Music touring: what’s life on the road actually like?
A professional musicians insight into the realities of tour…
Having worked as a songwriter/recording artist/touring musician for over 15 years now, I often find that there is so much that goes into lifestyle and routine of a musician than most people realise…
It takes a great deal of hard work and sacrifice to pursue a dream musical career, and live events often forms a huge portion of an artists income.
Whilst there may be many stories of rock and roll legends partying all hours of the night, or glamorous pop stars living the high life — the daily grind of a touring musician is not often all that it seems, so I thought I’d break down what ‘life on the road’ is actually like…
When thinking of musicians it’s important to remember one thing — that no two are the same. They come in all kinds of different shapes and sizes, so what may work for one may not work for another. Especially when it comes to touring…
For example, a 60 piece orchestra would likely need a few buses and trucks to go on tour, to carry all the players and their instruments — whereas a solo singer who plays with just one acoustic guitar may only need to travel around in just one car.
Typically — the bigger the artist gets, the larger their touring requirements become. For example: Ed Sheeran, also an acoustic solo act, had a fleet of 18 trucks and 50 touring crew members for the stadium run of his 2018 Divide tour.
Some musicians choose (or can only afford to) to sleep in vans/buses, whilst some may opt for hotels each night.
No matter how big or small, it takes months of preparation, a lot of money and hard work to put together a tour — requiring a whole team of people aside from the artist themselves.
Step 1: Booking a tour
First up on the to-do list is booking the tour! This usually requires the help of an Event Promoter. “But what does an event promoter actually do?” I hear you ask…well, they’re mainly responsible for:
- Booking the venues & local support acts
- Printing the tickets & posters
- Liaising between the artist and venue to ensure everybody’s requirements are met
How do you pick the venues?
Rather luckily our world is blessed with many, many, many incredible live event venues - ranging in size, shape and technical capabilities.
When choosing venues, it’s important to identify exactly what the desired aim of the tour is. Is it to showcase their recently released album, or is it to raise funds for the next?
Essentially - will the artist splashing out on a big stage, set and lights or do costs need to be kept fairly low in order to make as much profit for future projects? Do you need to stick to the cities you know the artist sells well in, or can you afford to add some wild card locations to the run?
For a lot of music fans, the venue itself is a huge part of the gig going process. Often music venues tend to, either naturally or by design, become popular for just one or two genres of music.
For example, London’s famous Ronnie Scott’s caters largely for jazz music, whilst Camden Town’s Underworld is extremely popular amongst the alt rock/metal scene, also in the UK’s capital.
How is a line up decided?
So smaller tours usually only have one or two acts play the whole tour, with an additional support act or two on each show - local to the city they’re playing that night.
This can often really help up and coming headline acts to sell their tours, especially in cities not regularly played by the touring bands. Local artists are usually carefully picked to strengthen advance promotion and ticket sales.
Bigger tours, however, will usually have several touring acts — with no local supports. Because of this, larger artists also often use a Booking Agent, whose job it is to focus on booking, contracting and organising the support acts.
In this instance, the support acts aren’t usually needed for promotion/ticket sales but instead aim to gain exposure from the headlining acts existing fan base.
Sometimes the support acts will ‘buy on’ to the tour. This obviously puts the artist at a loss going into the tour, so once embarked artists often the merchandise sold each show to cover the expenses along the way.
Whilst many artists may not end up making the full buy on fee back immediately, the exposure gained can be of tremendous value in growing their fan base for future releases/tours.
It’s also quite common for breakthrough acts who have recently signed to a new management/record deals — or are on the cusp of doing so — to be strategically placed on tours of more established, similar sounding artists.
This is usually done booking agent — in collaboration with the management/label — using their industry connections. In this case, the booking agent will work to a fee to seek upcoming tour opportunities and negotiate the best deals on behalf of the act they represent.
It’s important to remember that the live music events all around the world form an industry worth billions. The Guardian newspaper reported that in 2018 the British live music industry alone was valued at a whooping 1.1 billion pounds.
With so much money at stake, it’s crucial to start planning well in advance of the tour to ensure all the nuts and bolts are tightened beforehand. Which leads us onto…
Step 2: Preparing for tour
The artist usually then spends quite a hefty period of time preparing for the tour in rehearsals, requiring a lot of early mornings and late nights in a studio somewhere.
This time gives the artists the chance to put their set list together and really work on developing their live show into an enjoyable and memorable experience for their audience. It also gives any touring crew the opportunity to learn the show, design their set up and practice along with the band.
