Tour dates how often can you really gig in a year?

What's Hot
Just been looking at a website showing Elvis concert dates during 1955. Totals out at 259 gigs across all states in south, often travelling hundreds of miles between gigs in a large car with double Bass and drums on top. Considering bands since late 60's have used planes and tour buses I am amazed at this statistic for a 20 year old lad starting out. 
Anybody else know of any other harder working artist, or what's the most you have gigged in a single month, let alone month after month.
bearing in mind Elvis was also doing recordings back and fore in Memphis for Sun Records. 
0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
«1

Comments

  • WhistlerWhistler Frets: 322
    edited September 2016
    I thought the film of Johnny Cash's life, Walk The Line, showed how it worked back then, with a handful of upcoming acts touring together by car. It was total commitment.

    Tommy Emmanuel is perhaps amongst the busiest acts these days. You can read in places like this that he performs over 300 times a year.
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • BB King basically lived on the road for years, 300 or so gigs per year. If that's your living and lifestyle then that's how many you do I guess. 

    When Albert Lee played my local pub it wasn't on his tour schedule he just didn't see the point in nights off on tour, rather play a pub for £150 than sit in a hotel room Wether his band were all happy with that is another matter...
    Tipton is a small fishing village in the borough of Sandwell. 
    0reaction image LOL 2reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • Danny1969Danny1969 Frets: 10356
    edited September 2016
    I do well over a hundred gigs a year these days  .... be about 120 gigs this year when NYE comes around.  Mainly Frid, Sat's and Sundays with a few Tues and Thursdays thrown in here and there.  July was my best month this year, I did 17 in July. Only got 11 this month though. 
    In the nineties though we had a Monday night residency in a pub so gigged every single Monday. Naturally we gigged every Frid, Sat and most Sundays plus quite often Thursdays so sometimes the only nights we didn't gig were Tue and Wednesday. 

    To be honest though gigs back then were turn up, perform for 20 to 30 mins tops in the house system and then on to the next one. Not turn up, unload a whole van, do 2 or 3 X one hour sets and then de rig etc like most of us do on here so basically I work a lot harder than Elvis ever did :)
    www.2020studios.co.uk 
    0reaction image LOL 1reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • merlinmerlin Frets: 6594
    The longest tour I've done without is 4 weeks, with gigs pretty much every night. Sometimes I've had a week off then on the road again for another two weeks. 

    If you have good food, good hotels, good venues and not too far between then it's bearable. 
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • ESBlondeESBlonde Frets: 3576
    It was standard back in the day to travel in the van with the gear and go from town to town. A residency usually gave you a night off to gig out of town. Once a week a b&b to bath and a launderette for your clothes. Modern big tours are so organised and sensible. Big crews to sort the gear and you rock up to sound check (or not if you're the star) then eat and get ready for showtime. Most early tours were based on normal caberat tours with multiple acts on the bill.
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • Back in late 80's early 90's I was averaging about a 100 or more gigs a year, but I was home every night, as I played in a 40-50 mile radius of Yeovil. Fair enough, but back in 50's with gigs hundreds of miles apart, sleeping in car, sharing the driving etc, those guys had it a lot tougher. 
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • You tend to get very good doing that many gigs a year. I can't imagine how slick our sets would be if we were out 3 or 4 nights a week. Rehearsal/Scmehearsal :)
    "A city star won’t shine too far"


    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 1reaction image Wisdom
  • ESBlondeESBlonde Frets: 3576
    A gave that a wiz @mudslide73, when I was young enough to be able to stand doing 3 or 4 gigs a week it was always noticable how much better and more effortless the band was during the Sunday sets. I recall some friends going off to 'tour' the northern clubs (early eighties) in a blinged out bedford CF van. When they finallf came home 4 months later they were thiner, the van was a wreck but by heck were they tight, so tight and up to date with the charts. They opened thier set with John miles Music and proceeded to go up from there. Quite the boys to men transformation, they never did it again mind, hated each others guts iirc.
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • I seem to average about 50 gigs a year, will probably be fewer this year as we have turned down a few non-payers. I find that's ample for what is essentially a hobby. Got a day job to do and other life activities! Which is different to young Elvis and others like him who went all-out.

