Chit Chat & Mollie McClymont’s top tips for touring

Glenn Easton Dormand aka Chit Chat is sharing his wealth of experience as an Australian artist/producer/radio announcer/longtime TV presenter of MAX for a series of live streamed master classes developed by Telstra Road to Discovery. Joining him will be Mollie McClymont, who with her two sisters has taken their spontaneous and innovative take on country music across almost every corner of Australia and the US and watched four of their five albums chart inside the ARIA Top 8.

The pair are set to tackle ‘Tour Management’ on November 3, discussing the top things artists should know when thinking of touring. As a primer of sorts, below are Chit Chat and Mollie McClymont’s top tips for touring. 

Chit Chat’s tips for touring

1. Two bedrooms suites with singles beds, sleep 5 people and cost heaps less that 5 hotel rooms. Do this as long as you can, while the newness of being in a gang still has appeal. I guarantee songs will come from this initial unity.

2. Embrace merchandise. As weird as it may feel, go directly from the stage to the merch desk and start signing after the show. I guarantee you’ll sell five time more product and build a fan base faster. It’s not just about money, it’s about connection and profile, human billboards walking around promoting your band. On that point, shamelessly give shirts to bar staff at cool venues when you play.

3. For God’s sake put on a show, think about your set list, what you wear and how you act. People go to see shows to escape their own miserable existence, so give them something to escape too.

4. On that point dress your stage. Show you care by travelling with props. Banners are cheaper than ever to print and can be far more than band names. For this same reason, think about your lighting. Always show respect for you audience and give the same performance to 10 people as you would to 10 000.

5. Fucking enjoy it. You might do an east coast run and play to 20 people a night for three nights but that’s you touring and living the life you dreamed of.

6. For 99.99% of bands that’s all there’ll ever be and before long they’ll be back in an office job. So milk it, relish the gig, embrace any fan, drink all night and watch the sun come up feeling like a golden god.

Mollie McClymont’s tips for touring

1. Look into agencies that can book you a tour. They know all of the venues and will negotiate fees for you and where would be best for you to play. Example, clubs or theaters

2. Make sure you are across all of the costings before you book the tour. It’s not just about turning up to sing. Know how much you are going to lose or gain before you head out on the road. Things to include, lights, sound, motels, band, tour manager (if you want one), backline, is it in-house equipment or do you need to bring your own, fuel, air fares, marketing, etc.

3. If you want to tour but can’t afford to go on the road and don’t have a fan base yet, ask an artist if you can be their support act. That’s an immediate audience, so when you go on your own tour people will come back to see your own show.

4. There are many ways to promote your tour, and that all depends on your budget. For a low budget tour think about pushing it through social media, put up flyers around each town you are playing, call the radio station and ask if you can do an interview to promote your show, call the newspaper. If your budget is higher, TV commercials, newspaper ads, Facebook ads targeted at your target market work a treat plus all of the other things I mentioned.

5. Keep track of where you have played before and where you are playing as it’s always good to go back to those places as you keep building a bigger audience every time you go back. As more people see the show they recommend friends to go, or people hear about you and want to go see you.

‘Tour Management’ follows master classes with Steve Smyth and Wonderlick Management’s Gregg Donovan who discussed ‘Artists’ First Steps’ and Illy and YouTube Content Partnership Manager Georgie Powells, who tackled ‘Social Media’.

The pair’s live, free and interactive master class is titled ‘Tour Management’ and airs on Monday November 3 at 8pm AEST on www.telstra.com/trtd.