For many on the rise musicians, it’s essential to work a part time job on the side of music in order to fund their musical endeavours, such as equipment, recording, graphic designs, merchandising or tour costs.
A lot of musicians often find themselves stuck in a catch between needing to work a “normal” job to fund the band whilst also needing to dedicate a lot of time into the band - including frequent trips away for recording/touring etc - which, obviously, most employers obviously do not favour.
Sure they may have the potential to earn lots of money from music one day - but there’s a huge investment of of time, practice and real world education needed before this can happen.
When I mentioned sacrifice before, often aspiring talented people do have to make massive sacrifices to their work/social lives in order to chase their life goals.
Merchandising is a huge part of making money on tour, and so it’s essential that all merchandise is bought well in advance to ensure it’s all ready to go. Just like a shop, a cash float is also needed along with adequate storage/keeping of all physical cash and stock.
All of this ends up coming at the cost of the artist. In some instances, this may be covered by a record label/associated company…usually always, however, this will have to be paid back out of the artists earnings.
The financial reality of tour is that it costs a lot and can be very challenging for younger/up and coming artists. But for many musicians, myself included, once you get up on stage and ‘do your thing’, it suddenly all becomes worth while…
Step 3: Hitting the road…
Let’s face it, musicians don’t tend to be known for living the healthiest of lifestyles — in part, most likely, due to their ever changing surroundings and lack of consistency.
The reality is that 8/10 of your time on tour is spent driving somewhere or waiting around in a venue until it’s time to soundcheck/play. Therefore it’s always a very wise idea to put some pre-planning into entertainment for whilst stuck in the van, bus or backstage.
Over the years I’ve come across an awful lot of touring games — for example ‘service station roulette’ — where you pick your top 3 motorway stop shops (for me in the UK, it’s got to be: Burger King, Starbucks & KFC). If when you arrive at a service station it has one of your top 3, you win a point.
There are no prizes — it’s more to keep you some what sane, I guess! Touring can often become a bit of a blur, you see, with tours usually running to tight schedules. It’s very rare that you get any time to actually explore wherever you are playing before you have to leave to travel somewhere else.
That being said, there’s something truly amazing about waking up to new accents, sights and surroundings each day. Touring really does allow you to meet all kinds of people and visit, even if only briefly, all kinds of places…
Step 4: Setting up the show…
A great performance isn’t just about having awesome music — it’s about how well the artist plays that music, how they interact with the audience during and in-between songs and also heavily reliant on a few other key players…
The show is never possible without a sound engineer. Usually found at the back of a venue behind a big old desk, they play an absolutely crucial role in making the show a reality (and of course, sounding good!). You’ll often find a few sound engineers for bigger shows — some focusing on the front of house sound (what the audience hears) and some on the monitor mix (what the musicians hear).
Other key players include: lighting operator, security, box office staff, production teams, venue managers, cloakroom staff and bar staff. Every single piece of the collaborative jigsaw is essential in creating a safe, smooth running and successful show!
The time before the show is also often spent doing press interviews, any meet and greet type events or
Step 5: Show time!
There is truly something immensely spectacular about performing music in front of a live audience. A powerful high that takes control of your each and every bone…
…the adrenaline and rhythm run through your veins, leaving you with a satisfyingly electric feeling!
For any touring musician, their stage time is normally best moment of each and every day. It’s what makes it all worth while.
It also happens to be where the most important people of all come into the picture - the fans! Without an audience, the show would simply not be possible. All of the jobs mentioned above just could not happen. Hats off to you, music fans!
Once the show’s over, it’s time to pack the van back up and head to the next location…often quite a tiring and long winded process after a day of travelling, engaging and performing.
To conclude
There are many pros and cons to touring. It definitely isn’t, for sure, an easy thing to pull of successfully.
One good thing about social media is that it allows music artists to take us all backstage, giving us a glimpse of what it’s like behind the scenes.
But what you likely won’t see, are the hours spent bored, shattered or worrying about money/accommodation. The hours of heavy lifting and hard graft throughout each day.
For most musicians, it seems touring is a little like marmite. They either love it, or hate it. I suppose that’s why you often find some artists devote most of their time to writing/recording/releasing in the studio, whilst others prefer to tour relentlessly.
For me, well…15 years later and I’m still hooked.
Thanks for reading, I hope I’ve been able to share with you a little about life on the road as a musician…
