How do you avoid unnecessary touring challenges?
We’ve all heard touring horror stories. As an agent, I’ve experienced my share with my acts. You must have had your share of challenges over the years as well.
You know the kind I’m talking about. There are the travel mishaps like luggage, including instruments not arriving with you on your flight. Or how about the broken instrument discovery after a long flight, always a wonderful surprise. Then there is the cancelled flight or the traffic jam. Occasionally there might be the odd food poisoning right before your show or catching the flu on the plane on the way to the show. How about the time you forgot your passport on the way to your first tour in Europe or the OMG my VISA never arrived in time for that festival in the states.
There are group personnel challenges, technical challenges at the venue or staff clashes with venue personnel. Housing can sometimes present its own problems whether you stay with friends, book rooms at hotels or are put up by kind folks from the host organization. As grandma used to say, “There’s always something.”
It’s not about how daunting the challenges you might encounter are, it is about how you plan ahead to eliminate as many as possible so when you are faced with something completely out of your control, you are able to be clear-headed about how to deal with it.
That’s why Advancing every gig, every tour, is so important. Getting ahead of the problems that you can control allows you more mental space to deal with the uncontrollable situations when they occur.
Advancing each tour date in a timely manner puts you in control of every aspect of your gig. Connecting with the venue box office, technical crew, publicity people and travel arrangements gives you peace of mind as well as an opportunity to take evasive action to correct something gone awry. Multiple check-ins with each gig’s contacts keeps you informed on all fronts of your gig’s progress right up to play date. If media didn’t get done and you check in 4 weeks out, you can still do something about it. When you check with the tech crew and realize they never got your tech rider, you can get one to them with time to spare so they can still rent that piece of equipment you do not carry with you.
I think advancing your tour dates needs to be part of your tour strategy in your tour calendar so you may be more in control as well as an effective professional when relating to your venue presenters. Take care of the avoidable problems ahead of time so you can deal with the unavoidable ones more professionally.
Now, have you run into some juicy touring horror stories you would like to share? I know we all would be thrilled to hear about them and how you dealt with them. You would be doing us a great service as well as providing some entertaining moments when we can say, ” I can’t believe that happened,” or “I had the same exact thing happen to me.”
Leave me a comment below.
I can’t wait to hear about your success.
Thanks to Carol Ehrlich for this week’s Biz Booster Graphic Image. Check out her work at v360.c0m
Thanks to the band Curfew for the Biz Booster Theme Music, “Future Dance.”
And for more career boosting tips, articles, books, resources, tele-seminars, online courses and retreats, visit me at Performingbiz.com
I’m Jeri Goldstein, Thanks for listening.
And coming soon: Get Great Gigs Podcast. Check GetGreatGigs.com for updates and episodes
