April 3rd, 2020
Artist Liaison at Festivals
Hey pals! Kyle from Travelled Music here. I work with a few festivals as Music Officer. This role includes most of the advancing work; booking flights, ground transport, hotels and arranging riders and tech, basically making sure that everyone is sorted out and chilled.
So, here’s my top 5 tips for advancing a festival:
#1 Get on it early!
My first time doing this, I made the mistake and left it a bit late. Being contacting agents and artists to confirm specifics early! Acts should normally have a good idea of their summer schedule from February / March, so it’s worth confirming tour party numbers, shows they may have before/after the event ASAP so you can cost up travel and accommodation and aim to keep this within your budget.
#2 Hold hotel rooms
Once you’ve a fair idea of how many members will be in a tour party, look at holding various hotel rooms to accommodate all. This is a lot different from advancing a tour where you may have 5 people to find accommodation for in different cities every night. Here you will be look at hosting around 60 people in the same town/city over one weekend. Availability can be scarce, so hold as many as you can with the plan of confirming these down the line.
#3 Book travel ASAP
Hopefully, most of the acts and agents have replied to you by now with their tour party numbers and travel plans. There’s normally a lot of back and forth over travel. It’s your job to find the most sensible route and for the best price. Act playing shows either side of the event? Then ask for a promoter split on travel! Google Sheets, Skyscanner and Kayak are your friends, use them to find the best deals and keep a record of receipts, travel confirmations and flight details.
#4 Quadruple check EVERYTHING
It sounds full on, but as Alan mentioned in his “Advancing Shows” post, check everything numerous times! If you’re looking after 30 acts for a festival who each have specifics, there are bound to be some mistakes (hey, we’re all human) - but those mistakes can seriously put a spanner in the works. Whilst you’re drafting your intermarries to be sent to agents, check passports, name spelling on tickets, ticket confirmation numbers, flight arrival times, confirmed tech lists, guest lists requests, the whole lot. Do this, do it again and before you send, do it one more time.
#5 Always be reachable!
Plans change and shit happens. If you’re handling the work onsite you need to be contactable pretty much 24/7. Flights may be delayed, an artist may be stranded, someone may have a problem checking in their hotel. Ideally there will be an onsite team here too (I have the privilege of handing this over to an ace team) but together it’s everyones job to make sure the music happens and the artists and well looked after. I’ve had calls at 7:00am from artists stranded looking to get home because they missed their train or flight. It’s your job to sort it.
It can be challenging work, but also highly rewarding work after it all comes together.