ciara davey tour manager

Meet The Expert Sessions – Ciara Davey

Last week we invited Ciara Davey into our video room to tell us about her work as a Tour Manager.

Ciara has worked with the likes of Prince, Kings of Leon, Manic Street Preachers and even The Secret Service! She says reputation is very important as a TM and that’s something you earn.

Thanks to Ciara for coming in and talking with us!

Midnight Mango is an international live music booking agency. We work entirely online from anywhere in the world.

The artists we represent come from various genres; they are all outstanding!

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Avicii, the King of Oontz Oontz Oontz

By Jessica Pressler

Photography by Ture Lillegraven

Tim Bergling is anxious. He is staring straight ahead, so quiet that everyone with him has gone silent, too, out of respect or maybe a little fear. It was a crazy thing to do, in retrospect, two shows in two different cities, Anaheim and Las Vegas, with only an hour and a half between them. Even with the police escort and the private plane. Now he is twenty-one minutes late, and twenty-one minutes matters when it's the biggest party night of the year, New Year's Eve, in the biggest party city in the world, Vegas, and you're the star of the show, scheduled to go on at midnight, which was—Tim reaches into the pocket of his jeans, barely held up by a Gucci belt, and pulls out his phone to check the time—twenty-two minutes ago. "@Avicii better get to XS soon!!" some douchebag is saying on Twitter. "People paid money for this!" The doors slide open, and Tim steps forward, purposeful as a heart surgeon headed to perform a triple bypass. His girlfriend, his booking agent, his tour manager, a club promoter, a guy with a video camera, and a reporter surge after him.

"Security!" the promoter shouts, and hulking figures fall into step beside us.

"Dog!" An assistant sweeps in to take the Pomeranian from the girlfriend's arms.

"Okay, go!" and this unwieldy centipede begins its shuffle through the Encore resort, into a restaurant, where bejeweled women and heavyset men look up curiously from their Dover sole, out the back door, past a pool, up some stairs, and behind a velvet rope where Tim alone steps onto a raised platform facing out into the gaping maw of XS nightclub.

He pauses a minute, taking in the expectant faces, flushed and a little drunk, chanting, "A-vi-cii! A-vi-cii! A-vi-cii!"

Then the light falls on him, and he lifts a skinny arm and flicks a switch, flooding the room with a melody that washes over the crowd like a balm before turning into a beat that has them going, his words, "completely apeshit," and then, and only then, does he relax.

"Happy New Year!" shouts Felix Alfonso, his bodyman, popping open the first of many bottles of Dom Pérignon. When Tim twists around from the jiggy little dance he's doing behind the decks to accept a glass, he is smiling like the happiest guy in the world.

Which he should be, he knows. Most people would be overjoyed to have Tim Bergling's life. To have, 250-plus nights a year, audiences of thousands chanting your name. To have the leggy blond girlfriend, the limitless champagne and the piles of money, and famous musicians begging for the production magic he brought to "Levels," his inescapable 2011 electronic dance music hit in which Etta James has a good feeling, over and over, for three and a half minutes. To have the girls hyperventilating, "I want to fuck him so bad," whenever he appears, which one blonde is telling her friend right now at high-decibel volume, although Tim can't hear her, he's too immersed in cuing up the next track that is going to keep people going completely apeshit.

"I am reasonably happy, I am ," he'd said in his Swedish accent a few days earlier. He rifles a hand through his scraggly blond hair, sincerity in his icy blue eyes. Because he is only 23, subsisting on a diet of Red Bull, nicotine, and airport food, and spending most of his time bathed in the pixelated glow of a computer screen has not diminished, just kind of softened, the perpetually rumpled good looks that prompted Ralph Lauren to cast him in an ad campaign. There is a Tumblr devoted to his nose.

"I love DJing, I do ," he stresses. "I love everything that comes with it; it's fun and it's kind of glamorous." And yet. There's always that moment, right before he goes onstage, when he wonders what the fuck he is even doing up there, if he deserves any of this, and if this is the time it all comes crashing down. "It's just like when it's right in the moment and you have that stupid bright light on you," he says, searching for the words to say it. "It feels so awkward ."

Four days before New Year's, I arrive in Playa del Carmen, Mexico, to find him pacing around a tented greenroom at Mamita's Beach Club, smoking like a chimney and knocking back Red Bulls. The champagne is chilling. The waves are lapping gently at the shore. But Tim's attention is entirely focused on the sounds coming from the stage, where a warm-up DJ is playing a song called "Epic" by Dutch DJs Sandro Silva and Quintino. "I can't believe he's playing this," he mutters.

"This is really frustrating," he says, grinding out his cigarette and lighting a new one. "Is he gonna play 'Don't You Worry Child' next?"

Felix gives him a warning look and nods in my direction. Vin Diesel bald, with discernible muscle groups, Felix has all the indicia of scariness until he opens his mouth. ("I carry his drugs in my butt," he later jokes when asked to describe his duties.)

"I'm sorry, I sound grumpy," Tim says apologetically. "It's just that it's embarrassing to do the same things."

It's a strange problem for a musician, which is what Tim considers himself to be. While he likes to play mostly his own songs, he still includes tracks by others to keep up the requisite energy level, and "Epic" is one of them. In fact, it's the third song the opening DJ has played from Tim's usual rotation, and each time it happens, Tim cracks open another Red Bull and gets a little more jittery.

The Rolling Stones never had to suffer this type of indignity. "We should make a list of songs that we tell festival organizers not to let other DJs play," Bergling's tour manager, a no-nonsense Irishwoman named Ciara Davey, says decisively, as if writing a note to self. Tim nods, though he doesn't seem any less tense. His British lighting guy, Simon Barrington, comes in, carrying a box of equipment and smiling, blithely unaware of the budding crisis.

Tim Bergling, a.k.a. Avicii, DJs 250 nights a year and often earns six figures a show. Do the math.

By Chris Black

By Adam Cheung

By Eileen Cartter

"How many people are out there?" Tim asks.

"Just twenty-five people," Simon responds cheerily. "And a dog."

"And what?" Tim asks distractedly. He's listening to the thumping sound of "Who" by German producers Tujamo and Plastik Funk coming off the stage. "This, too?" he says incredulously. "How many of my fucking songs is he going to play?"

By the time he's set to go on, Tim's face has taken on a grayish sheen. He seems so genuinely convinced this is going to be a disaster that I'm steeling myself for the possibility that his preternaturally brilliant career is about to go up in smoke.

