I’m an actual tour manager series

I get a lot of questions about being a tour manager: how I got into it, how can they get a foot in the door, all kinds of stuff. A lot of people want to be tour managers, but I’m not sure they really understand what it means to manage an entire tour. I can tell you that I wasn’t the least bit prepared to manage a tour the first time I did it, and it wasn’t enjoyable being yelled at that much. So, I’m going to provide as much information as I can to help you avoid crashing and burning as hard as I did.

For the sake of everyone’s attention span, these blog posts will be long. But if you want to be a tour manager, the first step is learning how to read—not just the act of reading itself, but really understanding every little detail because every little detail is crucial.

There are all kinds of tour managers. The job is usually tailored to how the artist and their management do things. Some artists want a personal assistant and need constant supervision, while others just want to be told where to go and when, and are totally self-sufficient. You might get a heads-up from management about the artist’s preferences, but for the most part, these are the core duties of a tour manager (keep in mind that there are many levels of touring, but this applies to a mid-level artist on a club tour in a bus):

1. Advancing - Communicating with the venue about what you have and what you need. This is time-consuming and absolutely the most important step in tour managing.

2. Travel - Some tours have people from all over the place. It’s your job as a tour manager to get them where they need to go.

3. Hotels - This seems simple, but it has its obstacles if you’re traveling with a large group or need a place to park a bus.

4. Settlement - You are responsible for making sure the payment from the venue or promoter is correct at the end of the night.

5. Accounting - You gotta track and document every single dollar made and spent before and during the tour.

6. Day-of-Show - Managing the guest list, hospitality, green room, set lists, security meetings with the venue.

“If you were the person in school who actually did all the work on a group project while everyone else fucked off, you’d be a great tour manager.”