THE TOURING INDUSTRY COMES TO A HALT

There have been a few rare instances in my career where a single show has been canceled. Of the two that come to mind, one was due to artist illness, the other was caused by nasty winter weather that rendered travel unsafe, and we were unable to make it to the next city. However, the Coronavirus induced shut down of the live event industry as a whole last Thursday was uncharted territory, requiring those of us on the road to make some quick decisions and come up with a plan to quickly dismantle our tours.
Not everyone was on the road at the time, so I wanted to recount how things unfolded on the tour I was on. Not only to provide some insight into my approach to the situation, but also for my future reference, because I was operating primarily on adrenaline and I don’t think I’ll remember much if I don’t document it soon.
Despite the understanding that the severity of the virus was escalating rather quickly, I think we were all a little taken back when the word to postpone came in. In a matter of hours, our tour went from a few minor cancellations to a full-on postponement.
This virus is much bigger than anyone of us. Every active tour in the country was postponed, leaving everyone to handle the situation in his or her unique way. There were undoubtedly countless approaches; the following is strictly a recount of my approach.
With the official word coming in, it was a whirlwind of activity and some quick decisions had to be made. Some decisions were admittedly less than ideal, and I’m still in the process of ironing things out. I’ve learned a lot in the past seventy-two hours, already realizing some things I'd do differently. But we all learn as we go, and I’m grateful for this learning experience.
I wouldn't call it crisis mode, because nothing was broken and everyone was fine. But it did require some quick decision-making given that I needed to have a plan in place before that evening’s show, which was just a few hours away. Our tour party needed to know the plan so they could proceed accordingly come load out.
The first decision made was that the bus, band, and crew would return to Nashville from Chicago overnight. It seemed to make the most sense; the bus was based there, as were four members of our touring party. And with a major airport, Nashville would be a fairly easy location to get people back to their homes.
The first conversation I had was with our bus driver to confirm that my decision to return to Nashville was realistic. The drive from Chicago to Nashville is a reasonable overnight drive, but I had to ensure that his current logged hours wouldn’t require us to stop due to restrictions on driver hours of service enforced by the DOT.
Once he and I had a plan and confirmed a bus call time, I began to work on logistics for everything and everyone else. Luckily we were at the halfway point of the tour, so I had already begun wrapping my head around what needed to happen when the tour finished. But nothing can completely prepare you for such an abrupt end to it all, so my mind was racing with all the loose ends that would need to be tied up.
To begin, I simply started a list of what would go where. Road Radios needed to go back to their office in El Segundo, our red velour drape back to Sew What, and a few pieces of audio gear were headed back to their respective homes as well.
The production rentals were simple enough. I listed each vendor and their shipping address so everything could be pulled aside and taken to Fed Ex when we unloaded the trailer the following morning. One large road case required cartage rather than Fed Ex, so I emailed our cartage vendor to arrange a pickup and brought this to the attention our storage facility management team so they were aware of what was being shipped, where it was located on their loading dock, and that someone would be by to pick it up soon.
In addition to this list of gear being returned I also listed everyone on the tour and their final destination. With that information together in one place, the production assistant and I began to figure out how to get everyone home. For a few of them, it was nice and easy. We were unloading the bus and trailer in Nashville, so they could simply grab a ride home in the morning when we got to town. Some were not so convenient, but luckily flight operations were still happening so we searched for flight options that would get them home as soon as possible. We looked into flights for personnel that needed to go home and presented them with options.
Given the heightened risk of contracting the virus, one person on the tour understandably didn’t have any interest in getting on a commercial airliner. In that case, I researched the average cost of a flight for this person to return to their home airport and offered a travel buyout for that amount. This allowed them the opportunity to rent a car, cover fuel costs and other travel-related expenses, and get home without the need for air travel.
When we arrived in Nashville Friday morning the plan continued to unfold. We transferred all artist-owned gear to a storage locker, setting aside anything that would be shipped off later that day. Any gear in need of repair was last in so I could easily get to it at a later date to make necessary repairs.
Before arriving in Nashville I had also coordinated with a colleague who was in town and able to help with the Fed Ex shipments. I made sure he had the tour’s Fed Ex number along with all shipping addresses, and as things came off the trailer he loaded them up in his vehicle, eventually taking everything off-site to be shipped to their respective homes.
The most telling sign that we were not alone in this situation were the numerous other tour busses that rolled in that morning, with crew members stepping off their busses still half asleep, doing the same early morning dance of unloading the trailer while still trying to make sense of it all, and eventually making their way home for the foreseeable future.
With all the gear and personal belongings off the bus, band, and crew on their way to their respective homes, our driver eventually followed suit, dropped off the bus and he too headed home.
Hopefully sooner than later this unexpected vacation will be over, and we’ll all get back to work. But the lessons learned will serve many of us well in the future, and this will undoubtedly be a time that we will always remember and talk about for years to come.