Of course that isn't what happens at all. First of all, there aren't twenty-five people on the beach but 2,500. When Tim appears onstage, a tiny figure surrounded by a metropolis of equipment, presses play on his first big hit, "Seek Bromance," everyone—the California girls in itty-bitty bikinis, sunburned cubicle jockeys, belching frat boys in coral necklaces, ravers with giant pupils—leaps into motion like the sand is on fire, and it becomes immediately clear that his fears were totally unfounded. The DJ before was playing people some songs. Avicii possesses them. The sound that pours out of the speakers is crisp and melodious and so fucking loud it seems to get inside your body, the bass pounding away at your guts, the synthesizers providing a soaring moment of relief before the bass comes rushing back in so forcefully that there is no room left for thoughts or anxiety or anything. It is not an unpleasant feeling—like being inside a giant, beating heart. Everyone is grinning like a lunatic. In the front row, a fat guy weeps tears of joy. A bra wings through the air, landing somewhere at the side of the stage. Felix spots it from his perch behind the DJ booth, where he has been lighting cigarillos for Tim every time he holds up two fingers or getting him a drink when he makes a C-shaped gesture with his hand. "Women always throw bras," he yells delightedly.

"How was that?" Tim asks when he gets off the stage two hours later, all shiny and smiley and lighter looking, as though he shed his layer of tension somewhere onstage, in a little heap, like the undergarment Felix had examined and discarded.

"Oh, it was flash," says Simon, who is clearly used to Tim's histrionics. "Some people danced. Apparently some guy from Sweden was playing onstage? Not my taste, really."

Later, when I point out as tactfully as I can how completely insane he was to have been nervous, Tim shrugs somewhat abashedly. "It's just like, you have to really stand out now, DJing," he says. "Especially now that electronic dance music is getting so big and saturated, and there's a lot more like similar DJs competing against each other. People are just coming out of nowhere ."

He should know, because Avicii kind of came out of nowhere. Four years ago, Tim Bergling was a high school kid in Stockholm, remixing songs on his laptop in the style of house-music acts like Swedish House Mafia and posting the results in the comments sections of music blogs. While his parents were confounded by the "constant donk-donk thumping" coming out of their youngest son's bedroom, his ear for melody caught the attention of Ash Pournouri, an ambitious then 26-year-old club promoter who could see the electronic-music boom coming and wanted in on it. Pournouri asked the 18-year-old to coffee, figuring at least he could use his connections to help him get some club gigs. But after Tim warily ambled up, all disheveled-Viking hipster, a grander vision began to take shape. "He started saying all of these things like, 'I'm going to make you the biggest artist; we're going to get there in two years; you're going to be bigger than that guy and that guy,' " Tim recalls.

Before Pournouri could make him the biggest DJ in all the land, however, he had to teach him how to DJ, which was something Tim had never actually done before. Thanks to computers, these days, DJing is mostly "before work," Tim explains. Most of the set list and transitions are worked out before he gets onstage. The notion of a DJ who determines what to play by reading the room "feels like something a lot of older DJs are saying to kind of desperately cling on staying relevant."

This is not to say there isn't some skill involved. "I kinda know what's going to work," he says, pulling up a screen of cardiogram-like shapes on his laptop, which he identifies as songs. "You have to retain the energy level throughout the set," he explains, moving the shapes around until they fit together, like Tetris pieces. "You can't just start out with an energetic song; you have to build up to it."

Since so much of it is predetermined, I ask, what is he doing onstage? He sure looks busy as hell up there: Twisting knobs and pushing buttons and smiling and dancing. But after watching his show a few times, the only real difference I notice when he twists a button or pushes a knob is that sometimes it gets a little louder or quieter, like he's deploying all of that energy just to change the volume.

"Yeah, it's mostly volume," he shrugs. "Or the faders, when you're starting to mix into another song, you can hear both in your headphones, you get it to where you want and you pull up the fader."

The rest of it, the dancing and the constant arm-pumping motion like Right on, doesn't this moment totally rule? That's all performance, which was Pournouri's first lesson.

"A great DJ interacts with the audience," he says professorially over the phone from Australia, where he recently gave a talk titled "The Avicii Case Study" at the country's first-ever Electronic Music Conference. "You have to engage people. Dancing, smiling."

Anyone can play a gang of hits, he goes on. The trick is to make them feel like they're really at a show . "It sounds very abstract, but a great DJ takes his audience on a journey," he says. "You want them so into it that they can't leave . The tracks that get the attention are the songs that create some kind of feeling . And that became a precondition for everything we did in the studio."

Bergling and Pournouri produced "like a hundred" tracks, and along the way they settled on a kind of formula: a four-chord beat, overlaid with a melody that contains emotionally provocative but universally accessible lyrics. There's all kinds of stuff layered over it: swirls and echoes and sirens and pauses that make you feel like things are really happening! But the journey, as Pournouri might say, always comes back to the same steady beat. Rob Kapilow, the author of the book What Makes It Great? , likens Avicii's songs to Muzak, not only because almost all of them riff on other people's compositions (the piano line repeated throughout "Fade into Darkness," for instance, is lifted from "Perpetuum Mobile," by '80s-era classical music collective Penguin Café Orchestra), but because its main purpose is to create ambience. "It's peppy, it's upbeat, it's got a steady groove," says Kapilow. "There's nothing not-smooth about this music, nothing to annoy you. This sort of repetition is very comforting; it's why children want to hear the same book over and over again."

Back in Mexico, Tim plays a new track, tentatively titled "Someone Like You." "It's so simple," he says, laughing. "I mean, All my life I have been waiting for someone like you? It's almost stupid."

Tim had decided on the DJ name Avici—a friend told him it was a level of Buddhist Hell. (He added the extra i because Avici was already taken on Myspace.) It took him eighteen months to get comfortable behind the decks; his first show ever was in front of 1,000 people. The next thing he knew, he was commanding six figures at clubs in the U.S. and performing at the Ultra Music Festival with Madonna, who had specifically selected him to sherpa her into the booming electronic-dance-music scene. "It was just perfect timing," Tim says now. "My own rise went hand in hand with the whole EDM rise."

The last time kids in neon went crazy for electronic music, things looked a little different. "Back then, no one ever even used to look at the DJ," says the lighting guy, Simon, who spent four years on tour with the Prodigy in the early '90s and worked at Gatecrasher, one of the clubs where the rave scene first took off. "It was much more about dancing with one another. Now everyone is facing the stage. They're all there to see him."

The big difference: Money. EDM 2.0 isn't just the province of kids in warehouses and ravers on the beach, it's the soundtrack of glitzy clubs in places like Las Vegas and Miami, which is where we are headed tonight, as soon as Tim wakes up. "You'll see it tonight when someone buys a bottle of champagne. There will be sparklers. There will be a variety of scantily clad girls," says Simon, wrinkling his nose. Because the club has its own lighting, he and Ciara are flying from Mexico to Dallas to prepare for the show there. Which is probably a good thing. "Without digging myself too big a hole," says Simon, "it's completely against everything that I personally believe in about clubbing."

