure out you can isolate jobs and figure out who is going to be best in each one of those places. This is a term that Ah, lot of industries call keeping your aces in their places.

You want people who are strong, who are willing to work hard and who are willing to work together. And if you have this cocktail, then it's a wonderful, wonderful, wonderful precursor to success. I think that's a great story, because I don't remember statistics exactly, but something like one in eight people who have worked at McDonald's at some point in their life. So even if you personally haven't, you probably know someone who has or you've been to a McDonald's. And don't get me wrong. I don't like McDonald's.

I mean, I'm gonna be stereotypical here, but I'm vegan. I don't eat at McDonald's. I don't support them. Actually, that is 100% a lie. Quick side note. 10 seconds In Germany, they have a vegan burger and vegan fries. So when I was in Germany, I went there like three times so once a week. And it's delicious, too. Yeah, the U. S is the only country in the world where McDonald's fries are not vegan because they add beef flavoring. Yeah, it's disgusting anyway, so that is 100% a lot. I do eat McDonald's just not what I'm in the states because they have nothing vegan Anyway.

I used to work there 10 years ago. And, jeez, I was 11 anyway. You're absolutely right. They divide everything up, and sometimes when it's slow, people would cover a few things. Like if it was slow, I typically worked the morning shift. I might, you know, run the grill and then make the sandwiches or something, you know. But when it got busy, I would be on the grill and somebody else would be making the sandwiches or vice versa. Typically, I would be on the grill because that's where I was best.

That's where I had the most experience, and I was fast. And that's what they look for, somebody who could do it well and could do it fast and follow procedure because that's the other thing that McDonald's is all about. S O ps standard operating procedures. So anyway, I love that story. And I think it's something that pretty much anyone can relate Thio because if you haven't worked there, you've worked somewhere else with a similar business model or, you know, someone who has or you've been to some place that has a business model like that, And the point you're driving home, at which you already talked about, is every single person should have a job, and I agree with that.

And bands need to do that, too. Although I would have to say that in bands, it's more like every single person is gonna have multiple jobs that they are the soul caretaker off, because unfortunately, with bands, unless you make the big time, there's no budget to really have a team and delegate to that level. So I think how we're going to go with this episode is we're going to talk about types of work that should be assigned and it's not extensive or exhaustive list. And then once we go through that list, we're going to talk about a little bit of the decision process on who gets which type of duty.

And I know we were talking about that a little before the episode. Matt, just different personality types can tie into the positions that people should take on or the roles that people should take on. And so obviously, our topic for today if people haven't figured it out yet, is banned dynamics and the roles and responsibilities of each person within that band. And one other thing that I want to mention is that if you do all this well, you will have a better relationship with your bandmates because nobody is saying, you know, he said he was gonna do this and he didn't do it.

Now I have to do it. Well, now, if everybody has a job, you could say, Hey, Jimmy, do your job. I'm not gonna do it for you. This is your job. Please get it done is supposed to be done yesterday. Have it done by tomorrow at the latest or whatever, you know. But you will have a structure to kind of lay down the law and people will know what their responsibilities are so they can't shrink from continuing on. I think the first and possibly one of the most important things we should talk about having a role assigned is management and financial.

Just because that's such an integral part of any band. Though I have some experience with a lot of this stuff, Matt, you by far the experts. So take it away, man. You bet So as faras job responsibilities, you know there's a lot of responsibilities that can be delegated. You can go all the way down toe each individual social media. If you want, I could go for days about different jobs because the more you work, the more you're going to find that there is to dio. So starting with financial, you know, keeping detailed logs of each and every single thing that you dio is very, very important.

So you want somebody who has a good attention to detail doing that? It's very, very easy to get into a situation where you go out on tour. You know, you keep all your receipts from your gas. You keep your invoices from venues or promoters. You have to go purchase a few things from Guitar Center because maybe one of your cables breaks or in ears fail or whatever other reason. And you get to the end of your tour and you have this fat stack of receipts and nobody wants to go through them.

This is something I see all the time because book keeping sucks. This is why we have C. P. A s. Because nobody wants to keep track of all their own expenses. Logs. This is why balancing a checkbook for those of you that are old enough to know what that is, that's why this was a task that seems tedious because nobody likes to go through and literally count every nickel and dime that they're spending. However, this is very important and you want somebody that is not only attentive to detail but also has a go getter attitude about it.

If you wait too long to start things like your bookkeeping, then it becomes Titanic. The amount of work that you have to dio, you know, in our band, Jesse does our bookkeeping and he has detailed logs of every dollar in every dollar out from day one. And so not only is that awesome for us because we now know you know who's contributed what, how payouts are gonna work. What are expenses are what our net is, what our gross's. But also, when we have all these detailed numbers, it kind of keeps people that we owe money to from barking up our Trias.

