Hard Day's Day.......

Yesterday was one of those " emotional rollercoasters " so beloved of the numpties who appear on various reality TV shows and who wouldn't be able to muster an original phrase between them as long as their arses point downwards. However, far from being some kind of half-cocked dawning of self-awareness, it was a real-life visit to the opposite ends of the spectrum of this business that we call show. The morning had started very brightly indeed....a ring around the theatre box offices in the tour had revealed some very encouraging sales figures indeed, and it was with a renewed sense of optimism that I got stuck in to the nuts and bolts of the day. In fact, so stuck in did I get that I realised I was in danger of becoming a sink-estate mum, as I was still sitting in my little home office in dressing gown and monogrammed sleep - shorts at half - past one in the afternoon. One speedy shower and a change of togs later, I headed out to the car with spirits buoyed by the info I'd picked up that morning. Now, one harsh reality of going on tour is that there's an absolute shitload of little things that need doing / buying / arranging / cancelling etc, and as the band and Arthur are currently freezing their nadgers off in Finland, I was the man " on point ", as they say. One of the things that needed sorting was to look at some new suit bags for the band's stage gear ( who says there's no glamour in rock 'n' roll ?! ) so I duly scooted down to Bedford to get a couple of these. Next port of call was Le Mark Adhesives in St Ives, Cambs, purveyors of fine gaffa and insulating tape to Her Majesty The Queen ( probably ). Anyone involved with the technical side of touring will tell you that the entire "live" music industry is held together with gaffa tape. Have you seen the huge great set that Muse play on which looks like three glass tower blocks ?? Gaffa tape, all of it. U2's " Claw " arena stage set ? Gaffa. Take That's " Circus " outdoor show ??? Gaffa again. Gaffa tape is the music business equivalent of the sport's trainers " magic sponge "....it doesn't look pretty and it won't last long, but it's BLOODY effective in the short term. "So where does insulating tape come in ?" I hear you ask ???? (Oh....you DIDN'T ask....). This simply ties up all your coiled cables so you don't have the spaghettifest from Hell next time you open the cable trunk. ANYWAY, I needed to go and get a load of this stuff, so I duly headed off to Le Mark, despite their efforts to foil me by having moved their premises without saying anything ! So far, so mundane....and then we get the call from the bank saying that the financial plan we'd requested from them had been knocked back, and not even by a human, either....by some random bloody computer ! Suddenly I'm on the aforementioned emotional rollercoaster, but this time I'm hurtling down the steepest slope, desperately trying to hang on to the bar and my breakfast. This is a BIG blow; cash flow on the tour is going to be absolutely vital to keep the whole thing moving, and in one fell swoop we have to totally re-think the whole process. Don't you just LOVE bankers ?? A friend of mine once said that a bank was " someone who gave you an umbrella and then took it away when it started to rain ", which I thought was dead clever and have been trying ( unsuccessfully ) to claim credit for ever since. Anyway, so we've had this kick in the biffins and I'm trying to put a positive spin on things. It doesn't work, but a chat on the phone with a couple of the other guys after their soundcheck in Finland does wonders for the old confidence, and I'm soon raring to go again. The rest of the day holds even more excitement; lighting guru Martin Rodwell is actually going to be staying with me for the first week or so of the tour as we're trying to keep our hotel costs down, and I've suddenly realised that unless he fancies the dog bed or the garage ,we're going to have to sort him out somewhere to sleep....we only moved in to the house a fortnight ago and although it's a LOT better than it was, we're still only living in a couple of rooms and are constantly searching for lost items, like the cat. As such the day finishes with a trek to B & Q, but to my horror they no longer do the
" Instant Room Decoration Kit....Just Add Water "! anymore. There's nothing else for it...Paint is going to have to occur, furniture too, and maybe even wallpaper. Said items are duly purchased, and being the ever-watchful old pro that I am I take the opportunity whilst in there to buy some bits for repairing the hanging rail in the wardrobe flight case. We now have ONE DAY to create a habitable room for Rodders, so it's out with the stepladder and the worry beads, I think.....!

The joys of flex......