Around midnight, the black SUV carrying Tim, Felix, and myself passes in front of a line of tanned hopefuls being held tantalizingly back by a velvet rope in front of Story, a two-day-old club in Miami Beach. "It's not really new," Tim says, yawning. "They just made it over a bunch of times." These aren't his favorite kinds of gigs, either. "The VIP crowd tends to be less energetic," he says. "If you are able to go out and spend $2 million a night in a nightclub and then get laid, it doesn't add anything for their...what do you call it, what you leave after when you die?" The deep thought stays unfinished as beefy guys in black suits usher us down to a small windowless greenroom, where a dark-haired waitress in dangerous-looking shoes is already pouring glasses of champagne. The booze is always free for Avicii.

In the beginning, this was kind of a problem, when all of a sudden he was Justin Bieber big, without the PG-13 reputation to uphold, hanging out with a crowd for whom every day is literally a party. "You are traveling around, you live in a suitcase, you get to this place, there's free alcohol everywhere—it's sort of weird if you don't drink," he says. And so he did. At first it was because "I didn't expect it to last," Tim says. Then it did last, and soon he had a serious habit: champagne at night, Bloody Marys at the airport, wine on the plane, repeat. "I was so nervous," he says. "I just got into a habit, because you rely on that encouragement and self-confidence you get from alcohol, and then you get dependent on it."

He kept going like this until last January, when he developed "like, searing" abdominal pain and wound up in the hospital in New York for eleven days with acute pancreatitis. "I probably drink more now than I should," he says. "But I have a pace. I never drink two days in a row."

Tonight is a drinking night, as Tim has friends in town, a rooster-haired gang of Swedes in skinny jeans. "Skål!" they say, downing shots and jabbering excitedly in Swedish, until the room fills with the quiet rustling that signifies the imminent arrival of a famous person. David Grutman, one of the owners of the club, enters accompanied by a small dark figure in a knit cap and sunglasses who is surrounded by an entourage also wearing knit caps and sunglasses. "This is Pharrell," he announces. Producer Pharrell Williams pauses to shake hands with everyone in his path, like a religious figure or a politician. "I'm happy for your success, man," he tells Tim, and they chat for a few minutes, literally about the weather, while everyone stares into their champagne glasses. Then it's time to go.

The DJ booth at Story is elevated above the floor, so the audience below looks like a sea of disembodied hands, and as Tim starts his set— The love you seek and moooore —the hands go crazy, and a beam of emerald light suddenly envelops him, like he's about to be sucked up into space. Dancers appear, dressed in complicated sex-alien costumes that shoot light out of their fingers. It would all seem very futuristic except for Paris and Nicky Hilton, who are dancing languidly on banquettes as though the past ten years haven't happened at all. Paris comes to a lot of Avicii's shows. "She's like a stalker," yells Felix, who is standing next to me in the booth. "What?" I yell back. "LIKE A STALKER." Then he points a giant gun with the word "Avicii" at me and presses the trigger, spewing a haze of freezing dry ice fog into the air and cackling maniacally. Throughout the night, the line outside stays the same length, but as it goes from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m. to 4 a.m., its denizens seem increasingly skinny and haunted and desperate, so that it looks like a Soviet breadline in Hervé Léger. Upstairs in the balconies, flickering trails of light appear periodically as hostesses in tiny black costumes carry bottles of champagne, each one spiked with a sparkler, signifying the extinguishing of thousands of dollars.

"Last night was good, right?" says Tim the next day, surrounded by a crime scene of hangover food at the Miami airport. "It was cool that Pharrell came. Though I feel so fucking awkward when someone like Dave is like, 'Oh, here's Pharrell.' And it becomes a thing to say hi. And then we're like, 'Oh the weather's good,' for twenty minutes. But the energy was pretty good."

"You only got one bra, though," Felix points out.

"I know, sucks. It landed on the tempo too. Sped the fucking track up. I didn't even notice."

He looks down at his phone. In Tim's itinerant existence, the Internet is the one place he can reliably be found, and what he sees is not always flattering. "Ha," he says after a few minutes. A DJ called Funkagenda has posted a long, personal message to Facebook. "It's like this sob story," he says. "He's like 'I'm an alcoholic, all the shows where I've been really drunk I have been sorry for that.' He just wants people to be like, 'Oh my god oh poor you, it's like boo-hoo, it's stupid.' " He turns to me. "If you know who he is, he's like an asshole," he explains.

Tim's beef with Funkagenda started at Coachella, after Tim's managers had his set time changed so Tim wouldn't be competing with the holograms of Snoop Dogg and Tupac. "And in order to do that, they had to change everyone else's set," he says. "And all these people trash-talked me on Twitter, and Funkagenda was like 'Oh, that's like the time he played with Deadmau5, he didn't have the same production as Deadmau5, so he refused to go out.' And that's wrong, I didn't not want to go out. My management said, 'We were promised full production and we didn't get it so we're not going to play unless we get full production.' So he starts trash-talking me, like I'm a prima donna, so he's just a dick."

"He is a dick," Felix confirms.

"I thought of the perfect response," Tim says. "I want to write 'Cool story bro.' "

"Ash isn't going to like it," Felix warns.

"It's very obvious I am being sarcastic if I say 'Cool Story Bro,' " Tim protests, typing.

A few minutes pass. No response. "You're just sitting there hitting refresh aren't you?" Felix asks.

"Someone said, 'Don't be a dick,' " Tim says, laughing uneasily. "It's not that bad if you are saying 'Cool Story Bro.' Is it? It's funny." But his confidence is wavering. "I'm going to remove it before it escalates any further," he mumbles as we board the plane.

Tim does not want to be seen as a dick. He would also like not to care about Internet haters. "The hate started very quickly, because I'm young and I got into it very quickly, and a lot of people just find it hard to be happy," he says later, sitting at the Joule hotel in Dallas, drinking a cappuccino before his 10 p.m. set. "They get like jealous very easily, maybe. In the beginning, I used to care," he says. "I don't really care anymore."

But in the next breath he's off talking about how it drives him crazy when people call him a sellout for making a remix for Madonna: "How can you see that as selling out? She is a legend. Like fucking like Michael Jackson, when he was alive, people would have been like, 'OMG, that's like selling out.' Now people would think, 'Oh, that's so cool.' Because he died ."

