Before the tour starts, you will spend hours and hours emailing a bunch of people. Thank the good lord for email because this used to be done via letter in the mail, and I don’t even know how that was successful. What does advancing even mean? Well, you have a rider, which is a detailed document with all of the artist’s requests and needs. Everything from what they want in their green room to their photo policy to how many towels they want on stage. An artist’s rider is an overview of what they deem acceptable to put on a successful show, and the venue or promoter will either agree to it or cross out items and negotiate based on budget and venue limitations. Show contracts come into play here, and as a tour manager, you usually don’t get a say in what was agreed to between the promoter and the artist’s booking agent. So, you ask for everything in a rider and prepare to potentially get less. 

Now, you don’t want to start advancing a show too far in advance. I usually keep a two-week buffer between when I send my advance letter and the show day. If you send it too soon, people won’t respond because they have other imminent shows to focus on, or something might change on your end by the time the show day arrives. It happens all the time, prepare, adjust, move forward. 

For each tour, I write a super detailed advance letter that I send to each venue. The subject line should have enough info so anyone can easily find it when they search their email account. Something like this: Nirvana @ The Forum, LA - October 12 | ADVANCE. You can usually find a production contact on the show contract sent by management. Send the email introducing yourself and saying you're looking to advance the show along with a sentence like this: “If you’re not the correct person to advance with, could you please point me in the right direction?” The contact will either begin the advance process or cc someone who will. Make sure to add, "If there are multiple people in multiple departments to advance with, please add them to this thread to keep everything in one place."

This is somewhat controversial, but I don’t advance over the phone. My brain is going 100 mph, and I will definitely forget what was said, which defeats the whole purpose of advancing. Some people won’t consider an advance complete without a phone call. I only want to be talking on a phone if shit has hit the fan and we need a solution asap. I’m pretty adamant about my stance and will fight to the death to stay off the phone, but just keep in mind you might have to have a few phone calls and take notes to get through an advance. 

The advance email is typically the first contact you'll have with a venue and contains all details about the tour and specific questions about things that may differ at each venue, like WiFi info, their green room setup, bus parking, and shore power (an outlet to plug the bus into for electricity). I add links to my Google Drive so they can find the artist’s rider, their W9 (tax form for payment), and settlement details (banking info for wire or ACH). Make sure the links are set to “everyone” and “view only” so everyone can access them but can’t edit them. I also cc and introduce any crew who need to be involved in advancing, like our merch seller to coordinate and advance merch, and our audio engineer and LD to handle the technical advance. The initial advance email sets the tone for the whole process, so try to be informative and prepared while being polite and considerate. No one likes advancing with someone who is unprepared or frustratingly uninformative.

That brings me to another point that drives me nuts: respond to absolutely everything. If someone asks you 4 questions, answer all 4 questions. If you don’t know the answer, respond with something like, “Let me look into that and I’ll get back to you.” DO NOT just not respond. This goes both ways, for you and the venue. A common and efficient way to do this is to go down the list of their questions and respond after each question with an answer in a different color text. Here’s an example:

• How many people are in your touring party? 10 total: 5 band, 4 crew, 1 driver

• What kind of vehicle are you traveling in? Bus and trailer, 65’ total length, slide-out on the driver’s side

• Do you need shore power? Yes

• Do you carry a backdrop? Yes. 20’x30’ with grommets and tie line, fire certificate attached

Advancing is also when you work out the Run of Show. This is the schedule for the day. It’s how everyone knows where they need to be and when. If you can, try to keep the ROS (Run of Show) as close to the same every day so people can schedule their personal downtime with some confidence that they don’t need to be anywhere during certain times of the day. There are, of course, limitations to keeping the ROS the same, such as door times, added support acts, venue curfews, etc. The venue will respond with any changes that need to be made. Here’s an example of a ROS:

• Venue Access (Bus Arrives): 12 PM

• Load In: 2 PM

• Sound Check: 4-5 PM

• Support Sound Check: 5-6 PM

• Security Meeting: 6 PM

• Doors: 7 PM

• Support Set: 8-9 PM

• Changeover: 9-9:30 PM

• Headliner Set: 9:30-11 PM

• Venue Noise Curfew: 11:30 PM

• Green Room Curfew: 12 AM

• Bus Call (Bus Departs): 2 AM 

You’ll also run through hospitality in advance. Every rider will have a hospitality rider in it. You’ve heard of them—they list things the artist would like in their green room when they arrive at the venue, from fruit to a teddy bear to a salad bar to fresh flowers. The rider can literally include anything the artist wants, and some get it all, but for the sake of this post, you’re on a mid-level club tour, so the rider will probably need to be readjusted. The actual hospitality budget is agreed upon between the venue or promoter and the artist’s booking agent on a per-contract basis. For example, if you have a hospitality rider with $1,000 worth of items, but the hospitality budget agreed upon is $500, you would then scale your hospitality rider down to $500 worth of items. Whoever shops for your rider usually knows the cost of items in their area, so have a convo with them about what’s essential and what can be removed from the list to stay on budget. I also send a revised rider to each venue the night before our show with them and remove items to reduce waste. For example, if everyone makes turkey sandwiches every day and you have mayo on your rider but you've been on tour for a while and now have five jars of mayo on the bus, I email the next venue and let them know we don’t need any more jars of mayo.

Another useful tip is to ask if the venue has any relationships with local hotels to get a discounted room rate for your driver’s room or a day room. Your bus driver will be in a hotel every day. Day rooms are for people who want to get off the bus for a bit or need a place to shower if the venue doesn’t have showers. If you’re lucky, there’s a hotel within walking distance of the venue; if not, you’ll have to deal with Ubers. More on bus drivers and Ubers in the second post.

You’ve made it this far, and I’m super proud of you. As you can tell, advancing takes a lot of forethought, and having all this stuff lined up and ready to go before you send a single advance email is really important. If you’re new to an artist and crew or if a new member is joining, send everyone a group email with their current rider and ask if anything has changed. Ask if their hospitality rider is still working for them or if they want to try something different.

Honestly, there are so many tips with advancing that it would take 100 posts like this to get a new tour manager ready for their first tour. It’s just going to take you going out there and fuckin up. This is why putting an inexperienced person on a tour manager gig is such a difficult decision and why experienced tour managers are so highly valued. Tour managers are responsible for an artist’s comfort, time, and money, and that’s not something to be taken lightly.