Well, you know, if we are in a contract with saying manager and we owe them 15% of net and we go to them and say, Hey, look, here's our detailed bookkeeping and at the bottom, so we didn't make anything this tour so we're not paying out anything because 15% of zero is zero. But if you don't have those detailed bookkeeping numbers and you don't have somebody that's quality in that position and keeping very detailed accounts of everything, you might end up running into a situation where a management company or a booking agency or somebody else that you have a contract with for a certain percent might come back to you and say, Hey, where's my money?

And if you don't have detailed but keeping not on Lee, do you now have the headache of trying to go back through and figure out what your total bottom line is? But then also, you have to kind of defuse this situation between you and whatever third party you're working with. So it's very important to have somebody that's you know, they're focused. They are eager to get it done. I like to use turning your weaknesses into strengths, and people that have anxiety about things that lay over their head are wonderful people to take care of bookkeeping because some of these people won't be able to sleep until it's done.

If you are one of those people, I'm very very sorry that you have to deal with that. But also you have tow, really? Isolate what you think your problems are and turn them into your strength. And so for me, I am a very firm believer that somebody who is good with numbers, who doesn't mind sitting there using a calculator or has computer experience. They're wonderful people to use programs like QuickBooks, where you can literally log every single thing from day one for a very cheap price. Then, on top of that, it's not like, Oh, hey, did this happen or do we spend this money?

It's like, Oh, let's go back and find out Yes, we did spend this money. We spent it at this location on this date and you'll have that because somebody in your band is performing their job. They are keeping detailed records of your finances. Now, a lot of the time, this person is also the person that is going to be converse ing with promoters. If they're dealing with the financial side, then they should also be the person that's collecting a paycheck. So when you go and you play a show on, the promoter walks up to say your lead singer who may or may not be your bookkeeper or who may or may not be your manager for lack of a better term, and they try to give you money for me.

Whenever that happens to me, I differ them to Jesse. Jesse has worked very, very hard to set up this contract, and payment is the fulfillment of that contract. So for him being our bookkeeping person and being our manager and our liaison, who is conversing with said promoters, he should also be the one to go and collect payment. Not only will that help his job because he'll know exactly how much money is coming in, but then also, it leads to things like knowing which venues are gonna try to screw you over, or rather knowing which promoters are gonna try to screw you over.

That happens every tour. If you're going into a tour thinking that you are going to get paid 100% of your guarantee on 100% of your shows, you are in for very, very, very sore surprise. You wanna have these people be the same and hopefully it doesn't always work like this, but hopefully That's also somebody who kind of has a little bit of an enforcer nature for me. I love people. And if a promoter would walk up to me and say, Hey, we were supposed to pay you 250 bucks, but I only have 150.

So here you go, Me personally, I would be like, Oh, no, that's totally fine. I totally understand. I know how the industry is blah, blah, blah. This. I'm a nice person and I don't like confrontation. That's why I need Jesse. Jesse is willing to go and say No, we have a contract. This contract states that we could pay $250. Now. I'm sorry if you as a promoter or you as a venue did not promote this show well enough. Or perhaps you didn't have a bunch of your regular clientele show up.

That's also not on the problem of the band. So it's good to have somebody that kind of has the enforcer personality that's collecting these things. I know I'm talking about kind of a lot of jobs all in one, but at its core, all it is is managing the money you are basically the one person who says I am going to be responsible for collecting money or spending money for fulfilling contracts and for making sure that venues slash promoters don't screw me over. And that's kind of all lumped into the financial category.

And on that note for anyone who isn't super financially, I don't want to say aware, but isn't super knowledgeable about financial terms. What you mentioned a few minutes ago, Matt The net profit All that is, is your income after expenses and in some cases, after taxes, which differs from gross profit or gross receipts, which is everything that you take in. One thing for bands to look out for is if you're working with someone who gets a commission. I think with the exception of a booking agent, you would want anyone who gets a commission to be on the Net.

Booking agents typically take Gross just because that's standard, they get you the show. You know it's not their fault. If you don't make money, they should get you the best deal possible. But anyone aside from a booking agent that you work with should be working on net commission. Ideally, it would be perfect. If every contract that you ever work on is a net deal, because Net deals basically mean that these other people aren't making money until you're making money. Exactly. With a gross deal, you are always going to be spending money and you can get to the end of a tour.

You know, let's say you make $10,000 on your tour, but you spent 11,000 between expenses. Well, because you have a gross deal with your manager, you still have to pay them 15% of the 10,000 because that's what gross means. You're paying them 15% of gross sales. Your net is actually minus 1000. And then on top of that, if you're paying 15% on that $10,000 it's like, Oh, great, there's 1500 bucks. It's almost like adding insult to injury. And on top of that, it kind of creates a system where the management might not necessarily be as invested as you would like them to be.