And the people who gripe about his modeling for Ralph Lauren? "I always wear, like, checkered shirts," he says, plucking at his flannel. "Well, actually, this is striped, but all the photos are exactly what I usually wear."

And as for the people who say he is too mainstream: "I have always been mainstream. It's so weird, because I don't see it as something negative at all. So many people see it as something negative."

So yeah, he cares. He knows he shouldn't. Maybe it's the Swedish in him. "People in Sweden are very conscious of what people are saying about you," he says. "That's what it is. I'm much better about it than I used to be. But it's hard to switch a button and make it go away, even though I want to, because it's so stupid."

There's another reason, too. "I guess I think like deep inside, I know that it's like, it's a different kind of performing, it's not really... You're not performing like a guitar player or a singer is performing, you know what I mean? So it's weird to be in the same type setup as one of those. 'Cause I'm not really doing much, you know, like technically it's not that hard ."

He shrugs it off. "You can't do anything about it," he says. "I'm where I want to be."

Another black car to another greenroom, another show: The Lights All Night festival is a blur of kids in Fun Fur and neon going, "Are you rolling?," mesmerizing one another with light-up gloves. Tim has never taken the Drug Formerly Known As Ecstasy, which is sort of odd since MDMA is to EDM what cocaine was to disco. "I mean, I want to take it," he says the next day, eating a layover hamburger on the way to Vegas. "But I'm sort of afraid of anything that makes you feel out of control." Even though the kids in Dallas are his age, it's hard to imagine him among them crowd-surfing in a neon tankini. "Yeah, I kind of missed all that," he says. "Because when I was 18, I couldn't go out, and then when I could go out..." he trails off.

"He gets mobbed," Felix says.

"I don't really dance, anyway," Tim says. Other than his friends from high school, who he sees sparingly—"I help them get laid," he laughs—most of his time is spent around adults.

"You're sticking with us through New Year's Eve?" Felix asks me. "You'll see what we're all about."

"We'll do some showers," Tim says.

"We'll get ten bottles of champagne and we spray it, we have a war," Felix clarifies, seeing my blank look.

But Tim is having second thoughts. "It's a bit douchey," he says. "It's very douchey."

"Just blame it on me," Felix offers magnanimously. "I'll be a douche."

New Year's Eve in Vegas, and the anticipation in the air is palpable. Gangs of twentysomethings rove the hotel with giant water bottles, hydrating. This holiday is an endurance test, it must be trained for. The same is true for Team Avicii. Last night's show at Marquee and the subsequent hotel suite party was merely practice for tonight's sprint to Anaheim and back. At 6 p.m., Felix, Tim, and his booking agent, David Brady, gather in the lobby of the Wynn hotel, along with Jared Garcia, a promoter from XS who is coming along to make sure he'll get back in time, and a camera guy who is filming it all for reasons no one seems clear about.

"Look at the car Jesse bought," David Brady says on the way to the airport, twisting around from the front seat of the car to show Tim an iPhone picture of the sports car recently purchased by the managing partner at XS. EDM has been good to the clubs: XS made over $80 million last year, according to the Wynn, a figure that broke revenue records.

"Look at Jesse last night," Tim says, showing the car an iPhone picture of the same promoter, passed out drunk on his couch.

"Did you shave his eyebrows? The rule is when someone gets drunk you shave their eyebrows," says Felix. "When we get out of the club, let's go and TP his car," he adds, as we board the private plane. Everyone agrees this is an awesome idea.

White Wonderland, the festival in Anaheim, is organized by Insomniac, the same people behind the Electric Daisy Carnival, and it is similarly over the top. Four dancers in glittery snowball costumes rush past us on the way to the green room, which is decorated with Christmas lights and contains Emily Goldberg, Tim's girlfriend. Tall and blonde and startlingly normal, she and Tim started dating exclusively about a year ago, after Tim had his come-to-Jesus moment with his pancreas. ("I used to have a bunch of girls, girls that I liked," he'd said earlier.) They share a dog, Bear, who is running around on the floor like a feather duster with legs.

"Bear, it's your daddy," she says. "I'm not sure she recognizes you."

Tim scoops the dog up and walks over to the window that looks down at the main floor of the convention center, where rave kids dressed in the event's requisite all-white are trickling in. "Is it sold out?" he asks.

"About 98 percent," says David Brady.

"What happened?" he says nervously.

Felix, sensing panic, jumps in. "About 500 people just walked in," he says. "They're coming in waves."

"Wow, people really went all out," he observes. "Americans are really good at partying," he says, turning away. "Swedish people would be too cool for this kind of thing. We're, um...what do you call it? Emily, do you know which word I use?"

"Douchey?" Emily says.

There are 24,000 people there by the time he goes on, and afterward, he is sweaty and giddy. "They were really into that new one, the one that goes, brn-nrew-nrew nrew nrew nrew nam," he says as the van takes off for LAX, accompanied by a police escort David Brady hired to run all the red lights.

"Faster! Faster!" Tim urges playfully as the van screeches around a curve and everyone laughs. But the mood grinds to a halt at LAX along with the car, which is detained by security. "What the fuck?" he says, peering out at the airport officials sweeping under the car with their flashlights. "Why is this happening?" he demands of Felix. "Didn't you call ahead?"

Ten minutes later, we're on the plane, but Tim stays quiet for the rest of the trip, moving the cardiograms of song around on his laptop.

By 2 a.m., XS has given itself over to full New Year's Eve abandon. Kathy Hilton, Paris's mom, is dancing on a platform next to the stage, and girls with small dresses and hungry eyes are jammed into the velvet-roped area behind the DJ booth. Felix, who's been doing his usual business of lighting cigarillos and pouring drinks, has been attempting to keep them away from Tim, but at some point a skinny brunette attached herself to Felix and is hanging from his neck like a scarf. Nearby, Emily is swigging champagne and watching the scene. "Is this totally insane to you?" she types on her phone, showing me the screen. "I see it all the time and I still think it's completely excessive and disgusting."

With the brunette in his blind spot, Felix doesn't notice an XS promoter sneaking up, a bottle of Dom Pérignon in his hand. Seconds later he is batting foam out of his eyes, rivulets of $900 champagne streaming down his bald head, calling for reinforcements. A train of bottle-bearing waitresses marches in like the cavalry.

One hand on his headphones, the other on the fader, Tim is too focused on keeping the crowd jumping in front of him to notice the douchiness going on behind him. He is in what Felix calls "his zone," where tension and fear and anxiety are obliterated by the pounding of the bass and the swell of the melody, and all that remains is the need to keep it going, to keep the energy up. He lifts a hand in the air, unselfconsciously mouthing the lyrics to his biggest hit: Ooooh sometimes I get a good feeling.

