Great tours are checklists, not vibes. The unglamorous preparation is what separates the tours that build careers from the ones that build debt.
Three months out: route the dates, confirm the venues, and lock every guarantee in writing. Every handshake deal should become a text or an email.
Two months out: order merch, service the vehicle, and confirm sleeping arrangements. Running out of shirts mid-tour is leaving money on the road.
One month out: promote every date locally, line up the local anchors, and ship a press kit to regional blogs. Promotion is a per-city job, not a global one.
One week out: pack the gig bag, the merch bin, the tool kit, and the backup everything. Cables die, strings break, laptops fail. Redundancy is professionalism.
On the road: track every dollar daily, post content nightly, and thank every venue publicly. The tour you document and account for is the tour you can repeat.
Confirm every date twice: once at booking and once two weeks out. Venues change bookers, rooms double-book, and details slip through cracks. The five-minute confirmation call has saved more tours than any piece of gear ever has.
Carry a printed contact sheet: every venue, every booker, every couch, every emergency number. Phones die and signals vanish in the middle of nowhere. Paper does not need a charger, and on tour that matters more than you think.
Print this checklist and work it backwards from your first date: three months, two months, one month, one week. The tour that gets planned on paper is the tour that survives contact with the road.
About the Author – Ruben Burgos: Ruben Burgos brings over 25 years of music expertise and more than 15 years of model guidance to the table. He is the indie major pinnacle to retaining credits for musicians and helping them navigate this wicked industry without the fuckery.