you see it in business all the time. there’s the good faith folk who build a business, and then organically expand to neighbouring cities and grow for their locals and the greater community. Then on the other end of the spectrum, you see people grow to the point they can escape and sell their shit off or kill their prototype to go build in the big city or in a different country and hide their roots.
When it comes to touring, it kind of needs to work the first way. I build my city, you build yours, and then we share and exchange. If you can sell out your hometown as a headliner, and I can sell out mine, then when you have an EP to promote you can come and rock for my scene and vice versa. If there’s 10 of us who do that, we have a month long tour and the headliner recoups their project expenses (and hopefully profits too!) If there’s 30 of us that do that across Canada, now we have the chance to not only run highly profitable tours, but we can even run festivals and work huge venues where all of our networks come together and we get a signal boost so big it eclipses the country entirely. That’s the vision, and it’s common sense when I word it that way.
That’s just on locals. Bringing in outsourced headliners sucks up all the money and doesn’t add any special level of community outreach for the scene except crowd wise, but a lot of those crowd members aren’t there for (and/or aren’t interested in) the openers. The synergy in all of these locals working together opens up so much opportunity for collaboration between artists, producers, studios, videographers, graphic designers, fashion, vendors, and even just cool likeminded people to chill with.
I’ve seen the natural growth in many scenes, where by the time 3 shows are done and we’re selling out the local room, that certain members of the crowd get inspired to create, and a few years later even become headliners themselves. (Or get inspired to pick up a camera, or learn to mix and master, etc). Now, this 3 show system only works with the proper curation. I’m having a bit of trouble hitting that last point on the head, so I’ll explain it a little here:
- Show 1 is eclectic. You kind of just find everyone you can to plant your flag. Usually at this show, you end up finding one or two acts/crews that have their head on right. It’s almost always the act under the headliner, and they usually have a crew of ~3 homies with them who are artists featured in the set, videographers, or any combo of the archetypes I listed before.
- Show 2 gives you a bit more room to work now that your flag is planted. You can trim the fat on the people who sucked or no-showed show 1, but you can also work with the artists you keep to curate show 2. They have homies from high school who rap but aren’t much into social media, or they have their ear to the ground in other ways to help build a card in the dominant sound for their scene rather than the scattershot sound of show 1.
- Show 3, you reward the main act with a headline show marketed around them. This is either the crew you carried through with from show 1, or it’s someone that they brought in from show 2 that blew everyone away. At this point, you’re so tapped in with that city’s scene that everyone knows when the next show is aiming for, so they’re all pumped in the studio making exciting shit for to release around the show. They have their pockets padded a bit from the other shows, plus they might be willing to invest a bit into themselves now that money is moderately consistently coming in. (Or, they could be getting music videos and services done for free in the spirit of collaboration now that the town is poppin).
Boom. Sold out town. From this point on, you can start branching that market out. Book the supporting guys as headliners on the next one. Book alternative/adjacent sounds or themes to keep it fresh. Book smaller developmental shows with the youngins at a smaller cap venue. Type shit.
Ok, looping back, I think I got it. Proper curation is the key to turning a market from a dead one into regular sold out shows. If there’s no identity, if it’s just a mishmash of conflicting sounds/ideals/genres/attitudes, then that’s when you see the big crowd shifts and exoduses between sets. There’s a way to promote a big mishmash show, but that needs to be booked with intent, not neglect.
I think I’m ready for the closer. There’s “the formula” which is to bring in a big headliner, smash the first 6 local artists you can find into 15 minute sets, and make them buy their tickets up front like a shark in order for them to be able to perform. don’t put any thought into the stage, sound, lighting, experience, pre show and post show content, or really do anything but let some people come do soundcloud karaoke on a big wooden box with some speakers, the venue’s SM58s, a half dozen people they went to high school with T-posing in front of the stage staring at them, and then the group of friends there for the headliner who arrived when doors opened cuz they fundamentally misunderstood that the headliner isn’t gonna be taking stage for another 82 hours.
That formula sucks. If you think about it logically from the ground up and actually focus on what matters, there’s only one way to do this shit and it’s the complete fucking opposite of that formula.
(this also goes for literally everything. the boxes that these apps put us into, the corpos shrinkflating products, the boredom of a dull schedule… the formulas they made for us aren’t for us. a systemic approach is only beneficial if created in good faith.)
Good morning y’all.
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