He's only contracted to play for two hours, but 3 a.m. comes and then 4 a.m., and Tim is still going. He burns through everything in his repertoire, some generic crowd-pleasers, the tracks he's testing out from the album he's working on, which will feature real instruments and "a lot of talented people," he'd said earlier. "Like people with real talent." He is so successful at making the audience feel like they can't leave that many of them stay well past the time they should. By four thirty, the girls shimmying on tables have come to resemble Depression-era marathon dancers, all bloody blisters and smeared eye makeup. One of the security guards is taking out a girl doubled over in a wheelchair, puke-stained hair grazing her knees.

Through it all, Tim just keeps shaking his hips and pounding his hand in the air. He doesn't even see that right behind him, someone has taped Emily's legs together with electrical tape, leaving her flapping on the platform like a drunk mermaid, a bottle of Dom Pérignon clutched in her hand, or that when she starts to cry, it is Felix who bends down and untapes her. It is 5 a.m., and the air is heavy with exhaustion and sudden sobriety, but Avicii puts on another track, and everyone rallies, as he knows they will. He just isn't ready for it to end.

Jessica Pressler is a contributing editor for New York magazine.

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Becoming a Tour Manager: Essential Skills and Responsibilities

• Published: August 5, 2023
• By: Yellowbrick

Tour managers hold the key to orchestrating flawless concert tours, bringing together every detail with finesse. In this article, we explore the crucial organizational and planning skills required for success in this dynamic role. From adept communication and financial management to the ability to adapt and problem-solve under pressure, tour managers must wear multiple hats.

Organization and Planning Skills

Tour managers are responsible for planning every detail of a concert tour, from booking venues and arranging transportation to managing budgets and coordinating with artists and their teams. To be a successful tour manager, you’ll need excellent organizational and planning skills, as well as the ability to multitask and prioritize competing demands.

Communication and Interpersonal Skills

Tour managers must be effective communicators, able to negotiate with venues and vendors, and coordinate with artists and their teams. Strong interpersonal skills are also essential, as tour managers must be able to build and maintain relationships with clients, vendors, and other industry professionals.

Financial Management Skills

Tour managers are responsible for managing budgets and ensuring that tours stay within financial constraints. This requires strong financial management skills, including the ability to create and manage budgets, negotiate contracts, and track expenses.

Flexibility and Adaptability

Touring can be unpredictable, and tour managers must be prepared to adapt to changing circumstances at a moment’s notice. This requires flexibility, adaptability, and the ability to think on your feet.

Knowledge of the Music Industry

Tour managers must have a thorough understanding of the music industry, including the various roles and responsibilities of artists, managers, agents, and record labels. This knowledge is essential for negotiating contracts, coordinating with industry professionals, and ensuring that tours run smoothly.

Attention to Detail

Tour managers must pay close attention to detail, ensuring that every aspect of a tour is planned and executed flawlessly. This includes everything from booking hotels and transportation to coordinating soundchecks and managing merchandise sales.

Problem-Solving Skills

Touring can be unpredictable, and tour managers must be able to solve problems quickly and efficiently. This requires strong problem-solving skills, as well as the ability to remain calm under pressure.

Education and Career Path

While there is no set career path for becoming a tour manager, most professionals in this field have a background in the music industry or related fields. Many tour managers start their careers as interns or assistants, working their way up through the industry over time.

While a college degree is not always required to become a tour manager, many professionals in this field have completed degrees in music business, entertainment management, or a related field. These programs provide students with a foundation in the music industry, as well as practical skills in business management, marketing, and event planning.

Key Takeaways

If you’re interested in pursuing a career as a tour manager, there are several essential skills and responsibilities that you should be aware of, including organization and planning skills, communication and interpersonal skills, financial management skills, flexibility and adaptability, knowledge of the music industry, attention to detail, and problem-solving skills.

While there is no set career path for becoming a tour manager, most professionals in this field have a background in the music industry or related fields. If you’re interested in pursuing a career as a tour manager or want to learn more about the music industry, consider taking the NYU x Billboard | Music Industry Essentials online course and certificate program. This program provides students with a comprehensive understanding of the music industry, as well as practical skills in business management, marketing, and event planning.

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Ciara and russell wilson launch boutique management company.

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Ciara and Russell Wilson are entering into a new partnership. The couple is joining forces with talent manager, Jason Weinberg, to launch a boutique management company that will rep talent spanning the worlds of sports and entertainment, Deadline reports.

“The three of us are excited to come together to find and develop the next, future generation of talent,” the Wilsons and Weinberg said in a joint statement released on Thursday (Oct. 10). “We each bring a unique expertise and voice to our respective fields and want to collectively bring that knowledge to representing a select few artists and athletes.”

Ciara also shared a photo of herself and her husband alongside Weinberg with the caption, “honored to be a part of this dream team with  @DangeRussWilson  and Jason Weinberg to help others succeed in their Sports and Entertainment goals.”

  View this post on Instagram   So honored to be a part of this dream team with @DangeRussWilson and Jason Weinberg to help others succeed in their Sports and Entertainment goals. A post shared by Ciara (@ciara) on Oct 10, 2019 at 12:33pm PDT

The Seattle Seahawks quarterback shared the same announcement on Instagram. “It all starts with a dream,” he wrote . “Grateful for those who helped mine come to life. Now time for others. Fired up to Partner with  @Ciara  and Jason Weinberg and our teams to help others dreams come true in Sports & Entertainment.”

The company will be an extension of Wilson’s West2East  brand management company, and is aimed at working with “a select few top athletes and entertainers who want to inspire the world.”

Weinberg is a founding partner in Untitled Entertainment, which manages top names in entertainment including Britney Spears, Madonna, Naomi Campbell, and Ciara and Russell in film and TV. The pair’s collaboration with Weinberg is separate from their previously formed management relationship.

The duo has been building quite the business portfolio. In August, it was announced that the Grammy-winning singer and NFL player became part owners of the Seattle Sounders Major League Soccer team, and launched the production company , Why Not You.

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Musicians are barely getting a slice of music industry revenue, largely eating off of live performances instead. For ’Tour Tales,’ we dig into the rider requests, delayed shows, diligent preparation, and future of touring by talking with the multitude of people that move behind the scenes. Record executives, photographers, tour managers, artists, and more all break down what goes into touring and why it’s still so vital to the livelihood of your favorite artists. What happens on tour stays on ‘Tour Tales.’

DJ Trauma has livened up shows as Dave Chappelle ’s official DJ for nearly seven years. Over that time, he’s seen how the greatest living comedian’s shows change lives.

