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Rob on Touring
Since many of you have written asking about future tours, I thought I would save my fingers some typing stress by answering all of your tour questions at once. Here goes… Unfortunately, both for me—and if you’ve been chomping at the bit to see the old Youngster live again, for you too—I have no plans to tour this year. The reason is quite simple (and boring): M-O-N-E-Y. The deal is that I’ve spent the last two years digging out of the financial mess PolyGram created for me when, as a result of the Universal takeover, they pulled the plug on my ex-label, Imaginary Road. Being signed to a major label has many disadvantages…like you’re temporarily screwed when your label goes out of business!!! But one of the main advantages is that they’re totally into artists in their stable being out on the road. They think (but are entirely wrong) that all types of artists create massive record sales by being on the road. It used to be that way in the 70’s and early 80’s, but simply isn’t any more. However, an artist signed to a major label really doesn’t care. The record company, in the interest of achieving the prime directive of “Touring=Record Sales=Money”, is essentially a giant cash register. All you have to do is press “Drawer Open” and they send you plane tickets so you can go rock the world! Believe me, I’m totally into that! The truth is that all but the really big artists—and I mean BIG…like Pink Floyd, The Stones, etc.—actually lose money on the road. Musicians at roughly my level get paid guarantees of anywhere from $500 to $2500 per show, depending on the market and venue. So people have said to me, “Wow! $2500/show times 200 shows per year…holy crap! Rob makes $500,000 a year from touring!” Yeah, right! The fact is that by the time you’re finished buying plane tickets for you and the crew, plus meals, hotels, cartage, car service, etc., on a good tour you’ll break even and on an average one you’ll lose money. Put simply, when the record label is paying for everything, they’re willing to lose money (because they have lots of it!) in the hopes of selling enough records to make it up. My argument, however, is this: Don’t people go to see a musician live after they bought the record? If so then how does touring create sales? The answer is radio. People who listen to the radio, contrary to popular belief, don’t just instantly buy records. What happens is after they’ve been sufficiently bombarded by Band-X, they start to get excited when they hear that Band-X is coming to town and so they buy a concert ticket. They smoke massive amounts of pot at the show and are completely blown away by this live experience and go buy the record! So the next paragraph is for all the low level marketing people who used to preach to me about how knowledgeable they are and how I (the lowly musician) should just “leave it to the experts”… How is it that an instrumental artist can create massive record sales from touring when our following consists of music-savvy people who buy what they like and are immune to hype? More importantly, how can instrumental artists take advantage of radio-promoted tours brought on by huge airplay and contests when they have ABSOLUTELY NO F’N ACCESS TO COMMERCIAL RADIO, YOU DOPES?! I feel better now. So what does all this mean to you, REYers? Here’s the thing—and I say this with the utmost sincerity—I am totally into hitting the road and performing for you. I just love it. It has been a pleasure meeting many of you and seeing all of the wonderful places in the world on these last few tours. Ask any performer and they will tell you—nothing compares to the feeling you get inside when you pull up to a venue and see a line of people waiting to get in and see you play. If I had unlimited access to funds, I would spend my retirement money to come and see you all, no kidding. Anyway, I can’t afford to tour right now. If I re-sign again this whole thing will be mute and I will see you on the road again soon. Barring that, here’s what we can do in the meantime… Matt and I have put in a lot of effort to make this a web site worth coming back to. We will be posting tons of free music for you as I record it. In addition, we will have a monthly series of “road stories” by yours truly in which I relate interesting and sometimes funny [Embarrassing?—Ed.] experiences while on the road. These will be free (of course) to download in the MP3 format. I am also considering filming some recording sessions in my studio and offering those for download as movie files. Finally, I have three (count ’em) 3 new albums slated for release over the next 18 months, including the re-release of my ’94 album Consistent Variation, an album of film score music, and by overwhelming request, a brand new solo guitar record. So I’ll make you a deal—if you all hang in there and support this site and my music, (come right out and say it Rob, you want us to buy stuff, right?), hopefully I won’t need a new label and we can fund future tours ourselves. Above all, please be sure to join my e-mail list and come back often to see what’s new. Thanks! — Rob |