Nothing incentivizes hard work better than the potential of money, and so if they're going to get their money regardless, then there's less incentive to work. But if they have to make sure that your band is profiting in order for them to make money. Then that's when the good quality hard work is going to be seen. So if you can find a management company that's willing to work for net, stay with them because that means that they really believe in your brand. And you always want people on your team that believe in your business.

Yeah, that's a great point. And about the touring example, you're absolutely right, because all of a sudden the band would be in the whole 2500 instead of 1000 if they were on gross terms. As far as bookkeeping, you mentioned QuickBooks, which is a great tool. There's also waive APS, or if you're just starting out and first of all, wave APS is free. QuickBooks is $10 a month. Neither of those should have any great barrier of entry like you should be able to use either one. No problem. It really just comes down to personal preference for whatever you want.

But if you're just starting out and you only have a few transactions a day, you can also totally do this in Google Sheets or excel with just a little bit of knowledge of how spreadsheets work. So if you're good with spreadsheets, which I know Aaron are other co host, he's like a spreadsheet whiz. You can do all your bookkeeping in there as long as it's not too complicated. The biggest benefit of using QuickBooks or wave APS or something like that is that it automatically imports transactions from your credit card and your bank account and all that stuff, which is super helpful because it means you don't accidentally miss some.

And at least for wave, you can snap a picture on your phone of any receipt, and it will upload it and scan it and automatically add that as a transaction. And then once that transaction posts to your accounts, it will link it automatically. Or if it's a cash transaction, you just mark it as a cash transaction and I'll go to your cash on hand account. So those were both great tools. You can get really complex with Excel stuff if you want to. I know I've done that over at my studios website pinnacle pro sound dot com.

I have the ultimate d i Y tour budgeting Guide for Bands longest title ever. But it's like a 12 page PdF E book, which comes with a pre made Excel sheet and instructions on how to use it for a tour up to. I believe it's 15 days long, and it has a ledger, profit and loss sheet for each show, all kinds of stuff. So if you're not ready to jump into wave APs or QuickBooks, go ahead, check that out. It will be in the show notes At Band I've got rocks slash 14.

That is the numbers one and four. You do not have to spell them out just the number 14. So that about covers it. I think for the financial side of things, which is a huge topic, and we could go into much more detail. But I think you get the point by now. We're talking about having somebody who's got great attention to detail but isn't afraid to have a bit of confrontation. Handle these things when it comes to music, and this is probably something that bands order. They dio a lot of bands.

Each member writes the parts for their own instrument, but there are other ways to delegate or divide the duties when it comes to music. So, Matt, do you want to talk about that? A little. Sure, there's a lot of different ways that you can write music. I think there's been a lot of artists who are really experimenting with different ways. I think a big shift in how things were done started with under oath in some of the more underground scenes when they started using ipads to make synth noises, which they recorded on.

I can't remember which album I want to say it. Waas lost in the sound of Separation Perhaps, but I don't quote me on that. But they basically took a tool, and they were able to change the way things were done up until that point. Now you guys might get together as a group and you might jam, and you might write songs. You might have one person in your band who cranks out material left and right. You might have a couple people in your band who have you know, that riel creative gene.

Each case is definitely gonna look different, and it's going to have to cater specifically to your band. However, the way that this can look in a couple different situations. I'll use myself as an example for a live in Barcelona. I do a majority of the song writing now. That's just the initial song writing process. I write songs. I basically get them until they're 90% complete. And then I take them to my band mates and they basically deconstruct a majority of what I've done. They take out the parts they don't like the parts.

They don't feel sound like a live in Barcelona. The parts that they feel maybe just don't sound well enough produced. And then they incorporate their opinions. And then, over a long period of time, kind of going back and forth on these songs, we eventually create a product that fully encompasses all of our creative opinions. For me, I write drum parts, but I'm not a drummer. And so I might write a drum part that in my mind sounds good but is physically impossible to play. It's where we need these symbiotic relationships with our band mates that it takes a long time to develop because sometimes you know, maybe the bassist is really good, but is not the best rhythm player in your band, and when you go to the studio, you should have the best rhythm player be playing all of your rhythm sometimes thes for lack of a better term highs that you have in the music industry.

Things like playing shows things like going to the studio. They might not actually manifest exactly how you think that they dio when we go to the studio. Jesse tracks every single rhythm instrument because he is the tightest rhythm guitarist that we have. He doesn't play bass, but he tracks all the base. There are times when guitarists do vocal parts. There's times when bassists do vocal parts. It's always going to look different, depending on what is best for your brand. Maybe the vocalist is the best vocalist in your band, but you wanna have a different tone for your harmonies.

