Why It Sucks To Tour in the West US

[Outcast]

Everytime we book a tour and we don’t hit the west coast, fans from California are almost always the first to verbalize their discontent. “WHY THE *$#@ ARE YOU SKIPPING CALI?” Not too long after, we hear from Oregon, Washington, and Arizona. Our band is actually FROM Arizona. And we STILL don’t play their nearly as often as we do the Midwest, Texas, and the East Coast.

I think it’s time that someone leveled with you. There’s no easy way to say this, so I’m just going to say it:

TOURING THE WESTERN UNITED STATES SUCKS.

Now, it’s not you guys personally. I love the west coast. I love Colorado and the Rockies. Montana and northern Idaho are absolutely beautiful. Portland, OR is one of my favorite cities in the country, and California obviously is awesome because it’s fucking California.

But touring the west coast is HARD. It’s a financial nightmare. Every touring band knows this, I’m just the first to come out and say it. If you break even touring the west, you’re doing very well for yourself. Here’s why.

NOT ENOUGH CITIES TO PLAY.

Take a look at the US at night:



You see those white blobs? Those are cities and communities. You see all that black? That’s NOTHING. Lots and lots of NOTHING.


More people live in Oklahoma City than the entire state of Wyoming.

You can’t play a gig at nothing. For some reason, to play a show you have to go where there’s a population. Part of an effective tour is booking enough shows to make it profitable. With less options, the odds of not getting a day filled goes up greatly. So you can be left with holes in your tour routing, which means you are losing money on that day off.

I remember one particularly stressful tour when we were in Idaho. I had routed the tour, we were losing money, and a bandmate got in my face about it. “Why the hell did you route us with such long drives on this tour! We’re losing our asses
out here!”

My rebuttal was to pull out the atlas, point at the emptiness on the map around us and say, “BECAUSE THERE’S NOWHERE TO PLAY AROUND HERE!!!”

LONG DRIVES

Because there’s a lot of nothing, this translates to long drives. Long drives are bad because you waste a lot of money on gas, you lose sleep (you have to be at the venue at 5pm, and you had a 10 hour drive that day), and being cooped up in a vehicle that long really wears on your sanity.

The drive between Portland, OR and Sacramento, CA is what I like to call the <b>Drive Of Death</b>. The only way to mitigate the suck of the Drive of Death is to book Eugene AND either Redding or Chico, CA. Otherwise, you’ve got a long ass drive on your hands.

CRITICAL STOPS

In addition to the long drives, there are certain cities that are like an oasis in a desert. But if you don’t have any luck booking these cities, your long drive becomes a longer drive.



If you don’t get Salt Lake City booked, you’re FUCKED. If you are going from LA to El Paso, and you can’t book Phoenix or Tucson, you’re FUCKED.

But luck will not be on your side booking these cities. Since these cities MUST be played or face the drive from hell, it means you are COMPETING AGAINST EVERY OTHER BAND that also needs that gig to avoid the drive from hell. Think of it like a game of musical chairs, except that you only have 2 chairs and there and a few dozen people trying to sit on them.

TOO MANY MOUNTAINS

For some reason, you tend to use more gas when you are climbing 1000 feet in elevation. If you are doing the west, sooner or later you are going to have to cross the Rockies. Engine overheating, wearing down breaks going downhill, and SNOW IN THE MIDDLE OF JUNE are some of the fun challenges of touring through the mountains.

CALIFORNIA SOUL CRUSHING, PART 1: GAS PRICES

Gas prices in California are brutal. Ya know, because you weren’t already paying enough in gas driving long stretches across mountains. The cost of living in California is higher, and the gas itself is more expensive due to cleaner fuel standards.

CALIFORNIA SOUL CRUSHING, PART 2: DIFFICULT BOOKING

The highest concentration of cities on the west coast that would give you a fighting chance to book enough shows to make back some of that lost money is in California. But California is notoriously hard to book. Especially LA. I’ve seen multiple tours crash and burn that were routed with 4 stops in California, and one or even NONE of those dates ended up getting booked. Zip. Nada.

It’s even worse when a band puts their tour routing up on their calendar before their shows are confirmed.


An embarassingly long drive to the only gig you could get.

CALIFORNIA SOUL CRUSHING, PART 3: LA DON’T PAY.

We once booked a show with a band we’re friends with in the LA area. They sold 200+ presale tickets. Everything was going great until… the venue got shut down a month before the show.

They scrambled to find another venue, and they found one. The venue wanted HALF of the money from those presale tickets upfront to do the show. HALF. Nearly $2000 dollars! All they would have to do is open the doors to a guaranteed 200 people and kill it at the bar. But I guess that wasn’t good enough.

This venue was terrible, too. BUT IT’S IN LOS ANGELES, DAMNIT. THEREFORE, YOU SHOULD FEEL HONORED TO PLAY THEIR SHITHOLE.

CONCLUSION

If you plan a west coast tour, make sure to book some dates in an area of the country that will make you money so that you can take the financial hit.

When bands tour the west coast, they don’t do it for the money… they do it to spread their music to every corner of the country where people will listen.

That, and the killer weed.

http://backstagesmarts.com/2010/11/why-i...ed-states/

[Miguel]

That was an interesting article. Thanks for posting it. Made me think of all the places Casey Abrams has been playing. Seems like whoever books his show knows to avoid the Western U.S.

