Last month we played our first show in Ireland since 2008. Sold out at the Button Factory in Dublin. We had a great weekend hanging out, and playing a brilliant sold out show on the Saturday night was the cherry on top.

This show was also our first outside of the UK, Canada or the United States since we played OFF Festival in Poland in 2014. It’s not lost on us that our touring is limited to a very small number of countries, and even to specific regions/cities within those countries. The reasons for this are numerous. Like most bands of our size, band members have “day jobs” which pay the bills and restrict the amount of time we can spend playing shows, and some of our number have children and similar responsibilities which mean we can’t be on tour year round. Even if these day jobs and children weren’t a consideration, there would not be the demand for us, a 7 piece band, to justify doing this as a living. We always get asked “why don’t you ever come to play in XYZ”, and, though flattered, I personally also feel frustrated that there’s a lack of understanding as to the financial restrictions touring bands often face. Outside of the above reasons, I thought it might be interesting to break down the finances involved in playing one-off shows, or shows in locations that aren’t the approximately 25 different cities we know that we have a relatively large fanbase in. I will add, the following isn’t a breakdown of what it would cost every band to play this sort of gig, it’s a breakdown of what it specifically costs Los Campesinos! to do a gig like this.

Notes

• We are a 7 piece band. 
• Two of our members have two children together. More often than not the kids are in tow too. For this trip, we travelled without the children to save money.
• We are an independent band that is entirely self-funded. We manage ourselves and do not have a record label.
• Being as this show was in Dublin a lot of the costs were originally in Euros. In most cases I have converted to £s for my own ease and understanding.

The Gig

520 capacity venue. Tickets were €25. 5% of tickets for all our gigs are available at a low income rate of €10/$10/£5. Ireland is different to most countries in that booking fees are included in the ticket price, rather than added on at point of sale. Once fees are deducted the ticket price is actually €22.

(As it happens, we sold 516 tickets at €25 and 4 at €10. This is further proof that gig-goers won’t rip off the bands they love by purchasing low income tickets if they don’t need to. But I’m so glad 4 fans that mightn’t have been able to afford the full rate ticket got to see us live! More bands need to adopt this approach)

We insist that all shows we play should be All Ages. This is important to us, and I think it should be given more importance within the Live Music Industry in general. If we want kids to be excited about live music, why would we want to exclude them at an age where they’re developing these interests? Unfortunately, venues will often charge us/the promoter more for venue hire for All Ages shows. The reason for the surcharge is sometimes cited as being due to increased security costs, but is more often related to the venue’s perception that they will sell less alcohol. In this case, the fee for hire was €2,500. It would have been €1,000 if the show was 18+. I don’t especially agree with the logic here, but I respect that the venue has their own concerns about income. We’ll never know for certain, but I believe the show would still have sold out if it was 18+, and that would have brought us an extra £1,250 of income, but that’s not worth compromising our principles for.

Incomings

Show fee guarantee = £2,484

Regardless of how many tickets were sold, we would be paid a minimum of £2,484 for the show. It’s often the case in cities where we do not have a history of playing well attended shows that promoters are unwilling to take a risk on booking us for a show. We knew Dublin was a safe bet, but for a long time it seemed like no promoters were willing to believe us. Based on our costs, this guarantee is very low and we’d not consider it if this show was in the UK or USA.

Actual show fee = £3,695.74

A typical payment for a show is the “guaranteed” amount versus 80% of the show’s total profit, with the band being paid whichever is the larger amount. 

The show sold out in two hours. This meant no money needed to be spent on marketing, so we made a saving there.

As is industry standard, our booking agency (who are fantastic and work very hard for us) take 10% of the fee, which along with their VAT deduction and currency conversion, leaves us with £3,162.59.

Merchandise = £4,270

We always do very well on merch. A key element to this, which a lot of bands neglect, is to actually have good shirt designs. On this occasion we could take payment via cash only, as UK card readers do not work in Europe. We sold £4,270 of merch, with T-Shirts/LPs priced at a very reasonable €25.  Let’s be generous and say that this is at a rate of 70% profit, which makes our additional gain from merch £2,989.00.

A lot of venues will take a “merch cut” of anything between 15-30% of a band’s gross income on merch. We will not play venues that take a merch cut. More bands at our level should adopt this policy.

Total income = £6,151.59

£3,162.59 (show fee minus agent fee) + £2,989 (merch profit)

Outgoings

Travel – £1,889

We’re a 7 piece band, and in order to provide a show of the quality that is expected of us, we need to travel with a minimum of 3 amazing crew members (more on those later). Going to Ireland we’ve two options for travel. We could go by van/ferry, or we could fly…

8 of the 10 of our group travelled by air (£1,536.93), from Bristol/Gatwick/Manchester.