“He invited all these people to come to Ohio. We’re all in a pandemic, but we have the mobile COVID truck, so we test people as soon as they land,” Trauma told REVOLT. “People are able to be themselves and be regular. Common, Questlove, Monie Love, Talib Kweli, and Erykah Badu were in town.”

In this installment of “Tour Tales,” the DJ takes us inside Chappelle’s famous private jam sessions, working with Tiffany Haddish on her shows and much more. Read below!

You were Ciara’s DJ for Reggae Sumfest 2005 before her first concert tour. What was that experience like?

It was the same day as Birthday Bash in Atlanta and we were all bummed we were going to miss Birthday Bash (laughs). We took a private jet to Jamaica and landed in the morning. We chilled all morning and our showtime wasn’t until maybe 1 a.m. We were like the first group and people were still coming in. By the time we finished performing, it was packed. Akon was the headliner. After the show , we went back to the dressing room, grabbed our stuff, and went to the airport because we had to fly to Seattle. We got to the airport, changed clothes at the airport, got on the jet, and we were supposed to fly back to Atlanta before flying commercial to Seattle. We were supposed to perform at The Gorge [Amphitheater]. I fall asleep on the plane. I wake up and I hear, ‘Cuba’s not going to let us fly over them.’ We have to turn back because we don’t have enough fuel to make it.

I’m like, ‘What?’ I fall asleep again and then we land in Jamaica again. It was the middle of the night when we were leaving, so when we get back, it’s about three in the morning. There are no lights on at the airport . We were supposed to be the last flight out, so they turned everything off. We land and the police come rushing onto the tarmac with guns out . Our tour manager is trying to explain that we took off and had to turn back around. They wouldn’t let us off the plane for two to three hours in July in Jamaica with engines off, no A/C. Baking.

How was Ciara dealing with that?

I think back then she followed the lead of other people. She was young. So, when that happened, her tour manager told us to stay inside so we all stayed inside. We were all half-sleep trying to figure out what was going on. We didn’t get off the plane until six in the morning. That was a tiny jet. It was an SUV with wings. There were four dancers, Ciara, myself, security, her tour manager . So, there were at least eight of us on this plane. Apparently, somebody messed up on the paperwork, but we sorted that out. Unfortunately, we were too late to make our commercial flight. So, a decision had to be made on if we’re going to make this show at The Gorge or pay for a big private jet. At first, they were thinking of saying she couldn’t make the show , but it was a radio show (KUBE 93.3 Summer Jam Show). It would’ve been a big issue. We ended up getting a plush G-3 private jet. We flew to Seattle, jumped in the car, drove 30 minutes, and then pretty much got onstage.

Ciara (left) with DJ Trauma (right)

You’ve been the official DJ for Dave Chappelle since late 2013. How did you even link up with him?

On my 40th birthday, I had a big party in New York . A few days later, I find out one of my good friends, Bianca Mendez — BB gun— was in town in New York City. I bumped into my man Corey Smith when Bianca and I had brunch at the Soho House. Two weeks later, Corey hit me on a Wednesday asking, “Yo, can you do these shows for Dave from Thursday through Sunday?” I was on the “Coors Light Search For The Coldest Tour” with Ice Cube, Bun B, DJ Drama. I had to do that in Charlotte on Thursday. So, he said he’d get [Cannon] to do Thursday’s show and I’d do the rest.

They were doing two shows Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in Atlanta. This is 2013. I look up the show and I see “Dave Chappelle” and I go, “Oh s**t, this is going to be crazy.” I show up and they tell me, “Just play. You’ll have to announce the different comedians, find songs they want to come out to and find out how they want you to introduce them.” I never met Dave, I just think he likes old school hip hop . I’m Mos Def, Biggie, ‘Pac, The Fugees, Talib Kweli, all of that. I’m going ham. What I didn’t know is they had my set streaming into the room. We talked after and he said, “Yo, your set is crazy. You’re killing it.” I’m hype.

How did that turn into you becoming his official DJ?

We were in Atlanta and, at the time, I was the king of Atlanta. I was doing all of the clubs. I bring him to the hot club on Friday, we have a section set up for him. He comes out on Saturday night to a show I’m deejaying at and we have it all set up for him. On Sunday night, there was only one club open. But, I knew the DJ . Even after the club closed, we kicked it there until about five in the morning. I was trying to show him a great time in Atlanta. After that run, I tried to stay in touch, but I didn’t want to just call Dave Chappelle. He had a bad show in Connecticut (August 29, 2013) and I called his tour manager the next day. He was like, “Yo, can you come to Pittsburg the next day?” It was at [First Niagara Pavilion on August 30, 2013] and it was a really mixed crowd . I’m rocking it and making sure I play s**t everyone knows. Towards the end, I stop the music and say, “I feel like we’re all friends. Y’all want to see Dave Chappelle and we’re all friends in here.” Then, I dropped the Cheers theme song. Imagine 20,000 people singing that (laughs).

I didn’t get to do the rest of that tour, but a month later I get a call saying. “Can you come to Las Vegas? We’re going to go to the Floyd Mayweather vs. Canelo Alvarez fight (September 14, 2013). That’s when I met his personal crew and everyone he hangs out with. I deejayed his afterparty. We did an afterparty of the tour in L.A. and I murdered that party. Fast forward, and they were doing four shows at the First Avenue Club in Minneapolis, Minnesota (November 11, 2013 to November 14, 2013) where Prince filmed Purple Rain at. I go in there either Wednesday or Thursday night, and I demolish the crowd . In between shows, Dave was like, “Yo, would you consider being my tour DJ?” I was like, “Hell yeah. Let’s go.”

What is Dave like on tour?

If he’s doing something, his crew is doing something. If he’s staying at the Four Seasons, everyone on the tour is staying at the Four Seasons. That’s the type of person he is and how he gets down. He’s the only person I’ve been on tour who’s like that. Everybody else I’ve been on tour with would stay at four or five-star hotel and we’re staying at some regular s**t.

He’s had some amazing musical guests at his shows. Who was the hardest to get?

I’m never really on that side of things, but I don’t feel like anyone was super hard to get. For Kendrick [Lamar], we had to say it was a surprise show because we couldn’t announce it. De La Soul couldn’t do it because they had a tour in New York that was too close together. It was more stuff like that. Dave has this energy that people get drawn into. He’s a genuine person who is a real artist and people respect that.

How do you adapt to deejaying for surprise guests at a Dave Chappelle show?

