The Guide to Life is exactly what it sounds like: a guide on how to live. The world is entering a different time, so across different verticals at VICE, we're exploring what it means to be alive today, and how you can be your best self.While starting a band can seem like a daunting enough task as a newbie musician, packing said band up and touring across Europe feels like pure fantasy. But we're here to tell you that not only can you do it, you should.
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Although touring Europe on a tight budget and without your own booking agent is possible, it's a massive commitment in terms of time, energy, and the amount of breezy rejection emails you'll collect along the way. This said, if you're prepared to grow skin that's rhino-hide thick and dedicate a whole chunk of your free time to crafting emails to strangers, it goes from hazy pipe-dream to actual real life thing you're doing. And, if we're totally honest with ourselves, is it that hard? Sure, fielding mean emails isn't exactly a day out at the beach, but it's got to beat the daunting pre-internet method of booking a tour: reaching out to complete strangers via the phone and snail mail. Just imagine those telephone bills and all that palpable disdain dripping down the line. The mind reels.Plus, if you're going to focus on the downsides of booking your own tour, you should also keep the dreamy stuff in mind: feeling out where your fanbase is (maybe you'll play to three glassy eyed cynics in Paris who are too cool to clap but sell out a 300-person venue in Lisbon), making new music industry contacts, enjoying a holiday where you might actually break even, and possibly even experiencing the only thing more sought-after than adoring fans and some cool music label guy who's in love with your sound: Fun, you guys. Drinking beers in a squat and going to a weird hip-hop party as the sun comes up and someone you don't even know making pancakes in the morning.
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We've compiled advice and tips from both musicians and industry insiders with years of experience in figuring out tours around Europe. These include American Primitive guitarist Daniel Bachman, synth-pop musician Yohuna, Berlin-based music promoter and consultant for non-profit organizations Sebastian Hoffmann, bassist Leah Buckareff from doom-gaze band Nadja and Paper and Iron Booking's Erin Coleman.You know what's cool about nerds? They're organized and they research hard. This is your new personality, so embrace it. Start getting in touch with venues and promoters at least six to seven months before you intend the tour to begin. Coleman suggests building a tour around a route of cities you want to visit, citing Amsterdam, Brussels, Paris, and Berlin as good destinations to aim for, since they're relatively easy to travel between and offer a wide range of venue styles and sizes. In order to stay on top of the hundreds of emails you'll be sending out, Yohuna advises creating a spreadsheet with details of who you've contacted, when you last reached out to them, and checking back in every one to two weeks that you don't hear back. "You'll feel like a pest, but that's just how it's done."But before you even craft so much as your first line of an email, roll up your sleeves and research the people you're contacting with all the fevered enthusiasm you'd invest in a 3 AM Facebook stalk of your ex. Start by getting in touch via the contact page at a venue or promoter's website and they'll usually end up either forwarding your email on to the right person or giving you the correct email address. These places and people get deluged with requests from up-and-coming bands every day, so set yourself apart from the copy-and-pasting masses by sounding like you actually know what they're about and suggesting why you'd be a good fit for them based on their previous shows or connections. And of course, that means avoiding rookie errors like forgetting to check and then double-check genres: nobody wants to be that folk musician sending beseeching emails to techno promoters. Yohuna suggests including links to mp3s and a little press (track premieres, video premieres, reviews) if possible, but, please, never attachments, since they clog up inboxes. Coleman recommends looking up bands who you feel are comparable and checking out where they first started and who put on their shows when they were at a similar stage in their career to where you are now. This sounds like a lot, but Songkick, Bandsintown, and Last.fm all have archives of past tours, so these are good places to plunge into your Google deep-dive.
BECOME A NERD
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