Eyre Llew – TOUR TIPS

In this Tour Tips segment, the ambient rock band, Eyre Llew, give you their tips for being on tour. You can check out the feature, after the break.

1) HAVE FUN! Sitting in a packed van for hours between cities can get tiring. It’s important to stay positive and be ready for things to go wrong on the road. We play a game on the journey called “Twenty questions” where we’d give ourselves a topic like “Twenty Tom Hanks movies”, “twenty films with alien invasions” or “twenty British inventions”. You’d be surprised how much downtime a game like that can get through and the conversations it leads to haha!

2) PARKING! I’m sure every band gets stung by excessive parking charges for their tour van somewhere in a city center. Something we’d say was worth doing was to ask the venues you’re traveling to if you can park on their premises for the day or if they could recommend anywhere. Keep a track of the costs in public parking too as it’s surprising how much it racks up after a couple of weeks.

3) TAKE LOADS OF PHOTOS! Post them on your social media pages. We personally love Instagram for this. Be proactive and tell people about what you’re doing! Going on tour is a great opportunity to connect with fans that you haven’t met yet and make new fans – especially the people who are tweeting about you and sharing your music all the time. Get as many photos of the good times on the road as you can. Reflecting on these will keep the positivity up when things get you down too. Make some memories and enjoy it.

4) PROMOTE YOURSELF AND MEET PEOPLE! If you get to a venue/city early don’t lounge around and do nothing for hours, get out there and meet people. Give flyers out for your show, free cd demos, free spare tickets and say hello to people. It’s amazing who you can meet and you never know you might get a load of people come to your show later that evening or at least follow you online and share your music online. It’s a lot of hard work but touring is the best time to meet potential fans from other places that you just can’t do the same as you can online.

5) TAKE FOOD WITH YOU! Everyone knows that service stations are overpriced and grabbing food during a show times isn’t practical or easy. Sometimes a few drinks and snacks along the way can really lift the mood on long journeys. We particularly fell in love with cartons of Tropical Fruit juice and Cadbury Double Deckers. A real nice change from the same rider drinks you get at most shows too.

Keep up with the band on Facebook and Twitter!

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