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9. Not just a gig or two, but a whole load of shows... What the hell? You want to tour?! Okay, so maybe you've done a few gigs. Now you want to string a few together and call it a tour. Let's get a couple of things straight for starters: Firstly, touring is one of the greatest things in the world. Secondly, doing anything as complicated as arranging a tour is one of the most time-consuming things in the world. You also need to be massively organised if you want to book it yourself, as you are effectively acting as both your own manager and booking agent. It's when you start trying to do something like this that you realise precisely why so many bands employ two separate people to do these jobs for them. Basically, it's a massive pain in the arse. With this in mind, if you are still adamant about touring, I suggest that you find another band to tour with. The benefits of this include sharing the workload of trying to find gigs, and doubling your likelihood of finding them, and splitting the costs of van hire (you really should bring your own entire backline as well as sleeping bags, pillows & clothes). You'll also need a long list of people you can contact to hassle to organise a show for you - which is why touring is so much easier if you've done a string of gigs before and got on with the promoters at these shows well enough for them to want to invite you back. So you should start emailing and phoning people. You'll ideally want to start trying to book dates at least three months before the gigs, which means you'll need to make sure everyone in the band is willing and able to tour at a certain time together, and that it's not during a stupid time of the year (Christmas, the dead period in the middle of summer when no gigs happen, clashes with other shows or festivals, etc). If you're still enthusiastic about touring (and you should be: it really is the best fun in the world if you've managed to organise everything so no major disasters occur), you're best off seeking advice from friends who have done it before. Hassle them for contacts, tips, and people who have/drive vans which would be suitable for taking a load of sweaty people around with lots of heavy & expensive equipment around the country. Or you can ask me about it some more - email (dstockwell at diskant dot net)
You mean you want to do it properly? And no one wants to sink the cash to do it for you? Then check the end of this article for links to doing it yourself thanks to the rah fantastic rah Jonson Family and also the irrepressibly friendly and awesome Bearos Records. Who needs record labels? Do it yourself! Or maybe you've heard about the explosion of CDR labels in the last few years. These are innumerable and you've probably got at least three friends who run one each. Why not do a personalised, or "limited edition" run of CDRs? People always appreciate someone putting their time and effort into something homemade over some glossy generic piece of shit that anyone can waste £500 on getting a design company to arrange for them. I've got CDRs packaged in ripped up cardboard boxes and plaster paint, hand-sewn tote bags, re-stitched denim, wallpaper samples, and hand-scribbled pieces of paper. I'd take that shit over a glossy photo of a band beneath a computer generated logo inside a crappy jewel case that's begging to be broken any day. Plus, if you charge reasonable prices you can easily cover your production costs and maybe even store some money away to put towards future losses (gigs, follies, broken gear, getting a round in at the bar to stop people arguing) .
Given the option, you should ALWAYS bring merch to sell at gigs if you feel it's of a quality you would be happy to buy if you were a punter (think hard about how happy you are to exploit people for their money too). It can be invaluable in helping to cover costs on the night, and if you want to tour you will NEED that money. Every touring band knows this and lives by it: Explosions in the Sky were able to tour for nine months of 2003-04 with their day-to-day living largely funded by lucrative t-shirt sales. The fact that I have somehow ended up with three of them in my own wardrobe is testament to this. CDs and t-shirts will always be in demand if you play a good show. Vinyl has a more selective audience (unless you play in continental Europe, where people seem to go mad for it). If you're thinking about selling anything beyond this, think about how you would feel if you were a punter and you found a band selling additional junk on their merch. Would you go for lighters with a bandname on it? What about posters? (If some nice silkscreen ones have been done, they can be very swish and highly desirable). Badges? Fanzines? It's all up to you. Fugazi, for example, won't sell even sell t-shirts in addition to their music; whereas Wolf Eyes will sell you any kind of "customised" records packaged in broken guitar strings, globs of glue, blocks of wood and scratched/smashed LPs for "customised" prices, but hey, each one's a unique memento. Vincent Gallo sells his t-shirts for £70 a time because they were designed by a "professional artist" (himself). In the end, it all depends on your personal politics. Diskant links! Oxfordbands.com guide for bands starting out FatCat Records' DIY section Jonson Family Records Bearos Records Fourier Transform Foxglove @ Digitalis Industries Jetplane Landing BBC Radio1
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