    We definitely notice how tight we get when we are in the thick of the summer gig frenzy.
    I'm just a Maserati in a world of Kias.
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • There's a balancing act between doing it enough to be good but not so much it becomes a chore. I think one of the reasons my band works is because we're all genuinely pleased to be out there doing it (and still alive in a couple of cases!).
    "A city star won’t shine too far"


    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • Danny1969Danny1969 Frets: 10356

    I'm not doing over a hundred with the same band, that would be a bit dull I think, tight but very dull. The 120 odd this year is spread across Superheroes which is rock and soul, Italian Job which is classic rock, Captain Burrito which is funk, Black Rose which is a Thin Lizzy tribute, Kick up the Eighties which is (not surprisingly) Eighties tunes, Betty Blue = Rockibilly and there's another couple of bands I play in that make up another 20 gigs or so between them. 

    I've read Cash's autobiography when he talks about being on the road with Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and others and and it was  basically all shows with 20 min slots each .... no PA to setup or break down. ..... you just gotta cope with life on the road 

    Some friends of mine did 2 x  6 month stints in Germany in the eighties, they had a normal sized Transit packed with their gear and they slept on top of the gear at night in the freezing cold winter. 
    www.2020studios.co.uk 
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • ReverendReverend Frets: 4974
    Touring the States is much tougher than touring here. Very often they will book in tiny venues in the middle of nowhere simply because it's a 2 day drive between places worth playing. 
    In the states the nearby gigs on a tour are 3-4 hours drive whereas here that takes you from the south to north. I've done a couple of big drives in Europe; Bern to somewhere in Belgium, avoiding France, and Berlin to Ravenna. 

    the other problem with US tours is that they don'rt have proper vans. They all use half-sized mini vans.  
    0reaction image LOL 1reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • i know guys who have done 60+ nights in a row, thats pure van travelling as well, we're lucky that we live in a country where thats a very possible thing to do. 
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • Our drummers 50 - last week end we had a club gig on the Friday night (long set, nice big stage and not too hot, then a short set at an open air festival on Saturday afternoon (a 45 minute set with the stage and sound managed by the event) and a pub gig on the Saturday night (hot and sweaty - doing our own sound). All the gigs where within a twenty/thirty mile radius. Between the Saturday gigs we went for a nice bit of pub grub.

    The drummer played poorly on the Saturday night gig and reckons it was cus he was knackered...... is that possible? I never feel tired or ill during a gig even if I felt like crap before hand.....

    I am 37. Is this what I can look forward to?

    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • VaiaiVaiai Frets: 530
    I think The Aristocrats, collectively and individually, do an insane amount of gigs. Mike Portnoy too, never seems to be in less than 4 bands!
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • Danny1969Danny1969 Frets: 10356
    Thankfully all the gigs I tend to do are within 70 miles or so and just as well cos driving anywhere in this country is a pain in the arse. I actually found driving from Atlanta to Nashville, some 200 odd miles quicker and easier than getting from Portsmouth to central London, a distance of about 70 miles
    I gigg'ed Friday night, last night and I'm gigging tonight, then Tue, Thurs, Friday and Sat so not a bad earn this week 
    www.2020studios.co.uk 
    0reaction image LOL 1reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • IvisonGuitarsIvisonGuitars Frets: 6838
    tFB Trader
    When I was working with The 1975, in 2014 we did 195 shows in 29 countries. Travelled 249724 kms and lapped the world 6 times....2015 was a similar schedule too... :-)

    http://www.gigwise.com/news/96880/the-1975-named-hardest-working-band-of-2014-and-of-last-4-years

    http://www.ivisonguitars.com
    (formerly miserneil)
    0reaction image LOL 3reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • @miserneil amazing stats. 
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • IvisonGuitarsIvisonGuitars Frets: 6838
    tFB Trader
    @koneguitarist It is mind boggling when you take a step back and look at it. Bare in mind also that that doesn't include ANY radio promo, TV shows or acoustic sets etc that we were doing each day, that's extra.

    For example, on one US tour, we did 9 gigs back to back, after the 9th show we flew overnight into NYC to do rehearsals and record the Late Show then flew back out to another gig THEN had a day off! The schedule was brutal but that's what it takes now to be a number one band. The 2nd album went number one across the world so, you'd have to say, from a label view it was well worth it.
    http://www.ivisonguitars.com
    (formerly miserneil)
    0reaction image LOL 2reaction image Wow! 0reaction image Wisdom
  • Hats off to you, got a big wow off me. 
    0reaction image LOL 0reaction image Wow! 1reaction image Wisdom
Sign In or Register to comment.