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View Full Version : Touring Realities -- The View from Fish



Jefferson James
01-29-2013, 12:11 PM
An interesting look at the costs and mechanisms of touring circa 2013; pretty bleak.

http://fishheadsclub.com/2013/01/29/touring/

Lebofsky
01-29-2013, 12:24 PM
Yyyyyyup. That's about right. Simple math, really. In truth, there's only two things driving the whole touring/music industry: t-shirts and alcohol.

- Matt

Supersonic Scientist
01-29-2013, 01:37 PM
Very interesting read. Agree, that the math formula makes it look pretty bleak for (Non-high profile rock star) touring musicians.

MudShark22
01-29-2013, 01:50 PM
Thanks for the link! :up

And now people should apologize to festival organizers for those pie-in-the-sky rants about booking this that or the other artist.

Yodelgoat
01-30-2013, 01:29 PM
I dont blame anyone for not wanting to deal with this. I've never been to Fish show, and I likely wont, just knowing how little of the pie gets to the person you are paying to see. When things got lean back in the 80's when I was touring, we decided to pay ourselves and be our own roadies. We had a sound and light man, that was it- we used to have an additional 4 people. Cutting that expense made it possible for us to actually make a little better income. It was hard work, we had to load and unload about 5 tons of equipment, but paying myself an extra 200 a week made it worth it. I was young. I certainly couldnt do it now. We werent playing big venues, but we could pull in about 3-4K a week. After expenses, we saw a much bigger piece of the pie than we would have if we had kept a road crew. We also slept in campgrounds - sometimes under the bus. That was in a time when it was much easier to be a band on the road. Good memories, but I would never do it again.

Its got to be discouraging when you make less on the road than you would working for guitar center.