Glass Mansions – TOUR TIPS

In this Tour Tips segment, the electro pop band, Glass Mansions, give you their tips for being on tour. You can check out the feature, after the break.

1. Be prepared, comfortable and safe for the long road ahead
After 11 tours, we’ve come across just about every situation you can imagine, from flat tires and sleeping in the van, to shady hotel rooms and almost getting kidnapped by our sound guy one particular night. Each time, we’ve learned a new lesson in preparation, security, and comfort and it’s helped us stay sane while cooped up with one another for weeks at a time. For starters, invest in a portable battery/jump starter/air compressor all in one unit. You can find them in the auto section at any chain store, and don’t go cheap! We charge it up before we leave home or a venue, and it gives us over an hour of power should anything happen (venue loses power, a computer needs power to work for editing videos on the road, etc), a tire goes low or we need to jump start the van. Ours also comes with a nifty LED light that comes in handy when a tire blows on the interstate and it’s pitch black outside. Another solid investment we’ve discovered is the auto air mattress. Seriously, life changing. When you are spending more than 7 hours in a van ride between cities, especially in the dead of night, this simple $40 game changer delivers. It looks like a regular airbed but with two inflatable support legs that fit in the foot space of the row to keep the mattress from tipping over. The best part is, it doesn’t matter what you travel in, the bed fits in cars and SUVs as well! Last, but not least, invest in the security of your gear. While in a midwest city, an out of town band parked at a venue early and went to grab lunch. When they returned, all their MacBooks and electronics were stolen out of their van. Being a mostly electronic band that depended on these devices, they were forced to drop off the bill and drive home that night. We felt so bad we gave them $50 out of our pockets to try to help with gas. It’s imperative that you have some kind of insurance on your gear in regards to theft. Too many times we see Facebook posts about bands getting robbed, trailers trashed and gear going missing. It can derail a tour and maybe even put the band out of commission for a while. If insurance isn’t your thing, you can get a GPS device installed and hidden in your van or trailer. If you find that it’s made a disappearing act, you can quickly locate it with an app that works much like Find my IPhone. This is also a smart move if you are in a big city and your van gets towed! But simply put – don’t be stupid about your possessions/equipment either – don’t leave laptops, cameras, phones, guitars put in the open or on seats/dashboard when you’re out of the van. Carry any expensive items with you in a backpack or keep them locked in your trailer, don’t leave anything behind you don’t want to be stolen – no matter where you’re playing or staying.

2. Thank the local bands & staff
While we’ve taken bands on the road with us in the past, we’ve found it most beneficial to tour solo and stack the locals on bills for maximum exposure. At every show this past tour, I’ve made a point to make friends with each local band that is on the bill with us. I thank them in person and from the stage during our set because for a developing band like us, locals are the lifeline of the success these tours get. Make sure to put your band in the middle of the bill each night – 2nd of 3 or 3rd of 4 – that way you can get the best exposure between local bands. In new markets, we know the majority of people coming to a show aren’t coming to see us, but when the locals let us play in the sweet spot, we have that fighting chance to win over the crowd – which is all we need. Local bands have also been some of the most generous and hospitable people we’ve encountered while on the road, going out of their way to give us their shares of door money and offering places to stay. While we aren’t at a place where we are making killer money by any means, it’s the generosity of these bands that sustains us and gets us to the next city. That’s something to be truly thankful for. Also, make sure to thank your bartenders, sound guys, and any and all staff/crew you can – a simple “thanks for your time and what you do” goes a long way when these people can sometimes feel overlooked – we’re in this together and we need them (and doing this has helped us get re-booked at places!).

3. Hit the gym
It wouldn’t be a tour without finding creative ways to get the bare necessities. A few of us have memberships at a national gym chain, so earlier this year (and after a 7-hour drive through the night right after playing a show) we awoke a little after sunrise in the middle of Arkansas and the first thing on our mind was getting a shower. Knowing absolutely no one in town, and not wanting to drop any money on a truck stop shower, we found out our gym had a branch in town and headed that way. Once we arrived, we went in, swiped our cards and headed for the bathrooms for a hot shower and fresh towels. The best part, though, was that our memberships allowed us a +1 each. The four of us were set, and half an hour later we walked back out, clean and smelling great. Of course, you could always ACTUALLY use the gym for, you know, gym things too. Another bathing tip: drive to a hotel with a pool. Then, like a half naked ninja, jump in and cool off. Grab a free towel to dry yourself, then ninja your way back to the van and drive away. I’ve done this – it’s great. Trust me.