So as Tuesday February 2nd and our first show at Dartford Orchard Theatre draws inexorably closer, things are finally starting to click into place ( or at least clunk a little less loudly ). We've actually decided that we're calling this an
" organic " tour, not only because it sounds kind of cool and " green " but also because it's flexible ( sometimes also known as "making it up as we go along " ) Actually there IS a slight element of truth in there; on what we might call
" normal " tours where there's a financial underwrite in place from a record company or promoter, you crack on and book stuff like all the hotels, internal flights and so on right up to the last day of the tour, sort out your transportation to the nth degree, buy all the guitar strings, drumheads and gaffa tape you'll ever need and create a nice, big fat-arsed tour itinerary for everyone which takes you hours to make and then gets no more than a cursory glance from each member of the tour party before being stuffed in their bags, never to be seen again ( a topic we'll return to in a future blog !)
As we don't have an EMI or a Harvey Goldsmith coughing up a large wedge of cash, we have to be more creative, and that means doing the best deals we can almost on a week by week basis. The downside is that it means you've got the extra butt-ache of having to book your hotels and things for future dates while you're actually on the road, but the positive aspect is that you can shape things to suit your needs as you go, and at this stage of the game that's pretty useful. Talking of "flexible" touring, we've also got something of a floating crew; Arthur, myself, Martin
" Rodders " Rodwell the lighting engineer and Rupert "Pug" Jones, our monitor engineer will be ever - present, but due to other work commitments our AV engineer's slot is being shared by two people, Clive Moore and Jonathan "Tomps" Tompkins, so we're having to work out who does what on which day and how they'll get there and back; in addition to this we've got The Overtures' father and son crew team of Nick and Steve Liddard looking after the band's instruments and THEY'LL be switching around a bit between themselves too as the tour progresses, so at least we're not going to be looking at the same faces each morning as we clamber wearily from our Travelodge pits ! Sitting here looking at the datesheet, our final show on March 28th seems a loooooooooong way away, but then last year our first show on February 2nd seemed just as distant, and suddenly it's next Tuesday, so no doubt the whole thing will have flashed past before we know it, and we'll be on to the next tour ( late August / early September, before you ask ) It's a funny old game, this music business lark....everything's based around planning things that are happening in the future, sometimes AGES in the future, so you never really seem to have much of a concept of " today ", and before you know it, " ages in the future " was last year and you think " Blimey....where did 2009 go ? " Fine when you're 20 with your whole life ahead of you, not so good when the bus pass and telegram from the Queen are lurking just over the horizon! Still, things could be much worse....I could have been born a Sunderland fan, for example.....

High Noon in High Wycombe......

Although the wonders of modern technology mean that we can communicate with each other wherever we are in the world, nothing beats a bit of face - to - face brainstorming, so the Booties' production team sat down at high noon for what turned out to be an epic seven-hour meeting at the Holiday Inn, High Wycombe. Pretty much every aspect of the tour was on the agenda, so over pots of tea, some very toothsome cheese and ham toasties and a calorie-tastic hunk of cheesecake, the Rumpled Cotton Shirt of Tour Chaos met the Steam Iron of Experience, and everything got smoothed out. Actually putting the show onstage is, strangely enough, one of the easiest parts of the whole enterprise, because we've done this sort of thing for so long and because we know the band and their capabilities so well. No, what REALLY takes the time and causes the stress is all the " behind the scenes " stuff, and that's why today was so useful. When you're setting up a tour of this size you need a whole team to make it work, and that team needs to know what they're doing and where they have to be at any given time. Contrary to what some musicians think ( I'm not talking about you Overtures lads, don't worry! ) these things don't just magically happen....people like Arthur and I have to sit down and plan things such as tour budgets and cash flows, hiring vehicles, booking hotels, appointing crew, getting equipment together, calling all of the venues to get technical information from the house production crew, chasing venues who haven't sent contracts back or put up posters or sent sales figures through, filling in endless bloody risk assessment and method statement forms, getting tour insurance, organising merchandise...and that's before we've even STARTED on sorting out the drugs and hookers. The band have a lot of work to do as well....there are new songs being featured on this tour plus two whole new medley sections, so they've all got to be arranged and rehearsed, and then Den has the eye - watering task of looking at gazillions of still and moving images to compile the visual element of the show. Let me tell you, DIY punk rock it ain't ! Despite the headaches, though, you get a huge buzz from being in the middle of all this chaos and trying to turn into into something resembling order, and when the band go onstage on the first night and everything's finally happening, you get the most fantastic feeling of satisfaction. An extra thrill / pressure this time out has been our first national press advertising campaign; it's cost a lot of money but I have to tell you, when you open the Daily Mail or the Sunday Express or Mojo magazine and there's your big tour ad alongside all the other major acts like Marvello and Snouty The Dolphin
( oh, sorry...wrong mag....) it makes you feel " We've arrived " and then immediately afterwards " We're skint " A heady combination indeed... It's a real validation of the whole thing, though....we've talked about doing this big "proper" tour for so long and now here it is....it's in the Sunday Mirror, so it MUST be true ! All we have to do now is get those tickets sold....

