“When you say, ‘I didn’t know that was part of the job,’
it’s all part of the job,” laughs Mike Lukas, tour manager for
the likes of Sam Roberts Band, Shawn Colvin, Mary Chapin
Carpenter, and others. “Doing laundry on your day off or just
all of the things you wouldn’t even have thought you would
have to do. It’s like Spinal Tap – there is a great scene where
their manager, Ian, is screaming at them…”
For the uninitiated, Lukas is referring to a scene where
the band’s exasperated manager is yelling at the lead singer,
David: “For one thing that goes wrong... one... one single
thing that goes wrong, a hundred things go right. Do you
know what I spend my time doing? I sleep two or three
hours a night. There’s no sex and drugs for Ian, David! Do
you know what I do? I find lost luggage. I locate mandolin
strings in the middle of Austin! I prise the rent out of the lo-
cal [promoters]. That’s what I do!”
Lukas points out that finding mandolin strings in downtown
Austin isn’t actually difficult, at least in 2020, but nonetheless,
“He’s listing these absurd things you have to do in this role on
top of everything else. To me, I like it. I look back on it and laugh
at the strange things that you get asked for,” Lukas says.
But that’s all once the tour bus is on the road. As Lukas and
our other interviewees emphasize, most of the job happens
before the suitcases are packed.
“I would say logistics coordinator, part-time therapist, and
maybe adult babysitter depending on who you’re out with,”
laughs Maxime Brunet, defining the role as she travels from
Chicago to Detroit as TM for American rapper Kilo Kish. “But
really, I think people hire tour managers to not deal with
things like planning travel or booking hotels. Also, my main
goal is doing advances with the venue. So, things like coor-
dinating what time we can load in and knowing the logistics.
Also, [it’s] knowing what the venue is providing, knowing
what the artist needs for the show, and what the deal-break-
ers are. Like, if you’re touring with a 10-piece band and they
have only one monitor, you might want to look into options.”
“Basically, you’re steering the ship on the road,” adds
Henry Beckwith, who has been TM for Andy Shauf, Basia
Bulat, PUP, Dan Mangan, and other Canadian artists. “You’ll
reach out to every venue and talk to the promoter and you’ll
make sure that you have enough time for soundcheck, find
out the technical details of the club for whoever is doing
front of house, you’ll make sure the rider is ready, arrange
for a merch person, and then, of course, you’re the master
of the clock. So, you have to make sure that you’re in your
destination city when you need to be. And then from there,
you’re booking hotels. A big one is keeping track of press en-
gagement, be it in-person or phone interviews. Usually you’ll
work with management and the PR team to arrange the best
time for the artist. And how could I forget about the money?
You got to get paid! So, you’ll speak with the promoter and
you’ll go over all the numbers and see the advertising bud-
get. If anything looks funny, you can point that out. Essen-
tially, you make sure that the artist is being paid what they
should be getting paid.”
OK, so the tour manager looks after everything. But again,
“everything” starts before the tour begins.
“The tour manager’s role on the road is sort of secondary
LISTEN TO OUR FULL CONVERSATION ABOUT TOUR MANAGING WITH
ERIKA DUFFEE ON THE MARCH 4, 2020 EPISODE OF THE CANADIAN
MUSICIAN PODCAST. YOU’LL HEAR HER CRAZY CRISIS-MANAGEMENT STORY
ABOUT HOW SHE AVERTED DISASTER ON A RECENT TEGAN & SARA TOUR.
to the planning,” says Erika Duffee, the go-to TM for Cana-
dian pop-rock star Scott Helman and arena-filling Italian
pianist Ludovico Einaudi, among others. As she says, the
biggest part of her job is putting a crew together for a tour
and crafting a budget that is both reasonable and able to
accomplish what’s needed. “Especially with emerging artists,
they don’t know anything. They don’t know how much stuff
costs, they don’t know all the nuts and bolts, so it’s really
trying to marry an artist’s vision with what is fiscally possible
and responsible.” Bottom line? “The prep work on the front
end is essential to a successful tour.”
Lukas couldn’t agree more. “Ninety-nine per cent of the
job is done before you even get on a tour bus,” he says. As
we try in vain define the full scope of a tour manager’s re-
sponsibilities, Lukas does a good job of rattling them off: “It’s
the booking of the travel and routing of the tour. Once the
agent gives you the dates, you have to look at it and go, ‘OK,
what time do we load in? What time do we finish? What time
do we drive to the next city? Do we fly? How many buses and
trucks do we need?’ OK, book that. Get the hotels. Get the
flights. Get the schedules for each day. Get the staff. Get the
local crew. Everything is all done in advance so that when
we’re actually on the road doing it, it’s about putting out
fires and fixing all the stuff that goes wrong – and something
always goes wrong – and dealing with the band’s needs.
Sometimes on the big tours, I would have a production man-
ager who takes care of all the staging and mechanics, where-
as I would just take care of the band. That is a big difference.”
So, a tour manager needs to be a therapist and psychologist,
logistics coordinator, travel agent, accountant, crisis manag-
er, and the head of human resources. And did we mention
that on small- and mid-level tours, the tour manager is often
pulling double-duty in some other audio- or production-re-
lated job? Brunet and Beckwith, like many tour managers,
are also audio pros and often work both the tour manager
and FOH roles on a tour. What kind of person, then, is suited
to such a crazy job? The common denominator, according
to the TMs we spoke with, is that it requires a superhuman
ability to stay calm under pressure.
C A N A D I A N M U S I C I A N 39