When we did the private Comedian’s Ball event last summer, it was like, “Yo, Busta Rhymes is here,.” So, I drop “Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See.” Then, Busta was like, “Q-Tip is in here,” so I drop “Scenario.” I’m trying to skip to Q-Tip’s part and Tip is like, “Skip to my part. Skip to my part.” We had a time when we did a show in Denver and John Mayer just pulled up. He and John are friends. John performed at the main show and had a jam session at the afterparty. They were like, “Trauma, just play joints.” Dave was hosting and John was playing guitar over everything I played. We’ve done so many. Just the one we had [a week before July 14] was epic. He invited all these people to come to Ohio. We’re all in a pandemic, but we have the mobile COVID truck, so we test people as soon as they land. People are able to be themselves and be regular. Common, Questlove, Monie Love, Talib Kweli, and Erykah Badu were in town.

So, Kweli and Common are here, so I played “Get By” and then I played “Respiration.” When Common jumps on and everyone goes crazy and Questlove gets on the drums. So, Common goes, “Trauma, drop another one for me.” So, I drop “The Light” and I was telling them, “Yo, I don’t have the hook.” Erykah was like, “I’ll sing the hook.” I drop “The Corner” next. Then, for the next hour and a half, it’s like celebrity karaoke. There was a part where I dropped the Isley Brothers and Erykah Badu sang “Between The Sheets.” Cipha Sounds was there too and was like, “Follow my lead.” Jon Hamm was there. He was like, “Jon Hamm and Michelle Wolf don’t know any of these songs. You need to play some white s**t.” So, I dropped Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing.” Everyone loses their s**t and Jon Hamm walks on stage to start talking to the people and everyone starts singing that s**t. I ended my set with Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Now, imagine everyone I mentioned just moshing onstage. Monie Love almost knocked Dave off the goddamn stage she was so hype. I’ve never seen someone able to cultivate those moments with such a wide range of people.

You also DJ for Tiffany Haddish. How’s deejaying for her?

It’s fun, too. She has a whole different vibe, but has a crossover vibe . Her crowd comes there ready to turn up. During my DJ set, these people are dancing in the aisles. I don’t even have to say anything. They’re ready to get lit (laughs). I moved to L.A. five years ago and I’m sort of like the comedy DJ now. I did a show in L.A. and met her, but she’s also been around Dave a bunch. She had a bad show in Miami [on December 31, 2018] and she was like, “Yo, we need a DJ.” They called me the next day. I talked to Dave and he was like, “It’s cool.” So, I started touring with her , too.

What is Tiffany’s personality offstage?

She’s cool people. She’s very generous and straight forward. She’s always supportive. If I’m deejaying at a club after the show, she’s going to kick it . If we don’t have any shows, then we’re going to play spades. She’ll talk mad s**t playing Spades and I have to spank them every now and then (laughs). It’s a very family unit type vibe.

What are her shows like?

Her crowds are 50/50 Black and white. Dave’s are more 70% white, 30% Black. Tiffany’s crowd comes to have fun. With Dave’s crowd, it’s a lot of guys. Her crowd is all women ready to have a girl’s night out. For her shows , I play more fun songs they can sing along to. I’ll go as far as play V.I.C.’s “The Wobble” and they’ll do the wobble in the aisles. It’s a totally different vibe than Dave’s shows.

What are some other fan reactions you remember from her fans?

There are those people who go crazy just to meet her. But, at every show, her meet and greets are to raise money for her foundation that buys suitcases for foster kids. So, when they have to travel from house to house, they have luggage instead of putting their clothes in garbage bags. Her fans are more endeared to her. They see her heart . I feel Tiffany is all heart and that’s what people feed off of.

8 Keys to Becoming a Successful Tour Manager

Managing tours can be wildly difficult. It’s not for the faint of heart.

The days and nights can be long, and it’s easy to become discouraged out on the road.

But if you follow a set of guiding principles, your job will become easier, people will respect you more, your team will achieve great results, and you’ll go farther in your career.

I’ve been a tour manager for the last 12 years, and I want to share with you 8 things that helped me succeed along the way.

1. Secure Your Job

First, it’s important to ​ secure your job ​.

I always tell young tour managers, “You can’t effectively take care of other people unless you take care of yourself first.”

And that starts the moment you get contacted about managing a tour.

You need to know exactly what you’re expected to do and how much you’re going to be compensated if you complete the job and do it well.

This concept of knowing how much you’ll be paid may seem elementary to you, but I’ve seen so many touring crew (including myself) get so caught up in how cool the job is that they forget to clarify how much money they’re going to make.

If you jump into managing a tour without first clarifying your job description and compensation, you’re setting yourself up for future disappointment and possible resentment - forcing you to regret working your dream job.

2. Learn the Artist’s Vision

The second key to becoming a successful tour manager is to ​ learn the artist’s vision for the tour.

You can better prepare for a tour when you know the overall vision.

This includes the whole touring process - travel styles, production, personnel, spending, culture, vibe, etc.

And I recommend learning all of this before you start doing any planning, budgeting or advancing.

When you learn the artist's vision, you’ll be able to make quick and easy decisions about what has to happen in order to execute each show.

Plus, you’ll be able to anticipate what your artist needs before they even realize they need it.

3. Communicate Well

The third key to becoming a successful tour manager is to always ​ communicate well ​. Great tour managers are great communicators. On the phone, over email, and in person.

There are three general guiding principles that I like to follow when communicating in my job: be quick, be concise, and be considerate.

These principles are especially important to remember while sending emails, but they also carry into other means of communication as well.

First, let’s talk about being ​ quick ​.

Respond quickly when someone reaches out to you.

We’re working in a fast paced, constantly changing industry and our communication should reflect that.

No, you don’t always have to be on your phone or in front of a computer, but don’t neglect your email or texts about an important subject.

The longer you wait to communicate about a problem, the bigger it can grow. Second, be ​ concise ​. Get to the point. Be direct.

You’re going to be very busy on the road, and the people you’ll be talking with are just as busy, if not busier.

Managers, agents, and labels have rosters full of artists that have different schedules and teams to attend to.

So be concise, but don’t leave out anything important - which may seem contradictory.

You’ll need to learn to filter through the information, communicating only what is essential.

It’s also important to learn how to read and write emails without tone.

Being short ≠ being rude.

Most people aren’t being rude when sending an email that says a single sentence like, “Please send.”

Being concise helps us maximize our time. Sometimes that means sending a really short email.

But being concise does not give you permission to intentionally be a jerk.

Even if you’re at odds with someone you’re working with, rude communication is always looked down upon and will never fare well for you.

Third, be ​ considerate ​.

Think about these things when communicating to your team:

Who is my audience?

Does this person need to know all of this information?

How should I communicate with this person?

Consider who you’re communicating with. Are you communicating with your crew? Your manager? Your artist? A venue representative?