So even though you're vocalist wrote the lyrics and the melody, you might want your basis or your drummer to sing the harmonies just toe add a little bit of freshness to the sound. What you really need to do is determine what's going to be important for your brand and do what kind of I was talking about earlier and putting your aces in their places now for me, I can crank out music quickly, but it takes a long time for us to refine that music. And the refining process is really where everybody's creative input really comes out.

And then we finally, over a long period of time, get to a product where we're like, Yes, this is a relevant sound. This sounds like a live in Barcelona. Everybody has contributed. Everybody loves this song. And, of course, like with all music, some people are gonna love certain songs more than others. And that's just the natural way things go. The point is, is like for me, my job is writing music now. I also have some other jobs along the way, and that doesn't mean that once the music writing is done, I'm done for the next year, you know, until we have to write our next album.

It then means that I can move on to my next task, which all of us have our own jobs. And so they all look differently, you know, for everyone. Colton manages all of our social media, and that's his job, and actually that's not even true Colton manages. I think, too, of our social media's, Cameron manages one of our social media's. Jesse is our liaison between our label. Our management are publicist are booking agency. He does all of the hard conversations. He's the one that sends the emails.

All of his tax are business oriented versus all of my tasks are music oriented. And I also have quite a few tasks when we actually hit the road as well. In order for US toe split responsibilities, make sure we're getting to the next city on time, making sure everybody's awake when they need to be awake or loading in when they need to be loading in. There is day to day responsibilities, and there's big picture responsibilities. And so you, as a business need to sit down and make a game plan.

You need toe, isolate what each and every one of your jobs are, and then you need to assign those tasks. So for music, it can look a ton of different ways. But the best thing I would recommend is find out. I mean, I'm pretty sure you all know who the most creative person in your band is or who you would call the best musician in your band and nurture them to write more music. It doesn't mean that you have Thio 100%. Take the music that they produce, and that is your sound.

It just means that that's a great place to start. You want to nurture the creative genes in the people who are creating music. You want to nurture the social jeans and the people that are working your social media. You want to nurture the business jeans and the people that are dealing with your contract. The more aces that you have in their places, the further you're going to get 100%. And I'm glad that you mentioned the marketing and social media aspect to because that's really something. I've seen so many bands posting on social media, and this includes, like bands with over a million people following them on Facebook with just horrible spelling and grammar room.

Like who approved that post Thistle is an established band who is on the radio, done multiple international sold out tours and their social media is a joke and I think that's part of probably older bands, not realizing how social media reflects their image and their management team, not reining them in on how to use it appropriately. But I think it also is a very good example that smaller bands D. I Y bands who are just up and coming really should watch out for what they're doing. And I think most young bands know that, which is very good.

Typically, when I see that it's on Lee what they would call in some circles, the dinosaur acts who have those social media issues. So just to wrap up that section, I think it's incredibly important for bands to be self aware of the image they are portraying on their social media and in their marketing, and that's why it's important to put the aces in their places. As you would say, Matt or many other people would also say, since, uh, that is a common term for a reason, it's because it's true.

You have to have people where they are at their best. We've got one more example of how you can divide up the duties of you and your band mates, and that is on the road. Some of the major things that we have outlined here are logistics, a day to day or road manager and driving, which all three of those I think are pretty simple. But we just want to touch on them quickly anyway. So people get in idea of what kind of person might be a good fit for those roles.

Take it away, Matt. I'm going to start with a big one that I feel a lot of people overlook and that is driving. It's such a huge, huge risk every time that you go out on the road between winter tours, icy roads, heavy trailers, maybe loaded incorrectly, people cutting you off, not paying attention, drivers texting. There are about a million and five things that can go wrong when you're traveling on the road, and that's why it's very important to have a quality driver driving. This can be split up between as many people as you want, as long as those are people who are going to value the safety and well being of everybody in your van up front, you want somebody who is paying attention.

You want somebody who notices the signs on the side of the road who isn't having to send a bunch of emails Ah, lot of the time, your driver is not going to be your liaison or whoever is sending off emails. Thio get advances for shows or talking with promoters. It's gonna be somebody who generally wakes up earlier than everybody else. And they're tired of sitting in whatever walmart parking lot you slept in the night before and they're gonna go. I'm gonna go get in the front seat.

I'm gonna start driving to our next show. Now, one person in your band should not do all the driving because that person is going to get so fed up with driving so quickly that they're probably gonna end up snapping and taking it out on you because that's the very nature of being on the red. We all know that living in close proximity with close friends, no matter how close, is still hard. And so when you're on the road for a long period of time, if you're not switching up these responsibilities on the regular, then people might not be getting the amount of rest that they need, which is already a very sparse and precious commodity.

