Also in this issue:

PLANNING AND ROUTING:
SAVED BY GEOGRAPHY

Excerpted From Chapter 3 of
Tour:Smart And Break The Band by Martin Atkins.

“Do not go into battle unless you are certain of the outcome.”
- Sun Tzu

AMERICA IS BIG...

...really, really big. In a business where there are so many things that will derail you, it seems silly spending years mastering sampling , drumming, singing, or improvised guitar techniques, but not spending a little bit of time understanding elements that will affect your life on the road every day—Geography and Demographics. Look at a map. Keep looking at it. Think about how long it is going to take to drive from Minneapolis to Seattle. Imagine yourself playing the board game of “Touring USA!” What would your strategies be? Because, for some reason, when someone shows up in a van or buys a guitar, all common sense flies out the window!

Before you do anything, assemble information that will help you communicate with an agent (if you have one) or directly with a venue. If you see a gap between two groups of places that you want to perform in, reach out to a local band to bridge that gap. Understand that any show will be poorly attended unless you use some of the strategies outlined in this book, or make up some of your own. Developing new markets is costly and time consuming, but you must allocate resources accordingly. Suggest a free show for these dates, get involved in an established evening, play every day, twice a day if you can, or better yet, get involved with an established evening with a cheap ticket and a popular local band.

FACTORS TO BE AWARE OF BEFORE YOU PLAN A TOUR

• Size of city and proximity to other cities and secondary markets.
• Mileages.
• Best locations for your specific niche.
• Established events that can help you.
• Other tours within the same time period to use and avoid.
• Weather patterns.
• Your goals as a band.
• Your past history.
• Touring patterns.

GEOGRAPHY

It is only 300 miles to the next show, but is it all up hill in 110 degree temperatures? Is one route clearer than another? Is there snow through that mountain pass? How many cities’ rush hours are you going to hit? Is there a time difference?

We thought it was pretty much the same mileage from San Francisco to LA either by the coastal route or the I-5. It ended up being an entire day’s difference: I-5 is a mindless toolbox-on-the- accelerator drive; whereas, route 101 is comparable to a drive in the Italian Alps or for those of you unfamiliar with them, the part of Grand Theft Auto where your car always ends up in the lake.

All of these things need to be taken into consideration in advance and get logged into the itinerary while you are still able to think. Once you get out on the road, you will have enough information and awareness to say, “We can’t do an after show party tonight. We have a difficult drive through a treacherous mountain pass, two rush hours, and an early load in… please put your panties back on.”

CLIMATE

You need to factor climate into your planning. Drives are different across Texas and Arizona in the summer. It’s dangerous to go across Colorado, Utah, and Washington from December onwards, not just dangerous in terms of not being able to make it to a show, but... dangerous... Once you understand all of this, you might make a decision to tour in the face of the possibility of bad weather because there will be less competition from other bands who stayed home. …or you might decide to stay home… either way you are making decisions based on information.

EMERGING MARKETS

Population and geographical changes in many markets are fluid. There are many businesses moving in order to find other, cheaper places to operate. This isn’t to make more money, this is to survive! Slowly (but noticeably), secondary markets have started to have a scene and some major markets are declining or the emphasis is moving to the suburbs. Boise has grown 2% in the last year, Atlanta 3.3%, Phoenix 4%, just about every city in Florida is growing… New Orleans, tragically, has shrunk by 22%, Detroit and Buffalo are shrinking too. Go and play emerging markets! You’re certainly going to get a enthusiastic response.

PLACES TO AVOID

It seems that most bands want to head to New York City or Los Angeles to prove that if they can make it there, they can make it anywhere. Well, maybe. But the cards are stacked against you in both cities. People there are less likely to show up to see an unknown band and you might find yourself playing with five other bands. They are cities where people display their support not just by showing up and applauding, but also by leaving after the band they came to see has performed. Put these cities on the back burner. You don’t want the catchphrase associated with your band to be, “We can’t make it there; we can’t make it anywhere,” because it’s just not true.

Places to Avoid (for now):

• New York City – “Nobody cares, dude!!!”
• Los Angeles – “Dude, what was the question?”
• Austin, TX – Two weeks before and two weeks after SXSW (South by Southwest).

SECONDARY MARKETS

There are two definitions used here for Secondary Markets:

• Smaller cities.
• Cities that are close by or competitors with a primary city. (A primary city might not be the largest, it’s the one you have a show in. So if you have a show in Athens, GA, then Atlanta becomes the secondary market).

I am still learning about the geography and the flexible equations of time and distance in different parts of the country. It is not simply defined by city vs. suburbs, or by miles vs. hours. These considerations are overlaid by what can be a regionally unique mindset. In Manhattan, 25 blocks can be way too far for someone to travel. In Utah, people will drive eight hours to see a band they love. Rochester to Buffalo is 78 miles. This seems like a trek, but there is one club in Buffalo that is just off the highway, making it a straight–shot one hour drive. This creates a cross-promotional opportunity, a secondary market, and, depending on what you do, either a problem or a solution.

Using your geographic knowledge, along with information on secondary markets, will help you to ensure that:

• The tour has a greater chance of success.
• The tour has less of a chance of failure because of stress, miles, or money.
• Less wear and tear on machinery and people.
• There is less chance of someone dying during a 12-hour overnight drive.

Some venues will have a non-competing clause in their agreement that will state that you can’t play within 60 miles and 60 days or 80 miles and 80 days of another show. You need to understand why that clause is in your agreement. A club in Manhattan will argue that a show the week before or the week after in Long Island or Brooklyn will dilute the audience base for their show. They might be right.

Further upstate: if you play Rochester on a Friday and Buffalo on a Saturday, unless you are careful, the Buffalo promoter will advertise in the Rochester paper, and cheapen the ticket price. If it is a hotly-anticipated show, the Rochester promoter will advertise the show in Buffalo and try to get people who cannot wait one more day to see the band to jump on the highway and see his show. If you are not careful, you can decimate earning potential and upset a promoter.

If you are smart (and if you’re reading this then you are already smarter than the guy reading Tour:Stupid), you can plan your touring activity to take advantage of secondary markets. Plan to hit Rochester first (or whichever is the smaller club where you have the best connections in the surrounding markets). Promote that show in Buffalo. Do not announce a Buffalo show until you are on stage in Rochester. Sign everyone up to your e-mail list and hand out postcards. If you are playing to a few hundred people a night, then perhaps 50 people from Buffalo will be at the Rochester show. They want to support the band and, after all, you have not announced the Buffalo date yet. So, you have a happy promoter in Rochester, the people from Buffalo get to see you early, and the Rochester show was so well attended that 60 of those people come down to see your Buffalo show.

Throw in some incentives like a live or remix CD that is only available at the merchandise booth or a special shirt that can’t be bought on the web and you are really creating your own destiny… unless you are crap and your shirts suck. Then you are walking through jello… creating your own density.

ATTENDANCE

At the Rochester show, there are now 200 people, plus the 50 people from Buffalo because you advertised there, told your street team, and had a special advance CD.

At the Buffalo show, there are 250 people from Buffalo, more than usual, because their friends had told them about the Rochester show, plus 60 kids from Rochester make the trip and 15 kids from another town who heard how crazy it was, for a total of 575 people! Just by adding in a few weeks and planning!

See a video interview with Martin Atkins here: