making money...or maybe not

I have written about this before, but I think it bears repeating. Talking with my contemporaries as I go around the world doing a 'festival run' it seems that there is still a disconnect between a lot of show designers and the reality of mid level touring. Not all designers and tours, but enough for people to be talking about this topic...a lot

Let's start with the first rule. The artists/shows that we work for touring the planet are businesses, and as such, need to make money to be sustainable. Whether we are playing in clubs, theatres, arenas , stadia or at festivals as in this case, the rule remains the same. Seems obvious, doesn't it?

The artists I am usually working for are the headline acts on these festivals. As the final act on any festival of size, and therefore, you can assume, a big part of the festival's appeal that is manifested in the ticket sales, it is necessary and proper to deliver a show that gives the audience what they paid for. To let a band produce a show, as close to their own solo shows as is possible, in this environment is what a festival should be doing, and the artist should be playing their part by bring the necessary production to achieve same. This means a bunch of gear and crew. Say 6 or 7 trucks, 30 - 40 crew as a sensible amount. Obviously there are bigger and smaller headline productions but you get my point.

Logic would suggest that as we work our way down the festival bill the number of trucks, crew, and amount of gear would decrease proportionately. Now we are getting to what I want to talk about as this is more and more not the case. You have acts that are playing in daylight attempting to load up the stage with a floor package of lights, a set that is too big, and just too much stuff generally. Let's examine why this is wrong, both for the artist and for the festivals.

The first reason is the most obvious; cost. Vendor costs, transport and freight, crew travel and accommodation; all keep going up. Artists get squeezed and as is so often the way, the problems are revealed once the show is designed and so the pressure comes to the production manager to fix it, which is usually an impossible task without making very dramatic cuts, which then begs the question as to how you got there in the first place.

The second reason is about respect. It is simply not the right thing to do to show up with fuck tonnes of production when you are playing down the bill. You are just making it hard, and not just on the festival staff and the other acts, but on your own crew as well. Think about others as you climb the ladder of success. You will likely meet them again on your way down.

How did it get to this?

Some show designers seem more interested in what a show design will do for them and their business rather than how it works for the artist. Sounds harsh. I reckon a lot of really experienced production and stage managers might just agree with me. And if you do, or if you don't then speak up. Let's have a productive discussion.

But I digress...

Over the past months I have witnessed an extremely talented musician and his great band go around the same European festival circuit as I was with my current client. Playing a couple of spots down the bill and yeah, you guessed it, carrying a literal fuck tonne of set and production. To watch this crew go through building and dismantling that huge set and all its bits and pieces each day and then loading all those trucks with it was painful. They had it down as they, like most good roadies, worked it out and got it done, to their credit. And the show was great, but great music because that artist and his band do not need a huge set or production to hide behind, they have talent and the music says it all. I would suggest that maybe at the reconciliation at tour's end there would be a bigger percentage of the total income going into the artist's bank account if some different production decisions had been made prior to the festival run.

I acknowledge that I am on the sidelines here and that quite possibly some valid reasons were present for those involved to make the decisions they did, BUT trucking and freight and wages cost what they cost and are not impacted by the artist's position on the bill, so if all the obvious factors of fees vs expenses are present then I cannot see how this tour makes an acceptable level of profit, if they are doing this week in and week out. (My old head tells me that maybe this large set was in fact the arena show creative that was simply thrown back into trucks for the festivals...could be wrong, but....

Live Music professionals are hired to do a job and if we are talking about that period before a tour when the design is taken from concept to construction, the people involved are the designer and associated 'creatives', then management, business management (for budget and cost projections), the production manager, appropriate vendor representatives, and obviously, the artist. Within this group there will be different agendas and often times the discussions can be robust.

It is the job of the Production Manager to give solid counsel about what can and cannot be achieved. For a festival design this is very important for all the aforementioned reasons. It is not a time to be shy or quiet. This is what you are being paid for, and you know that if things don't go the way they should it will be you and the crew fixing it, or having to deal with it, just like the hardworking girls and boys of the crew from the aforementioned artist...but again we rely on a crack crew to work as hard as they do hiding the problem...

...until the aforementioned reconciliation

So, it can be daunting for a young PM to find a voice in these design discussions, but find it you should. This is easy for me to write, a lot harder for you to do. Sometimes it might seem that you are just there to load shows in and out and get them to the next town, but this is the easy part of the job. The real work is in helping to make a tour economically efficient and this is where you earn your money. Do your research, ask a mentor PM for advice and get involved. We all see the results out there.