It's much easier to get sick on the road. And so If everybody's not resting, then your whole tour is going to deteriorate quickly. Sometimes this takes the form of a drummer waking up on driving and then allowing the singer to sleep in, because if the singer sounds bad, then everybody sounds bad. But maybe that drummer is exhausted and you guys don't want to die. So it's a good idea to make sure you keep open communication to know how long the next leg of your drive is. You know, on the East Coast is not too much to worry because you're driving hour and a half two hours for the majority.

I think the longest drive I've ever done legitimately on the East Coast was like four hours in between shows, and that's pretty far for the East Coast. But once you get to the Midwest, I think one year on warp tour one of the drives was from Portland, Oregon, to ST Louis, Missouri. Now, for all of you that air strong with geography, you already feel my pain. For those of you who aren't, that's a two day drive. Having one person do that is both going to kill the morale of your band, but also potentially kill yourselves because one person doing all the driving is dangerous.

So it's very important toe. Determine how far you're gonna drive in a certain day. If it's a two day drive, then Thio. Make sure you're splitting it up regularly and giving out those, you know, Maybe it's an eight hour drive. Your there's four of you in the band. Everybody gets two hours, and it's much more doable for everybody to do two hours. And then everybody ends up in a much better mood than one person to do. Six hours and another person toe do the last two hours because they've been sitting in the driver's seat so long that their back is killing them, and then they have to go play a show that night as well.

So it's, ah, important thing to just kind of keep open communication with your bandmates, divvy up the driving responsibility, make sure everybody knows how much gas you have. I couldn't tell you how many times we have driven out of the city and you know where we switched drivers, and then the next driver didn't look at the gas gauge and we start to get out of town and we realized, Oh, shoot, we didn't get fuel. It's more than just a separation of jobs and delegation of responsibility. It's more about communication and making sure that everybody's okay.

Some days you might split up all of your jobs. Everybody has an hour and a half drive, but you're guitarist is feeling sick. It's probably better to let them rest and everybody to take a two hour shift instead and maybe the next day. Then you're guitarist is feeling better and he'll drive a little bit more. But the point is, you want to adapt to the situation. You want to figure out exactly what's going to be the best situation for your band and then make sure that one person isn't doing all of your driving because that just increases your chances of death.

Yeah, driving is such a big thing for touring. I mean, that's just that comes with the territory, and it's really key to have somebody who takes safety seriously. There was a tour where I was on the road and we had to drivers who were hired to drive and do merch because it was co headlining, and I was the first driver. I always did the first five hours or so, and then the other driver would take over and he would text as we're driving down the interstate in this giant 15 passenger E 3 50.

And I'm like, Dude, what are you doing? There are four other people in this fan, and it is literally our job to get them safely from point A to Point B. Not only that, but I don't want to die either. You can't be doing this so things like that people who don't take safety seriously. To me, that's insane. If you want to be an adrenaline junkie, that's fine. But texting while driving is not an adrenaline junkie thing, because that will kill other people to it Could be people in other cars.

It could be people on the sidewalk like it just upsets me to drive home the point about warp tour that you were making. Yeah, I remember that drive from ST Louis to ST Louis from Portland. It was awful. Oh, yeah, it was. And it was a three night drive for us. At least we always had eight hours at a hotel during the day and then overnight drives, at least on our end of things, and we always had one bus driver all summer. There's well, actually, we had multiple bus drivers, but that's another story.

But there was one bus driver who lasted after the first like week. He was there the rest of the tour, but they literally hired ah, backup driver because those overnight drives were like 16 hours, I think. And so they would each do eight hours, split up however they wanted and then get eight hours of sleep in a hotel, do another 16 hours the next night, eight hours each, sleep in a hotel and then do another 16, or maybe slightly less than a third night to get us to the venue.

In the end, you can't have somebody do a long drive like that by themselves. So if even the bus company who has a professional driver is hiring someone else to come in, that just shows you that your band should be driving much less than that. Because you are not professional drivers. You are in a band who is driving yourselves from point A to point B, absolutely, but to move things on the next big duty on tour is having someone who handles the day to day tasks. They're not a tour manager.

I might call them a road manager or a day to day manager, and basically they just run the schedule for the day. So they're making sure that everybody is in the right place at the right time. That you're leaving wherever you are to get to your destination on time, which in the music business typically means early because if you're on time, you're late. And if you're late, you're fired. You can't really fire an entire band if you're the show promoter, but you can, you know, kick him off the show bill.