4. Be shameless
If you treat your band as a business, and you want your band to succeed on the road, what steps would you take to make sure business was good? Would you go out of your way to let people know about your business, especially a new one? Would you carry business flyers around with you to tell potential customers about what you have to offer? What about setting up a booth at an event to display your business and get it out in the public eye? These kind of things seem like a no-brainer for business-minded professionals, and we can adapt those strategies to fit being a band on the road. Once a tour is booked, we contact everyone we know in each town and tell them about it – the local papers, the radio stations, the TV news stations, bloggers and other writers and make sure they know we are playing. Then, we get there early and get to work helping promote the show. Every tour I make smaller, black and white versions of our tour poster and get them printed and cut so we have hundreds of flyers. On the ride to shows, we take permanent markers and write the details of the show on the back of the flyer and get ready to hand them out. Making a ton of “generic” show flyers is relatively low cost, and it lets us customize them on the way. Many of the cities we play have colleges, so we usually start there. All four of us will branch out and hand out flyers and tell people about the show. If you have a day off before a show in the same town, hit the streets and try to busk in a populated area. Once, in Texas, we played two shows back to back at different venues and even during SXSW we had 3 showcases in one day. My point is, when there are opportunities for exposure, take them. The musical landscape is so oversaturated with bands that if you have a moment to stick out from the herd, you should take it. Don’t be lazy. Be shameless and don’t think twice about it. There’s no rulebook out there, no guide for how you should or shouldn’t promote yourself, but as the Great One once said: “you miss 100 percent of the shots you don’t take.”

5. It’s all about the takeaway
Touring is great. Yes. It’s fun to travel and wake up in a new city each day, but if you want to progress as a band you have to make an impact each night. Give show-goers a takeaway — that is, let them leave the show with something you’ve given them, whether it be a photo together, some merch or even something as simple as a great conversation post-set. Playing a memorable show is a given, but to make a more meaningful impression, you want to give people an experience that they will remember (at least until the next time you come through town and make a new one). This past year, we’ve been using band postcards with our picture and social media on them. We use them EVERYWHERE, from dropping them on tables at the show to handing them out in front of venues and in cities we are playing. They work well for promotion, and their low costs let us make sure everyone at a show is taking one home (at the very least). I’m a very visual person, so I like to see things in front of me to help remember them. These postcards, with our name in big letters, acts like a less official looking business card under the guise of being a mini-poster. It works, and even if that person puts it on their wall or uses it as a bookmark, they will always remember that moment and that show when they see it. When we send people over to our merch table (more on that later), we’ve already initiated the conversation. Even if they are out of money and can’t buy anything, I always make sure to give them a postcard anyway so that they at least leave with SOMETHING. The same can be said for other inexpensive items like stickers, wristbands or hand-made paper airplanes – just make sure there’s a takeaway somewhere.

6. Retain the new fans you’ve made
Ok, so you played your show and your fans are hooked — great! Now, how do you keep them as fans until the next time you play for them? Get them to sign up for your mailing list. Usually, before the end of our set, we announce from the stage that we are giving away stickers to everyone who signs up for our mailing list, and its incentives like this that help in a big way. We’ve also given away a sticker for fans liking or following us on social media by using their phones. It’s a one-two punch by incentivizing them to trade a like or their email address for something they can take away from the show. Our mailing list signup also has space for city, state, and zip code, which helps us target certain groups of people when we come back to their areas. If they like or add the band on a social media channel, we usually try to reach out to them and thank them using the same channel, solidifying the relationship. We have a few super-fans of the band that drive long distances to see us play, even bringing us handmade items, and it’s important to us to never take that kind of stuff for granted. For them, and with all of our fans, staying active online and regularly answering questions and responding to comments makes fan retention fun and easygoing. You want to be hitting up the same cities anyway, so why not make friends?

Keep up with the band on Facebook and Twitter!

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