Che’Nelle – TOUR TIPS

In this Tour Tips segment, the pop artist, Che’Nelle, gives you her tips for being on tour. You can check out the feature, after the break.

Tour tips for indie artists especially in non-English speaking countries:

Without a booking agent nor a major label backing, me, touring for the first time independently, was definitely different. Here are some of the important things I’ve learned in needing to be more in order during a tour overseas.

1. A personal sound engineer. This was probably the most important person we were missing at each tech rehearsal. Having a different sound person at each location/ City was a slight nightmare. Apart from the language barrier, the benefits of having a personal sound engineer saves time and energy.

Having the perfect level of sound in each band members ear and being able to separately control their own instrument amongst other instruments and the artist vocal levels makes an impeccable difference. Having to re-program the sound levels in each city we performed at was crazy. I never thought about this because all the other times that I toured, I was taken care of by the booking tour managers who had their team, this time it was not like that and I was a little thrown off by it all. Although there is still going to be mistakes and weird technical difficulties here and there having a pro that we can trust to take care of us, sound wise, allows one less headache and allows way more comfort when performing.

2. Make sure all the stems of your songs are mixed professionally. It’s important when it’s time to perform, levels of instruments and background vocals are all even and make it much more sufficient when tech rehearsal happens, and we can just focus on going from song to song without wondering why the next song levels have all of a sudden dropped or is now too loud.

3. Tech rehearsal for me had to be much more than 2 hours. I would set 3-4 hours for “just in case” situations. Every location is different and to me, it’s important to get comfortable on each stage.

4. Tour manager. You NEED someone to look over everything and everyone. As the artist, unless you have Beyonce money and a Beyonce team, you gotta be involved a lot more than you think, so having a tour manager to help make sure he makes the calls, communicates with the performers to organize each day, where we are going, etc helps soooooo much to focus on other important things .

5. Tour itinerary. To make sure everyone is on the same page, a tour itinerary for the trip is essential. It keeps peoples minds at ease to know which city there will be at for how long, how many shows, phone numbers, emails, what happens if someone gets lost lol whatever to keep the whole crew in sync. Otherwise, you’re gonna get a million more phone calls and questions and you don’t want that.

I could go on however here are the top 5 that I needed to make sure to have more in order on my next tour good luck all you indie’s out there.. it’ll all be worth it and honestly, I feel much for gratitude knowing what everyone’s position is and the work that needs to executes. It’s a lot and it takes a team, whether you begin small or large, my understanding and vision of touring is so much more clearer.

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(Photo Credit: Shoko Takayasu)