---

I was doing some research earlier tonight related to Haley's friend performing at the House of Blues Foundation Room and came across this:

We played the "House of Blues" in Hollywood. Only it wasnt the main stage, it was a room upstairs called the Foundation Room.
And even for that room, they wanted us to pay them $300 (30 tickets, $10 each), though they gave us 200 tickets to sell at any price we wanted. We ended up breaking even, recovering expenses. Id not do it again.

Prior to that, I found this informative article:

"Pay-to-Play" the Great Debate

Almost everyone is against "Pay-to-play," but once you understand the reasons behind it, the more it makes sense. There are always exceptions, but when 1.9 million bands are wanting to be that exception and want to play for free and get paid to play, it is just NOT a realistic possibility.

...Another misconception (is) major artists don't have to pre-sell tickets. You are mistaken. They ALL do. EVERY ONE OF THEM. They all sign contracts guaranteeing a specific sales number and it is typically 80 to 150 in ticket sales for places like The Viper Room, The Roxy, and other venues alike. And, if you want to play at a bigger venue like Hard Rock Cafe, House of Blues, El Ray, Paladium, etc, you better get ready to fork over up to $30,000 if you want to headline your own show....upfront (not based on ticket sales at the box office).

It only gets more expensive from there, especially when union organizations like Live Nation (are) going around to all the major cities buying out all the big clubs. Soon, no one will be able to play anywhere in Los Angeles or New York or any major market unless you're with a major label. It will become too expensive to play anywhere that has a capacity over 500 people. It's no coincidence that this is happening. Major labels make money in three ways: radio airplay royalties, live performances, and merchandising. This is how the major labels are making the bulk of their revenue. With piracy out of control with no end in sight, no one is making a whole lot of money by selling music. Performing live is where the real money is made.

...Yes, there are some great bars and smaller venues that do not charge, but a brand new band out of Hoboken, New jersey is going to have a hard time booking a gig anywhere in LA. You are a risk to the venue to book and that's why there is a pre-sale. If a band was told to pre-sale 60 tickets at $10 each, the club is expecting 60 people to show up and hoping to exceed that number. If three bands booked that night only bring 20 people each in a venue that holds 400 people, it will look empty and fans are disappointed. Everyone loses in this scenario including the club. 60 people cannot buy a lot of food and drinks. This is a major loss and $1,800 in advanced ticket sales does not make up the loss in bar and restaurant sales, when it typically brings in $10,000 to $15,000 in daily sales it needs to stay afloat. Your talent isn't an instant cash machine...not yet.

If you want to play the LA/NY game, it's best to bit the bullet, pay the bill at the venue and sell or giveaway the tickets for free, but don't do this a week before the show. Plan it months ahead, schedule radio interviews to do ticket giveaway contests, and promote like crazy. Find fanatic fans in the area that are willing to create a small street team to pass out flyers and post flyers on college bulletin boards, etc.

Let's put this scenario into another perspective. Los Angeles is vast and clubs are abound. Anyone can go anywhere they want and see some popular artist at any given night. Why would they go see someone from Small Town, USA they've never heard of and why would a venue book a nobody? These are some of the questions bands members and managers have to ask themselves. Most artists live in a fantasy world and cannot grasp why someone won't book them. Of course, there are always exceptions, but it's not the norm.

How are these so-called exceptions made? Well, a booking agent will look at your artist profile. They go to your Facebook page, your Reverbnation page, Youtube account, and your Twitter account and they look at how many fans you have and they look at all your activity. Are your fans active? Are they interacting with you? Are you interacting with them? Are they taking photos of you, sharing your posts, and retweeting your Tweets. Do the videos of you have a lot of people in the crowd? If you fit the profile they are looking for, then they begin to look at other aspects like, does your music fit the theme of what they typically book for their venue. If you meet the above requirements, it's almost irrelevant that you sound good.

You cannot not book a popular venue and expect it to be packed and hope they all love you. The reality is the people that are there, they are not there to see you. They are there to see another band and once their band plays, that crowd leaves when the band does. It's rare to play at a venue where the crowd is there no matter who's playing. This only happens when there is a once a month promotional night, when there is no cover charge and a tall can of Pabst Blue Ribbon is on sale for $2. If this is what you are waiting for, you better stand in line, because you're going to be in for a long wait behind the bands that have a massive draw.

While you're waiting, you really need to keep touring other venues to build up your fanbase and focus on social media branding. Don't wait for the perfect opportunity. The longer you wait, people will begin to forget you. Work on building your own draw, otherwise it's going to cost you.

http://www.allindiemagazine.net/2013/02/...ebate.html

[cherelann]

Perhaps this gives us an inkling as to why Haley has not gone on tour. Since I live in the Northwest it looks as though I will not have an opportunity to see Haley perform live anytime soon...

As much as we hate to see Haley still linked to American Idol, I feel that AI is a great platform for artists to get exposure and thus have a leg up in the music game.

Haley does not show any signs of being discouraged and as long as she remains happy, I am happy. There are many avenues in the entertainment industry that allow artists to make a decent living and I think in her own way Haley is enjoying her journey with the destination yet to be determined...