Is Touring Worth It?
Is touring pointless? Fair question. I'll answer it next.
Today's title couldn't be more click bait-y, but I do have some really interesting thoughts on this topic, and I'm really excited to share them with you.
Before we get started, it’s time for the artist of the day, so let's get to it. Today's artist of the day is someone that you're very familiar with, but is starting a new venture on his own, and that is Oliver Wood of the Wood Brothers. So you know about the Wood Brothers have been around forever, they put out so many great records, and I can't tell you how influenced personally, I've been from them. Once upon a time living in Atlanta, I had a chance to take a lesson from Oliver Wood, and he was the nicest guy on the planet and still is, I was young, I didn't really have much together and I was really curious about transitioning from one phase of my musical life to another, and he unlocked all the doors and it was really awesome. He lent me a book that was really helpful, it's called Songwriters on Songwriting, which I thought was a really helpful book about how to organize your time. But anyway, Oliver has finally released a new single all to his own Soul of this Town. If you're anywhere close to a streaming platform, you should stop what you're doing and make sure you go and listen to this song, it's really cool, it sounds really timeless and classic, just like Oliver always does, and I think you really dig it. Take a second and check him out!
As for now, let’s get to the topic at hand. The other day, I was talking to my friend, Nick, and we were talking about how the music industry has changed seemingly overnight, all these practices that are now becoming common place like live streaming and things of that nature, it used to be things that people sometimes did on social media and other platforms, but wasn't really a priority in their career. I think most people are just caught up in playing gigs and in getting from one gig to the next and taking the time to learning about all of these things just seemed like kind of a daunting task and something that maybe the next generation was really gonna have to deal with, but for us, late 30s, early 40 year olds, it's probably past us and we can probably exist in our little bubble for the rest of our music lives and get by with it.
Fast forward to right now. And that has changed.
I was reading an article about a touring musician, and she was just talking about how she's been out there roughing it for years, and only three people and all in one little car traveling with all their stuff and playing all these clubs and always losing money or breaking even if they were even lucky, and it kinda got me thinking, what is touring gonna be like for the beginner or medium-level artist when this is all over with, is everyone gonna go back to just getting in their van and hitting the open road and doing 60 dates in a row and coming back with next to no money, or in the whole... Or are people gonna start embracing technology and realizing that they can reach people for far less cost just from their own living room or a really nice decorated space somewhere?
I got to thinking, I wonder what it would be like if a band really embraced technology and sort of marketed shows night by night as if they were touring somewhere and advertise them to specific areas and then showed up each night after night and recorded a show, or even if they didn't wanna get together and do a live stream every single night for a certain area of the country or a city every night, maybe they just put together one amazing show that was really well produced and then broadcast at a each night to a different area of the country.
These are ideas that are just flowing around my head, but I'd really be interested in what you think in the comments below, the advantages of something like this would be mainly logistical, I would say; you don't have to spend money on gas or hotels or food from going out of town, you don't have to worry about random breakdowns of your car or something like that, trying to get from gig to gig, which happens all the time, you save all those hours in the day, so you're more energetic if you're gonna go do a live stream. But there would be negative to something like this too, there's something about experiencing life with people and just being on the road and traveling with them and getting to know them on a more intimate level, that's something that develops a bands music, maybe just as much as practicing and playing shows. It seems like in the world that we live in now with bands becoming harder and harder to assemble because everybody is so involved in so many different things that this might be the new model of a band.
What if you put together a bunch of friends in a band that would normally never be able to be able to commit to being in a fulltime band, and you were able to come together for a few days and do a series of shows for different parts of the country?
Aside from the actual continuity of the musicians and being out and playing for 35 days on the road, and sort of the magic that happens with that, and I am not underestimating that at all. I think that's probably one of the best things about being on the road and really honing in on a set, is the experiences that you have with those people, economically, it makes a lot of sense, and if you look at some of the artists that are out there today that are really blowing up the airwaves, they didn't really tour at all either, they just basically had a PR machine that pushed them. So I think that's the reason why it's important these days that musicians learn the value in learning how to use Facebook ads manager and the YouTube advertising platform for their art, so they can get people to check them out all over the world. This has just been a random thought of mine since this all started, because it just seems like everybody's investing into live streaming and making more videos of themselves during this pandemic, and when things end, I just wonder how practical is it to continue to do all of those things .
I've often even thought about, what if it was me and a few other people that I knew that was really interested in chasing art and promoting ourselves and stuff, and maybe I just went in unlike a building somewhere with someone and help paid rent, and we all... Just shared the space for our live recordings and share the equipment and all that kind of stuff. Now, I wonder if that's gonna become the new model anyway, today it was a little bit more of a loose, conversational, less factual kind of reporting episode or something, but I hope this generated some thoughts for you that could impact the future of your business.
Until next time, I'll see you soon!