Martin Atkins' Tour:Smart: More Q and A-Holes

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Let’s stick with Hay Perro – they seem to be in the same position as many new bands so answering their questions feels like it’s good advice for others…….of course, you are welcome to send me your own personal nightmare scenario too.

HP: Out-of-town shows. This seems like a very logical next step, and since Chicago is centrally located, we have a variety of options. We've accumulated a decent list of small venues that are friendly to out of town bands and we're looking to schedule a few weekend tours this summer. Since we all have Monday-Friday jobs that prevent any kind of longer touring, we're looking mostly for Friday-Saturday combinations.

MA: So you could use the “weekend hit and run” strategy (page 17 of Tour:Smart). One of your problems will be, as a new band, you want to be able to use established evenings (or built-ins) to help you gain more exposure – some of the best ones might well be on a week night. It seems a bit simplistic to just look at doing shows on Friday and Saturday. You could get to an out of town show (and back) 100 miles away – it would make for a groggy, bad value for your boss day the next day – but certainly no worse than the damage an all-nighter at a club can cause and who cares! Fuck the system, meet the new boss……..just the same as the old boss……except there’s benefits…..oh errrrrrr...(if your day job is an airline pilot – just keep drinking). You might have a situation where two of you can get a couple of days off, but one person really can’t. Here and there you can deal with this by adding in a Sunday show but flying the other person back so they don’t lose their job, while the rest of you drive back with the gear and all of the loot! Unfortunately, any venues willing to risk an untried out of town band will probably only do so on a Monday/Tuesday……so you might need to look for some more flexibility in your day job.

It’s well worth dealing with the problems that day jobs can create. Without any other sources of income you will quickly be in all kinds of shit – losing the path that you decided to set out on and losing your ability to do it your way. You will end up doing too many local shows because you need the money, the free beer and the high! Nowhere ever in the history of the world have I come across a situation with a band with (say) six members that has a strategy to take over the world, but first, they all get two jobs and put $100 bucks a week each into their “make or break” or “break or die” fund. Wow, that’s ANARCHY. How sad is it when strategies like saving and planning feel weird to even type on the page of a band advice column?……Naaaa, only joking! What you need is DRUGS baby, Drugs!


HP: Is there a good way to say, "We are a new band and we have no draw in your city, but we would love to play at your venue?” We have friends scattered all over the Midwest, but there are some cities where no one
specifically coming to see us is likely.

MA: Well, honesty is a good thing – just think it through. If you blag it and con a venue into giving you a Thursday night slot because you are HUUUUUUUUGE – then that’s terrific, until you are standing on stage in an empty club. It is the phallic equivalent of a jump into a freezing cold pool. Congratulations, at last, your career is now the size of your shrunken dick – but hey, look at my nipples! (Of course, I am using dick-ness as a universal metaphor here.) So, honesty is a GREAT thing (in this case). I don’t know that telling the venue that no one is going to come to see you is really going to do much. Brownie points for honesty might help a little, but maybe they – or you – can locate a band in (let’s say St Louis) that REALLY wants to do exactly what you are doing, but their target is Chicago. Da daaaaaa! The promoter is, after all, a hub of information in their area, or should be. Tell the venue that you are setting up a show with this out of town band, and want to play with them next time in St Louis. Also, of course, tell the band. Make sure that this is all understood before you work your nuts off (there I go again with the testicular vernacularis which reminds me of a tour when I was in Portugal….). Make sure that the out-of-towners don’t accept a conflicting show a few days before – making you look like an idiot and shredding YOUR credibility.

More universal questions from Hay Perro next time (do I spell the name differently every time, and, what does the name mean?????) and meanwhile I should tell you that my book is now available! I will be on the east coast from August10th onwards first at Black Sun Festival ( ) on a panel about the future of the music business then in NYC for my Tour:Smart book launch and art gallery opening at Fuse Gallery August 15th ( ). I’ll be at various Ozzfest’s hanging at the Jagermeister booth, playing drums with The Lunar Bear Ensemble at The Court Tavern New Brunswick, NJ on August 16th with Dave Dreiwitz from Ween on cornet (who has the balls to eat ice cream on stage!), doing an interview on WFMU, making some appearances in Boston and all over the place….as usual…… Send me an email and maybe I’ll come sit with you for a while and give you the tools you need to be errrrr, tools.

Be careful out there!

Martin Atkins

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Martin’s new book Tour:Smart is available and shipping now for $29.95, click the link to order your copy.

web address: http://suicidegirls.com/news/music/21942/