If they're not the headliner. Stuff like that does happen. If you're late and you miss your slot. Too bad you're not playing tonight. So the day to day manager has a lot of responsibility to make sure that the tour goes as planned. Obviously, things come up, you get flat tires, you run out of gas. Hopefully not if people are paying attention communicating, but stuff happens. It's the day to day manager's job to make sure that any kind of stuff like this is anticipated. because it's going toe happen.

One year on work tour. Our bus blew up, thankfully, like the bus was okay, but the motor literally blew up and we had to get off the bus onto a different bus. It was an off day, so it didn't matter. But stuff like that does happen. Didn't that new bus not have, like, air conditioning, either? The air conditioning broke because we were going thio Arizona. Yeah, I was like, I remember that. Yeah, thankfully, like the bus company that our bus was rented from was based in Arizona.

So they give us a loner bus for the show day the next day. Otherwise we would have had nowhere to go cool off in, like, 115 120 degree heat. We actually had three people go to the MedTech, maybe even more with heat stroke. And one person went to the hospital and went home so I can understand why the air conditioner broke down because it just literally could not handle the heat to cool down the bus. But it was also a nightmare to not have our hotel rooms yet and be sitting on the bus, not knowing what to Dio with no air conditioning because it was like a tin can being heated on a fire anyway, Not going to distract you more with crazy, warped tour stories.

But that was a mess. And later that same tour, we got kicked off the bus to other times. One time there was a flat tire and thankfully, we're already at the venue. So we just had toe get all our stuff and go because they had to go get a new tire on the bus. And I guess you can't replace a bus tire on site. You have to go take it somewhere. Yeah, stuff like that happens. It's a pain. And when it happens on the road, you're either going to be late.

Or if you have a good day to day manager who planned a buffer in your schedule, you might not be late. It all depends on what happens. But if you leave an hour early to account for any unexpected stops 90% of the time, that's gonna be enough time to make sure you get there on time. The other 10% of the time, it's gonna be something that you're gonna be canceling the show and maybe a couple more shows because your van won't move. That's just something. You can't be at the venue two days in advance, just in case, but at least in our or two is advisable.

Plus, that way, if you're early, you go find some food, take care of errands. You got to run anything like that. But big deal if you're gonna be, Ah, a little later than you expected. You're still gonna be on time even though you don't get to do your errands. Yeah. Just to add on that since everybody already knows by this point that I really like good quality quotes. Another quote for you is planned for the worst and hope for the best. If your plan for the worst, then all of these things naturally happened.

And if you hope for the best, you know, then you're not a nihilists angry person who's constantly saying we're gonna get a flat tire. We're gonna overheat. We're gonna do this. And it's funny that you've mentioned a couple different things that have happened to you because all of those things have happened to me as well on totally different tours in totally different types of vehicles in totally different cities, and so these are very, very riel things that you have to think about. We went on a winter tour one time where we changed one of our wheel bearings three times the same wheel bearing because we had a warped Roeder.

And so it was wearing weird on one of our wheels, and that caused us to have to go through three of the same part, a part that you really don't have to replace. Like for years and years and years. We went through three in the matter of like, two months, which also helped us realize you know what was actually wrong with our vehicle. But you may be sitting there and planning and saying thes things. They're all gonna go great. In all actuality, you always need to be prepared for something bad to happen, and I recommend a small cash emergency fund in a bank account for when things like that do happen.

So at one time we were driving through Idaho Falls and something happened with our wheel, and it sheared our lug nuts off of one of our tires. And then we were like, Well, we lost a lug, maybe and looked up on auto parts store. Or maybe it was a mechanic that we looked up and it was like a mile away. And so we're like, Well, let's try to drive to that mechanic. And in that one mile we sheared off tomb or of our lug nuts, And so just little things that you don't think about.

They always come up, so it's really good idea. Have a little bit of extra cash sitting in an account that you don't touch. That's used just for emergencies. Yeah, that's such a great point. And first of all, you're absolutely right that these things are common. And essentially, it's Murphy's law. You know they're on Lee gonna happen when you're already late, which is unfortunate. But that's why it's so important to plan that one hour buffer in. Because then, thanks to Murphy's law, it's just less likely that something is going to go wrong.

E Think what you're saying about having a separate account is great. You could also use wine AB. You need a budget, which is a great budgeting tool. It's like $80 a year something. It's really inexpensive for the benefits it provides, and it basically lets you look at all of your bank accounts and delegate that money. So we're talking about roles and responsibilities for your band mates. But we can also talk about roles and responsibilities for the money that's sitting in your account. I've been using wine app for almost three months now for both myself and for my business, and it's amazing, like I am so much less stressed about money and finance than I was before I started using it, and I'm in a much better financial position.