For example, you may only need to communicate a schedule to your crew, but you may want to communicate every detail to your manager.

You may want to make sure your artist’s personal email isn’t copied onto a chain with the venue staff when going over production details.

One of the most important things to learn when communicating is how to communicate with your artist.

You need to learn how ​ they ​ like communicating.

Every artist and team you’ll work with will communicate differently. So you’ll need to learn how everyone likes to communicate and then adhere to those standards.

Tour managers and production managers are typically expected to be better communicators than other types of touring professionals.

But no matter what job you have on the road, if you communicate well with all parties, people will love working with you.

Remember to be quick, be concise, and be considerate in all of your future communication.

4. Follow Up

Key number four, ​ follow up on ​ all ​ show details. You can’t assume promoters, production personnel, and venue representatives will always know what you need.

I didn’t learn this until I made a ​ huge ​ mistake.

About a year into my career as a tour manager, I got a call to go on the road with an artist.

On my first day as the new tour manager with this artist, we showed up around 10AM to headline a large US festival.

Everyone was excited because it was a warm, gorgeous day and we were about to play for over 10,000 people.

Then the stage manager brought me some bad news. There were no instruments on the stage, backstage, or waiting for us on a truck.

We had flown to this show, and typically when you fly to a show you have to rent backline locally.

I realized in that moment I had forgotten to follow up on ordering backline for the show.

Through some quick and creative problem solving, we found the right instruments and saved the show.

But unfortunately, my first weekend with a new artist quickly became my last weekend with that artist.

If only I had followed up on the backline order.

Not following up on that ONE detail cost me my job, over $20,000 of income that summer, and an important business relationship.

Don’t make the same mistake I did.

Even if everything has already been confirmed weeks in advance, following up on all the details 24-48 hours before the show will help keep small items from falling through the cracks.

5. Stay Organized

The fifth key to becoming a successful tour manager is to ​ stay organized. A huge part of being a great tour manager is knowing how to organize the flow of many different types of information.

At times you might feel like you are drinking from a fire hydrant with the amount of information being thrown at you, but you have to stay organized.

There are many different project management apps you can use to stay organized, but I recommend simply using Google Sheets.

It’s free, it’s customizable, it’s collaborative, and it’s in the cloud - meaning you always have the information you need at your fingertips.

In case you’ve got an event coming up and you don’t have a good advance sheet, I want to share mine with you.

I’ve organized arena-level tours, mini-festivals, single shows, and live stream events all with the same sheet.

Click here , download it, and customize it how you want by clicking File > Make a copy.

6. Keep a Great Attitude

Key number six, ​ keep a great attitude! No one wants to be around someone who’s a drag on the road.

In our ​ How to be a Tour Manager ​ course, I teach about what it means to be a good “hang” on the road.

Touring is extremely interpersonal. You’re always surrounded by people you have to live and work with.

How you interact with others and how you respond to tough situations on the road will ultimately determine whether or not you will be hired again by that artist.

Touring professionals who are in extreme demand typically have good attitudes and are enjoyable to be around.

I said it earlier, touring is not for the faint of heart. There will be days on the road where you will just want to scream (or cry).

Learning how to be extremely optimistic and keep your stress levels in check even in tough situations will be a major key to your future successes on the road.

7. Don’t be afraid of conflict

You may strive to always have a good attitude, but ​ you can’t be afraid of conflict ​. That’s key number seven.

I’ll be the first to admit, engaging in conflict is not fun. But it’s absolutely necessary! Because nothing great can ever be done without engaging in some form of conflict.

You can’t hike up a mountain, lose weight, win a ball game, learn something new, or manage a great tour without engaging and navigating through some type of conflict.

The word conflict has a bad connotation; it gets a bad rap. But did you know that conflict within a team can actually be ​ healthy ​?

If you’ve built trust with your team and your team respects each other, conflict becomes more than just an argument.

With trust present, conflict ultimately becomes the pursuit of truth or the pursuit of the best possible outcome in a scenario.

So if you are in pursuit of the best possible outcome in a scenario, why wouldn’t you confront someone if they’re hurting the vision or the goal of the team?

Why wouldn’t you have a conversation with someone who is not helping your team (or tour) achieve great results?

Learning how to actively address conflict head-on rather than sweeping it under the rug is going to help you overcome many tough situations in every part of your life, and it’s going to help you manage a more successful tour.

8. Continually Improve Yourself

Lastly, you have to ​ continually be improving yourself ​.

Why do you need to continually improve yourself?

Because ​you are a product.

You get paid in exchange for what you’re worth and for the services you provide.

And if you want to keep getting hired and paid more money on the road, you have to continually be improving the ​ value ​ of the product or service that you provide.

For example, say you only know how to push cases and pack a truck. Well, you’re only economically worth about $15 bucks an hour.

And if you know how to set up and tune instruments properly, you’re worth a little more.

If you know how to lead a crew, you’re worth a bit more.

And if you can manage a tour, mix a show, lead a crew, set up instruments, and make sure every piece of gear is in top working condition every night, your value will keep going up and up and up.

You as a product become way more valuable because you are able to provide more services.

You save the artist money because they don’t have to bring out multiple people on the road to do all the jobs. You’ve got it covered.

You save the artist money because you keep all their gear in working order.

You give your team peace of mind because they know they can count on you to lead them on a tour.

And when you can prove that you save the artist lots of money, they’ll have no problem increasing your pay.

Because to them, working with YOU is a great investment, rather than working with someone else who doesn’t think like you.

I’m sure you get the picture here.

No matter what job you have, you are a product on the market, and you should continually be improving your skills and services to increase your value.

Once again, here are 8 Keys to Becoming a Successful Tour Manager:

Secure your job.

Learn the artist’s vision for the tour.

Communicate well.

Always follow up on ​ all ​ show details.

Stay organized.

Keep a great attitude.

Don’t be afraid of conflict.

Continually improve yourself.

A Great Way to Improve Your Skills

If you’re ready to up your game and learn how to lead your team on the road, join Tour Management Made Easy . It’s a program for young tour managers with bi-weekly coaching sessions and access to our ​ How to be a Tour Manag ​ er course. It could be the best thing you’ve ever given yourself.

Whether you’re a current touring professional or a student dreaming of becoming a tour manager, Tour Management Made Easy will help you gain the knowledge, the tools, and the confidence to be able to hit the road and successfully manage your next tour.

When you enroll in the program, not only will you immediately start gaining a new skill that’s valuable to artists on the road, but you’re also going to learn tips, tricks, and step-by-step processes that will make people love working with you. Plus, you’ll be surrounded by a community of people who are growing together.

Click here to learn more