Theatrical shenanigans....

One of the tricky things about this tour is that normally you pass all of the negotiation with the various theatres on to your agent or promoter, allowing you to spend time on more practical pursuits like booking hotels, working out transportation plans and cultivating your smack habit. However, the Four Musketeers of Bootleg Sixties LLP, me, Arthur, Steve and Den, are also the de facto promoters,as well as being the band, production company, press office, logistics managers and financiers of the tour, making things a lot more hands - on than they'd be under normal circumstances. So when we hear that one of the venues seems to be playing silly buggers and hasn't sent back the contract, ordered any posters or put any details for the show on their website, we can't just shrug our shoulders
or " get our people to speak to their people "....we have to pick up the phone and actually see what the problem is. So we do this, and at first it's the normal tale of woe....they didn't get the contract, the promo DVD didn't arrive yadda yadda yadda. I've actually come to the conclusion that most theatres exist in some kind of postal black hole; a letter sent to a remote yurt in an as yet undiscovered area of the Siberian tundra manages to get there for the price of a first - class stamp, whilst a contract or technical rider seems to disappear without trace the moment it gets anywhere near the orbit of your average City Hall, Assembly Rooms or Theatre Royal. Alan and Nick, the stout fellows who have put this whole tour together, have already had a full and frank exchange of views with the theatre in question, and whilst blood may not actually have been spilled, it was certainly slopped around a bit. It's thus with a certain amount of relief that when we speak to them this morning we find them in conciliatory mood, and with very litle pain we manage to work out a schedule of promotional activities that will hopefully kick the gig back into gear. No-one likes to lose a show ( unless you're Britney Spears and your playback machine won't work, in which case you HAVE to cancel ) so we're happy to have been able to resolve this. The real pain in the biffins about it all, of course, is that it takes up EVEN MORE TIME to sort out, when there are literally hundreds of other things need doing....for example, there's a new flavour of McFlurry out and I haven't had a chance to taste it yet....In fact, I've just realised that the nearest Maccy D's is open 24 hours..... NOBBY, WARM UP THE MOTOR ! WE'RE GOIN' FOR A LITTLE DRIVE !

Tomorrow's topic : Verbal contracts and why they're not worth the paper they're written on.

It's getting closer.....

When we first realised we were going to be doing a forty - three date UK tour we thought that it'd be a great idea to join the digital age and set up a tour blog. Now that we've done it and all the pre-tour preparation is in full, manic swing, it doesn't seem like QUITE such a good idea, as the days seem to only be about three hours long, but I'm sure we'll find the time once we get started to share our thoughts, feelings and observations from what's going to be our longest - ever jaunt around the UK ( what IS a " jaunt " by the way ? Have you ever " jaunted " ? Speaking for myself I've strolled, sauntered, strutted, and even, on one momentous occasion, I've sashayed, but to the best of my knowledge my life to date has been jaunt - free....) Anyhoo, it's all booked and happening and the sleepless nights are really starting to kick in now ! The tour is only a couple of weeks away and the pressure is mounting. The one thing we DON'T have any worries about at all is the actual show....we know the band will deliver. It's all the logistical gubbins that goes with it that causes the headaches. There's such a lot riding on this tour, not least a big bundle of our cash ! We've all toured many times before, but this is the first time we haven't had a record company or promoter to underwrite everything, and it definitely concentrates the mind, to say the least ! When we actually get under way on February 2nd we'll be doing a little review of each show, but for now the plan is to try and give you a glimpse of the stuff that goes on behind the scenes when putting a tour of this size together. As the old cliche goes, watch this space.......!