I highly recommend it, even if you don't use it for yourself, use it for your band. And that way you whoever the finance person in your band is can go through it and use it for that. But you could literally connect and have is many budgets as you want. So if you do want to use it for yourself is, well, you can absolutely do that. Just be aware that people are going to see your your stuff like there's only one sign in either you're the only person who does the budgets for the band, or if somebody else's logging in, they will see your finances, too, so that's the one heads up about that.

But it is a great app, and I highly recommend it. We're going to give you just one more example about tour duties that you can delegate or split up two different band members, and this last one is logistics, which is something that is sometimes overlooked or not even considered as a thing. But it's really important. And so I just talked your ears off with day to day stuff and budgeting software. Nerd alert. But Matt, why don't you take it away and let us know about logistics? Alright?

And logistics is basically a fancy word for saying all of the things that are not music related. You know, you're a musician, and so you think about things like oh, having guitars and making sure that, you know, we get to the venue on time and making sure we get paid. Those were all very major parts of your day to day business. Things like logistics. It's gonna be more like, Oh no, my in ear monitors broke. Now it's not vital for me to have those for this show, but if I don't go get them that might affect my performance.

And so okay, we got to get over to a guitar center. Or maybe we have to call our guitar center rep and make sure that they even have the part that we need in a certain place. Maybe it's your responsibility to book hotels for your driver if you're hiring a driver for a tour, Sometimes people don't think about things like food. It's a simple thing, but it's like, Hey, what are we gonna eat today? When I know for us? Since we like to try to cut as many cost, that is possible.

We do simple little things, like bringing a Coleman Grill with us, and we go to the grocery store and we buy what we're gonna make and then we make it. And then we eat in the parking lot and then we leave. And so, ah, lot of the time your day to day manager is going to be busy with things like talking with publicists or trying to get advances on this show or one of the many different day to day, you know, trying to find points of interest.

One thing we didn't mention earlier was a day sheet. And as you get on larger tours, good tour managers will have what's called a day sheet where it's giving you a list of everything you need. Everything about the venue. If the promoter is good, you'll know where you're parking. You'll know the WiFi password of the venue. You'll know if there's catering or not. You'll know how much money you're supposed to get paid. You'll know how you are going to get paid. If it's gonna be a wire transfer, a check or cash.

These are all on your daesh. Eat a lot of the time. A good tour manager will also incorporate points of interest because a lot of time you get to a city and the life of a musician is Hurry up and wait and like you were mentioning earlier, James, if you get there, if you have a good tour manager and you arrive 1 to 2 hours early, well, maybe you don't wanna go eat chipotle. Maybe you wanna go try a local spot, or maybe you want to go to a nearby pub.

Or maybe you want to go skydiving. A good tour manager will have lists of these things on your day sheet, and that's going to be the responsibility of your day to day manager. However, somebody that's doing a little bit more of the logistical stuff might sit there and go, Oh, yeah, we also need to make sure we're doing X, y and Z. And so you wanna make sure that whoever is doing your day to day stuff, your logistical person can kind of catch the stuff that falls through the cracks, so to speak.

Whoever is doing your day to day is going to be having a lot more of a busy day. And so, with logistics, if you're like Oh yeah, guys, by the way, Pro tools failed yesterday. And so we have to go get this new piece of gear or whatever, and it might be your responsibility to figure out where you're going to get that gear or if you need to order more strings or, you know, it's a lot of a lot of things to remember. And so it's easy for a small little things like that to fall through the cracks when you're not paying attention.

And so having somebody that's like, Hey, I need to contact my sponsors or my I need to talk Thio this rep from this company. You know, for us we're in Ernie Ball artist. So you know, we get all of our strings through any ball. If we get close to the point where it's like, Hey, we're almost out of strings or I have five packs of strings left and I have 12 shows left to play. And if you're quality artist, you should be changing your strings. Every single show.

Five pairs of strings are not going to get you through 12 shows. You need to be that person. That is like, Hey, guys, we gotta order more drumsticks. We gotta order more guitar strings. We gotta order more picks. We have to make sure that all of our cables air working. We have to make sure that my in ears air working, we have to make sure that pro Tools isn't getting a CPU overload. And if it is getting a CPU overload, we need to figure out which hard drive that we can use that we can dump a whole bunch of stuff that's on our hard drive on so that it will free of some CPU or it can take the form of, Ah, whole bunch of different things, and it's going to be specifically catered towards what you is a band or using.

If you use an A B y pedal, you wanna make sure that those work. If you have active pickups in your guitar, you wanna make sure you have nine volt batteries. So these air, all little tiny things that it's really easy to overlook. And you need somebody that has a good attention to detail in orderto clean up the mess, so to speak, because a lot of the times a guitarist will switch the guitar strings and they didn't count how many are left in the box, which is totally fine, totally regular, because they see, Oh, look, I have a half a box left.

