I’ve never booked a tour. I imagine it must be a pain in the ass, that only gets worse as the number of dates on the tour increases. You have to coordinate with a promoter in each city to find a venue that is available the day before you play a show in another city and the day after you play another city. From a logistical standpoint, that sounds like it’s probably not the easiest thing to do. I’m sure the sense of relief you get from finally having everything booked feels great. But then you post the tour online and you get a bunch of comments that are like:
“NO SAN ANTONIO?!?!”
“Bruh why no albuquerque date???”
“WTF no Toronto show?!?!?”
That’s gotta be so annoying to read after doing all that work to book the tour. For one, you know that none of those people ever hit you up about booking you in their city, and if you’re in an indie/DIY scene of any kind then they probably could’ve booked you if they took some initiative in that DIY spirit. Second, and while I understand feeling a little disappointed that a band’s tour won’t be coming to your town, I don’t know why the gut reaction is to post a whiny comment on the band’s Instagram as if the band personally wronged you. Like, look at this comment section, it’s terrible.
I live in a geographically isolated city. The second closest major city with a substantial underground music culture is a four hour drive away. If you’re not playing in huge rooms, it just might not be an economically wise decision to come here. With gas, accommodations, food, and the other costs of a tour piling up, coming to a play a show in this city might be more likely to put you further in a hole. This is why a lot of bigger bands in Canada apply for grant funding to support their tours. And if you’re a smaller band who doesn’t have resources to apply for grants, or your country doesn’t have much institutional support for independent musicians, then it’s all out of your pockets and maybe the label if you have one. So, finances and logistics can create barriers to booking shows. At this point, I’m actually shocked when bands from far away locales come play in my city. But I suppose if you live on say the east coast of the united states or in a city like Toronto or Vancouver, then you’ve been conditioned to thinking that seeing touring acts you like is not a gift or a privilege but something you’re entitled to.
Bands you like do not owe you a show. They do not owe you new music on a regular basis. Your brain has been poisoned by consumerism. I understand that we’ve been conditioned to be able to consume and expect to consume all the media we want in a way that is accessible, cheap, and convenient. But you won’t always get what you want, and you need to chill out. To save you from looking like a loser with a sense of entitlement, I am providing you with a list of things you can do instead of getting mad at tour announcements online.
- Apply the 24 hour rule before commenting on something that bothers you.Â
Log off and take some time to do something else. By then, you should come to your senses and realize that it’s actually not that big of a deal if you don’t get to see a band you like in their city. If you still wanna be a whiny baby a day later, well it’s too late pal. The internet moves fast, and by then there will be 47 other things that happened and got people worked up. You’ll be too late to contribute to the discourse, and we’ll all be better off for it.
- If you wanna see a band so bad, book them yourself.
I’ve seen like seven new promoters start booking shows in my city in the last year, so clearly it can’t be that hard to book shows. Also, it might be possible that the band doesn’t have a connection to anyone in your town, but they do in others, which made it easier to book elsewhere. Ask other promoters how to book shows, reach out to the band, and maybe you can make something happen for your local scene. In do-it-yourself music scenes, sometimes you gotta be the yourself that does it. You should expect to depend on the initiative of others all the time. Do the scene a favour and pull your end of the rope.
- Critically examine your listening habits and ask yourself why you like the acts you like
Marketing matters. Think of how popular the most popular musicians in the world are. They have institutions behind them, with people doing work to push their music into the ears of listeners. And then those listeners do “work” by talking and reacting to said music, which keeps it in conversation and gets it to the attention of others. Communication technologies allow these cultural products to be transmitted all over the globe. So while this also breaks down barriers, it remains that large populated areas and their accompanying large media structures (corporate, independent, or otherwise) will often capture a larger share of the market. Not only is New York a huge city, it has plenty of people invested in the music that comes out of its scenes who then get the word out and get people in other places interested in that music. And there are plenty of other metropolitan areas not that far away for those artists to play shows in and garner and audience in. This is why plenty of independent music scenes that are pan-regional/global nonetheless are dominated by artists in New York, Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Toronto, or Los Angeles. You and I like a lot of music made by people that are far away from us, and that’s awesome, but also, when our attention and cultural engagement becomes decentralized we are in relation disengaging from what’s happening closer to us. This leads into my next point.
- Pay closer attention to bands in your local or regional scenes
If you’re gonna be upset that artists in other regions don’t come to your city or that there are never any good shows, then you better be making an active effort to be plugged into the artists that are local or closer to local. I sometimes find that complaining about the lack of good music in a local scene is like complaining about public transit. People who complain that there aren’t any good local bands are probably those least tapped into local music, just like how many of those who complain that public transit is unsafe are people that drive and never take public transit. Maybe the local heaters aren’t showing up in your algorithm-powered daily mixes on Spotify in the way that some buzz band in Los Angeles or New York is. There are reasons for that, and you gotta be part of that ground swell, especially in a city that has less of a music-based media ecosystem built up, to hype up those local acts to get shows popping. When you find the local acts and local promoters putting on good shows, you’ll care less about some big band’s tour. And it’s not that hard to do, start by checking local venues and finding out what’s going on. Seek culture out yourself, don’t just wait for it to come to you.
- Become your local version of that band
I’m not saying that you ought to become a cover band or blatantly rip another artist off. But you are tapped into the local scene and there’s a sound you like that isn’t being produced locally but is happening in other parts of the world, get some people together and take that influence to create new art. For example, in Edmonton, there hasn’t been much of a screamo scene in recent years after bands that were active in the 2010s stopped performing. And without a local screamo scene, there’s haven’t been many touring skramz bands coming through because there weren’t much options for local support to include on the bill. But it seems that within the last year or so, screamo is starting to be revived as a new generation of locals are starting bands and playing shows. Was I disappointed that Orchid’s reunion tour didn’t come to our town? Not really, I wasn’t expecting them to, but I would like to see some screamo shows in my town. Did I get in touch with some new local screamo bands and a promoter that booked an emo/screamo show recently? Yes. Does my screamo band have a show coming up that is put on by that same promoter? Yes.
- Travel to go see the band.
This is easier said than done depending on where you live and how much disposable income you have. But if you really wanna see a certain artist so bad, you’ll find a way. Maybe you’ll be able to see them on the road midway through your own tour with that new band you started. If anyone from Nebraska whined on your IG because you aren’t playing in Omaha, feel free to refer them to this article.