Dead! – TOUR TIPS

In this Tour Tips segment, the rock band, Dead!, give you tips for how to get your band on tour. You can check out the feature, after the break.

DONT WAIT EVER
Don’t wait around for someone to take you. Trust us you can spend ages waiting to get that golden support slot. Find some friends who are also in the scene. Start to build a network of like-minded bands that can all pull a local audience, and gig swap with them. You can “headline” to your local crowd and they can to theirs. That way you can both benefit from each other’s hometown crowds and you can both expand your fan bases. After doing this a few times, you will soon find that you can pull a small crowd in a number of different cities. You’ll also be able to offer more to bigger touring acts than just your sick riffs… Keep it DIY at first, getting your music out into the world is more important than getting a record deal.

GET A FUCKING JOB
Touring costs money. Don’t expect to be living the life of luxury either. When we first started touring. We would each work at our day jobs, stacking shelves and pulling pints in order to be able to afford the rent of the van and the petrol to keep it going, hiring the venues, paying supports. You have to look at your band like a business, and like all businesses you are going to have to invest time and money in order for them to work.

MAKE FRIENDS (with big clean floors and sofas and blankets)
Unless you like the idea of spending cold nights huddled up in a tiny metal tin that has bigger holes in it than the jeans on your knees, You’re going to need to find places to stay on the nights you can’t travel back home. Hit up the bands you are playing with and see if any of them can help. Or if you’re lucky the venue might let you stay the night. Hotels may seem like an easy option but get expensive VERY quickly. So far we’ve only had 2 Travelodges, 1 hotel & an air BnB over about 200 shows…

FLYER FLYER FLYER
All your favorite bands flyered at one point. Find shows with a similar crowd to your band, if you’re going to a show because you like the band, and you like your own songs that’ll probably be the right place to start. Half an hour before doors walk down the queue. Flyers don’t even have to be expensive. Go to your local library and steal their printer or draw your own. We flyer religiously, anytime we are at a gig that we could find some new people that could be into our music we hit them up. Nothing connects with a music fan like talking to another music fan. Never lie, sell your music as what it is, don’t say its deathcore just cause the goth girls pretty or you want to sell some tickets to the beardy guys in the line.

IF ALL OF THE STEPS ABOVE AREN’T WORKING, IT JUST MEANS YOUR SONGS ARENT GOOD ENOUGH.
That’s okay, it takes time. We’re only just starting to hit our stride with our writing BUT you have to be ready to accept that you just aren’t there yet. Keep it about the music and making the music fucking great. Then just have a good time. Everything else is secondary.

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