But what they don't think about the fact is, is they have two weeks more of touring, and that's not going to get them through. It's a management responsibility, but at the same time it's more of behind the scenes, much less praise, much less reward. But it's preventing you from being embarrassed, really. I mean, when you stand up on stage and you break a guitar. I mean, I've been to shows where a local band breaks a string and then has to sit there and say, Does anybody have a guitar tonight?

You know, it's like, Why didn't you bring an extra pair of strings or back up guitar? I'm sure the strings on your guitar works just fine beforehand. But if you're not actively thinking about these things, then really it gets to the point where you're like, Well, we played two songs. Have a good night because thes touring artists you know who are playing $5000 guitars, $2000 guitars, $1000 guitars they're not going to let you borrow their instruments. Musicians air unanimously, pretty stingy with their instruments. And that's to be expected as they are their livelihood.

So you're logistical Person is gonna kind of make sure that you're avoiding silly mistakes at all times. Yeah, and I got curious as to what the actual definition of logistics is because we're talking about this as it applies to a band, and it's exactly what you were talking about. I'm impressed with our capability. Thio use the term correctly because it is very vague. Google says logistics is the detailed coordination of a complex operation involving many people, facilities or supplies. Everything you said Matt falls directly into that because I was thinking of the logistics for touring.

Bands were probably misusing the word, just like as an industry. But no, it's exactly what it sounds like. So, yeah, logistics is just making sure that everything runs smoothly. That's the elevator pitch of logistics. Make sure everything runs smoothly or attempt to make everything runs smoothly. And I think that about does it for what we're going to talk about as faras things you can divide up amongst your members. Obviously, that's not an exhaustive list, and there are many other things you can divide up. And with each of those topics, we talked a little bit about what kind of traits personality wise might be good for each of those roles.

One last thing I think we should touch on is how it's decided, who gets what roles, because even if somebody has a great personality for a certain job, they might not be willing to do that. So, Matt, how would you suggest people go about deciding as a group who takes on what responsibilities. I think it's fairly simple. You look at what people are already doing in their regular lives. Obviously, I play in a band of five people. We all write music were all musicians, but I have a different writing process than everybody, and I also have the tools to facilitate writing a lot of music.

And so it's very easy for me to do that. Jesse is naturally business oriented. He also is more confrontational than the rest of us, so he kind of naturally fit into that role. Colton is incredibly talented at social engagement. When Colton first joined the band, we saw this on his personal social media's where people would comment and he would comment back and have just great conversations with each and every person that was on there. You basically kind of have toe look for specific traits that people have, what I would call intangibles, things that you don't necessarily teach.

I enjoy doing a podcast because I like talking. So the same thing kind of goes with these individual tasks that you're gonna have in your group and where, like yeah, maybe that person doesn't necessarily like doing that, but again, it's about putting aces in their places. And if somebody is a little bit, you know, hesitant about trying toe, basically step up and take that role, then maybe you step in and you work on it with them. The only thing that people are really scared of is not having a plan.

You know, when everything goes according to plan, it's wonderful. When things don't go according to plan, it's rough. Maybe it takes a little bit of one on one time, or maybe everybody in your band collectively working on things together until you realize who really gets it. Nobody likes doing anything alone. And so doing things together collectively, really identifying your goals and working towards that. Then you're gonna naturally find people that step into those leadership positions in each and every one of your categories. So my answer is, if you don't like what you're doing, just start doing it, and before you know it, you'll be halfway through.

That wraps up another episode of the podcast. Thank you so much for listening. We really appreciate it. It means a lot to us to see this community of listeners grow, and we love to see all the discussion in our Facebook group for this episode, we actually have a specific question for you. If you would be so kind, Please go to our Facebook group. If you're not already a member, you confined it just by putting Bandhive dot rocks slash Group into your Web browser, and that will take you directly to the Facebook group.

The question is, how do you divide the roles and responsibilities in your band, including? How do you decide who gets which roles and just in general, who does each role and you don't have to name specific names. But you could say, you know, the bass player does social media and booking, and the guitarist does. Finance and tour management and that kind of stuff were just curious to see how you split things up in your band. So that's over at the Band High Facebook group. And like I said, if you're not learning member, just head on over to Band.

I've dot rocks slash group to be automatically redirected to the group again. Thank you so much for listening. It's awesome that you do. We hope you have an awesome week. We'll be back next Tuesday at 6 a.m. As always for an episode about nurturing relationships. So keep an ear out then and in the meantime, keep rocking.