Tour starts next week!
& musings on the perma-tour lifestyle
I’m nearing the end of the Closer Than Hell tour cycle, and am honestly looking forward to a break.
I have been packing into a van and singing singing singing nearly non-stop since 2018. It has been so fun and educational, and has connected me to fans and friends and more!! My entire adult life has centred live music performance. I am endlessly grateful for how spiritually enriching this 8-year long adventure has been.
Brace yourself, I’m going to talk about money.
It’s become more expensive to put on my show in the last 3-5 years. The music venue ecosystem has had major cuts, making it harder to account for inflation of gas, accommodation and food costs of a touring band.
For a while, it seemed a lot of artists in Quebec were shielded by rising costs reported by established international acts thanks to the grant system here. But inflation has finally, truly hit those of us who are trying to tour ethically (paying musicians: not everyone does). Some artists are doing alright, but everyone I talk to is seeing a downturn across the board.
What no one is shielded from is the fact that every possible dollar gets siphoned everywhere other than into the hands of artists. Several years into my professional musical life, I can’t think-positive my way out of that reality.
Artists are in the position of constantly proving our value.
Chasing the next landmark success to put into my bio and excite promoters and generate ticket sales in an era where peoples’ attention is so scattered it’s hard to even reach my own fans has an anaesthetic effect on me. It’s depressing.
Part of me feels like a giant failure for the recent difficulty in making a profit/paying myself from touring. But then I see artists with far more fame and success than me also shrinking their bands down to a three-piece from a seven-piece, or canceling their tours entirely, and am reminded of the somber fact that nothing lasts forever.
Because I have the stubborn resilience of a cockroach, this is making me re-think my touring strategy.
I am a soul (?) artist in transition toward something that is still vague to me and I think my audience. My experience is primarily with a full band, and a soul (?) artist needs a band.
Since recent inflation means it now costs thousands of dollars to pull off something as a simple and close as a Montreal-Quebec city jaunt, and a booking agent can only do so much for us aging non-superstars, and posting constantly on apps that suck the life out of people just to remind them about my shows feels icky, I’m sort of at an impasse.
So what does a musical maximalist who must perform to maintain connection with her fans, and her sanity, do (other than be more famous, cause I’m trying and also not and it’s really, really hard to make people care when you’re kind of old news)?
Options I am considering include, but are not limited to: acoustic performances and craft night combo events; the three-piece shrink-down band with backing tracks, DIY house shows where no one gets paid and are only promoted by word of mouth, and a one-woman theatrical performance with no musicians at all.
These all have some creative and financial potential, but ultimately may not achieve what I hope to do with my live shows, which is scare everybody with the fire in my belly. I need a band for that, I just do.
When I started touring around Quebec and Ontario a year and a half before COVID, I had all the optimism in the world and no amount of sleeping on couches or eating dry Tim’s bagels could touch me (this is a lie and a fantasy, I love touring but it takes everything out of me).
But I was intoxicated by the novelty of being a newly signed artist putting out her first record, and all the attention that comes with it. The musicians I was playing with were 20-somethings paying 400$ in rent. A hundred fifty bucks a gig felt fine then. It was so easy to think we had all the time in the world, and that gumption on its own would lead to wider recognition and more money for everyone.
That has only turned out to be partly true. I still mourn the parallel reality that could have been if not for the pandemic, and TikTok, and streaming app exploitation infiltrating my vibe like it did.
Alas, life goes on! So I’m going to play these shows and pour my heart out doing it, then take a teeny tiny mental break from The Show so I can make an album, launch a soul music festival, and pay off my credit card. Do some more yoga, paint, maybe write more, be properly sedentary for a bit.
When I have filled my tank a little and gather some ideas that excite me, I’ll embark on the task of building a new show from scratch, which I’ve never really done.
Send me ideas! I want to feel inspired and excited, not defeated. Thanks in advance :)
xx