This piece was originally published via facebook. Reposted with author’s permission.
Give R.Ariel all your money!
– W†H
Here y’all go ❤️
Touring internationally as a broke bitch: a brief introduction.
The first thing you are going to want to do is identify the venues that host your type of music. I.E. if you are a full band don’t send booking requests to a generally acoustic venue. You can do this by a simple google search “pop venues in _________ city.” Listen to a few of the bands that have been booked in the past week and if it aligns with your music, send a request.
Another good way to identify venues that would book you is by searching bandcamp and Spotify for music that aligns with yours. Again, simple google search “pop music japan bandcamp.” You listen to a few of the bands and if they align with your music, you can check out their pages and see where they have played recently and then send a booking request to those venues.
A lot of countries that aren’t the USA have amazing collectives that work with smaller international bands and they are great to get in contact with.
Another big mistake I see a lot of ppl make is sending horrendous booking emails. Do not be so rude and entitled to send an email that just says “hi I’m ________ here is my music, book my band.” On the other hand, don’t send a four page essay on how you are a bad ass and everyone will love you. A short paragraph describing your accomplishments as a musician and a description of your recent release as well as links to recent press if you got it is sufficient. Additionally, you can use google translate to add a note that you do not speak the language fluently and if they need help translating your email, you are happy to help (s/o google translate).
A lot of countries that aren’t the USA have amazing collectives that work with smaller international bands and they are great to get in contact with. They are sometimes harder to find but much more enjoyable to work with. Search in that countries language. For example if you are booking France searching “collectif de musique à paris” on FB or Google will help you find them. Sending a short request to work with them is normally a lot more fruitful cause that is their whole goal as a collective.
Harvesting info from pages like mine is also a great way to find venues. My music tends to be booked at indie / pop / chill-er venues so if you do a search “r.ariel Tokyo” on FB you can see venues I have played and hit them up. Don’t ever say that I sent you their way tho unless I specifically gave you their booking email 😊
Be prepared to not get a lot of responses but keep pushing. Each tour (USA or international) requires a lot of emailing and a lot of trying. Tokyo, for example, has something like 800 venues. So be alright with staring at yer screen.
Additionally, don’t send a request to a venue with a 1000 person cap if you are a smaller band (duh).
Be flexible with your routing but have a general idea of how you would like routing to go.
OKAY NOW FOR THE BROKE BITCH PART
Touring during off seasons is key to not spending much (ie why y’all see me freezing all the damn time). It is also more likely that venues will work with you if it is your first time in their country because it is their off season. You can get a round trip ticket to Tokyo from LA for 500 bucks on off seasons. Phoenix to Paris off season round trip can be as low as 600. Etc.
Plus side, a lot more ppl are willingly to come out to a show cause not many other bands are playing so that’s tight too.
Searching for air bnbs and house sharing shits is a great way to find cheap housing. Also, talking to the bands you are playing with plus venues booking you. A lot of the time they will have somewhere for you to crash.
Gear is easy to rent and / or asking bands if you can borrow some of their equipment is great. Japan tho, for example, has almost all types of gear you would need at the venues aside from guitars.
Europe however tends to be easier to rent cars.
Renting a car or taking a train depends on how many ppl you have with you and what is going to be the most efficient. Japan seems a lot smarter to take trains cause they are faster and cheap. Europe however tends to be easier to rent cars. Renting from sites like “oui car” in Europe is great because you don’t even need a credit card to rent (like air bnb but for cars).
Buying food from grocery stores will save you hella cash and looking online for cheap restaurants works too (so u not just eating fast food the whole time).
Okay that’s all the general info I can think of for now! Feel free to ask any questions in comments and I’ll get back to them when I gots time and feel free to share / bookmark this for whenever you need it.
Feel free to PayPal me a few bucks if you got it and found it helpful
– R.Ariel
paypal.me/rariel
rariel.bandcamp.com
IG: @r__ariel
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