Last spring I tour-managed a 14-date run through the Midwest and East Coast. I sent 14 advance emails five weeks out. Eleven venues replied within a week. Two replied after a follow-up. One never replied at all, and that show, naturally, was the one where we arrived to find load-in was through a kitchen, up a freight elevator that closed at 6 p.m., and the “backline provided” from the original offer had quietly become a bass amp with one working speaker.
Every tour disaster I’ve ever witnessed was already visible in the paperwork three weeks earlier. Nobody read the paperwork. So this is the system I use now: what to advance, when, and how to keep 14 shows’ worth of details from turning into soup.
Advancing: the ten questions that matter
Advancing a show just means confirming the details with the venue before you arrive. My advance email asks the same ten things every time:
- Load-in time and where, physically, the load-in door is
- Soundcheck time and whether it’s a full check or line check
- Set times and changeover length
- Backline: exactly what’s provided, make and model, not “drums available”
- Input list and stage plot confirmed received
- Parking for a van and trailer, and whether it’s secure overnight
- Hospitality: what’s actually being provided vs. the rider
- Settlement: who settles, when, cash or check or transfer, and what paperwork they need (W-9, invoice)
- Merch: where’s the table, is there lighting, and is the venue taking a cut
- Curfew and any noise limits
Send it five weeks out. Follow up at three weeks. Anything unanswered at two weeks gets a phone call. The venues that are hardest to reach in advance are, without exception, the ones with the weirdest load-ins.
Routing and drive math
The romantic version of routing is a line on a map. The real version is arithmetic: I cap drives at 6 hours between consecutive show days, because a 9-hour drive means you arrive at load-in with no soundcheck, play flat, and sell less merch. If the anchor dates force a long jump, that’s what the day off is for, and the day off goes in the middle of the jump, not after it.
While you’re doing drive math, do curfew math too. An iron-clad 10 p.m. curfew with three bands and 30-minute changeovers means doors at 6:30, which means load-in at 3, which means last night’s hotel needed to be within 4 hours. The spreadsheet catches this in October. The parking lot conversation catches it at 5 p.m. the day of.
Day sheets: the thing that stops the questions
A day sheet is one page per show day: lobby call, drive time, load-in, soundcheck, doors, set times, payout terms, hotel address, and the venue contact’s actual cell number. I post it the night before.
Before day sheets, I answered the same four questions (“what time do we leave?”) a combined 30 times a day. After day sheets, near zero. The band members who claim they’ll never read a document will absolutely read one page taped to the dashboard.
Merch is the margin
For most independent tours, merch isn’t extra money, it’s the profit. Guarantees cover the diesel; the table covers the payroll. Which means merch deserves real inventory discipline:
- Count in and count out every single night, per SKU. Not “roughly two boxes.” Numbers.
- Track the venue cut. Plenty of rooms take nothing; some take 10 to 25 percent, sometimes only on soft goods. You agreed to it in the offer, so know it before settlement.
- Track sales tax by state. If you’re touring regularly, you’re technically supposed to be remitting in the states where you sell. At minimum, keep the per-state totals so the conversation with your accountant is short.
- Reorder point: when a size dips below what two good nights would sell, reorder to a city ahead. Getting boxes delivered to a venue is a solved problem; venues receive packages all the time. Ask in the advance.
On the run last spring, per-night merch ranged from $71 to $840. The $840 night wasn’t the biggest crowd. It was the night we had full size runs on both designs and the table was next to the exit. Inventory is not a boring detail. It’s the paycheck.
Settlement and the money spreadsheet
Every show has four numbers: the guarantee, the door deal (if any), the expenses deducted, and what actually hit your hand. Record all four the same night, while the settlement sheet the promoter showed you is fresh. Then the tour ledger tracks the running totals: fuel, lodging, per diems (we do $15 a day, cash, no receipts required, no arguments), backline rentals, and merch cost of goods.
A band is a small business that happens to be loud, and the bands that last treat it that way; if the business side is the part you’re weakest on, the operator-focused write-ups at elorodigital.com are a good place to build that muscle. The tour that “felt great” and lost $1,400 and the tour that felt grueling and cleared $6,000 look identical from the stage. Only the ledger knows.
Where all of this lives
For years this was a folder of spreadsheets: one for advancing, one for merch, one for the budget, a Google Doc of day sheets, and a text thread where the actual truth lived. The failure mode was version drift. The bassist books a hotel from the old routing tab. The merch person reorders from a count that’s two nights stale.
Now the whole tour is one workspace at wisegrid.co: advancing grid, merch counts, settlement ledger, day sheet source, all as linked sheets in one place. It behaves like the spreadsheets everyone already knows how to use, which is the entire reason my band actually updates it. One editor seat costs $19 a month and everyone else rides along as free viewers, which for a five-piece is the correct price of approximately one t-shirt sale. There’s a 7-day free trial, which is conveniently about the length of a short run if you want to test it on a real tour.
The checklist version
- 5 weeks out: advance emails sent, all 14
- 3 weeks out: follow-ups, routing and curfew math finalized
- 2 weeks out: phone calls to the silent venues, hotels booked, merch ordered
- Nightly on tour: merch count-out, settlement recorded, tomorrow’s day sheet posted
- Weekly on tour: budget vs. actual, reorder check
None of this is fun. All of it is why the fun parts happen on schedule, to a room where the PA works, with a merch table that has your size. Advance the show. The kitchen freight elevator is out there, and it closes at 6.