Joe Ghost – TOUR TIPS

In this Tour Tips segment, the electronic artist, Joe Ghost, gives you his tips for being on tour. You can check out the feature, after the break.

1. Make sure you’re prepared before you take off:
Don’t leave everything to the last minute, print out your tour itinerary, show schedules and routing information at least a week before you take-off. I find that you can never be over-prepared, and if it can happen, it will happen. I like to usually create a separate online email folder where I can transfer all the emails from my agents, management and club promoters with all the itinerary information, artwork for each show and any correspondence I might need to know!

When I first started traveling for shows I found myself leaving everything to that last second which always created headaches. The number of times I had to turn my house upside down before my first pick-up trying to locate my passport could have easily been avoided if I just started to pack my stuff up a week earlier.

Also, I found it very important to not only print out itinerary lists, but also take screenshots of them on my phone so I can easily locate them I needed to access any information quickly.

2. Set Ground Rules:
Your first tours can be exciting, especially when you’re visiting new places around the world, but it’s important to know that this is still a job and you need to pace yourself or else you will get drained really fast. As a touring artist, you want to make sure you are giving the fans and promoters exactly what they want, keeping yourself healthy and clear-headed avoids the opportunity for sloppy performances and pissing promoters off.

3. Look After Yourself and Get Sleep:
This goes off my last point, the hardest thing to come across on tour is healthy food and enough sleep. Make sure you take advantage of any shut-eye you can get, and even though its enticing to eat at every cities most famous greasy spoon joint, opt-in for salads, water and fruits as much as you can to balance it out.

4. Connect with fans:
It’s important to remember that the main reason you get to do what you do, is because of the fans. They are the ones who are supporting you at your shows, so give them what they want! Don’t be that douche that is too cool for them. Meet them, talk to them and interact with them! If you are loyal to them, they will forever be loyal to you.

5. Enjoy Yourself
At the end of the day, you are doing what you love and are able to make a living off it. Yes, the tour life won’t always be pretty and as expected, but smile! I made it a point for myself to live more in the moment, I found that I was getting so caught up in the business side of the industry, that during tours I wasn’t taking enough time to sit back and be like “holy sh*t I am actually travelling the world and playing music for people who enjoy my music.”

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