Of course, we also have to travel between our homes and the airport, and between the airport and our venue/accommodation at the other end. Ground travel in the UK came to £135.07. Ground transport in Dublin was £217. This included shuttling for 10 people to and from the airport, and also to and from the van, which we had to park some distance from the venue. This is my one concession for something we could/should have made savings on, but the convenience of taxis was preferred over busy shuttle buses.

Haulage – £1,738.50

Jason and Tom hired a van (£550), filled it with our gear and took the ferry (£545.36) from Holyhead. If everyone had travelled by land and sea, rather than flights, we would have needed to hire an additional vehicle (splitter van) to accommodate all 10 of us plus merch and gear. There was a consideration of whether we hired backline (backline being drum kit/amps/stands etc) in Dublin, but the expense would have been about the same, plus we’d have had the uncertainty of playing with unfamiliar gear (and would have incurred additional substantial baggage costs for guitars/keyboards etc on our flights). Fuel for the van came in at £136.86, and parking in Dublin was £80.28.

Since the UK departed the European Union, bands are required to carry carnets (an itemised list of goods you are taking in and out of the visiting country). This means weighing and valuing every item that we’re travelling with. The process of doing this is more irritating than the cost, which came out at £426. There are additional security costs relating to the carnet, but I’m excluding them from the ledger here, primarily because I don’t fucking understand them and can’t explain it. The carnet is valid for 6 months, so if we played more shows in Europe over that period of time, we’d not incur the cost again. A lot of bands will travel without a carnet with zero repercussions, but I am a coward and had a nightmare about not being able to play the show because Jason was detained at sea and forced to walk the plank, so we didn’t want to take the chance. As it happens, we were not asked to show the carnet at any of the 4 crossings…

Accommodation – £1,439.34

We spent two nights in Dublin. Our show was on a Saturday night, and we travelled across on the Friday. This is partly because flying on the day of show could cause serious issues in case of delay or cancellation, but also, we obviously wanted to have some time to enjoy Dublin (and we really did!). Ensuring we’re not rushed also contributes to us being able to put on the best possible show. The promoter got us a good deal at a great hotel, totalling £1,361.34 (that’s with us sharing rooms, rather than having rooms to ourselves). Because of the timing of the crossing, Jason and Tom stayed at a hotel in Holyhead the night before taking the ferry (£78). Often when this conversation is had in the public domain, people will make statements like, “you can save money by sleeping in the van, or crashing on someone’s sofa” attempting to turn things into the dril candles meme. To those people, I say “grow up”.

Food etc – £497.04

We each took €20 “per diem” pocket money to cover our food and drink for each day. 10 people, 3 days =  £497.04. In reality €20 doesn’t get you far these days, does it? We went out for a massive Japanese meal on the Friday night (paid for by the band), and put all our booze on the band card too, but I’m not including that in these sums. 

Crew wages – £2,300

In order to provide a high quality show we need to tour with the following:

Front of House Engineer – the person who mixes the sound that the crowd hears. Paul travels with us everywhere, knows our songs inside out, and can ensure you hear them as we want them to be heard. As good as a lot of in-house sound engineers are, it would compromise the quality of the gig if we didn’t travel with our expert.

Backline tech – Bernie helps us set up everything onstage, and looks after the show as it progresses, responding to any breakages or technical issues throughout the day, or during the concert. He’s our number one problem solver and the oil in the machine. 

Merch Manager – For years and years we sold merch ourselves, but as we’ve become more popular this isn’t possible. Because we’re performing for up to 2 hours, I need to rest my voice before a show more than I used to. And being honest, if I’m chatting to you at the merch desk, I’m slowing down the queue and we’re selling fewer t-shirts. Lily’s an incredibly organised and patient merch seller, and does a much better job than I could these days.

The trip saw us away from home/travelling for 3 days. Which means we pay our crew for 3 days of work.

Worth noting that we saved money on crew costs because Jason did the long drive from Midsomer Norton to Dublin (via Cardiff) and I (Gareth) Tour Manage all shows we play outside of North America, and we don’t pay ourselves for these roles. Additionally, Rob designed the brilliant poster, so that was a saving too. Also worth noting that we don’t have a “manager”! If we did, you could deduct the standard 20% management commission from the £6,151.59 income (it’d actually be more than that, as their management cut would come off the gross total of merch, not net).

Total costs = £7,863.88

Incomings = £6,151.59

Outgoings = £7,863.88

Loss = £1,712.29

So there you have it! We go to Dublin for a one-off show and the band comes away with a loss of £1,712.29 (in reality it’s significantly more than that as we drank a ton of Guinness, and there are other smaller/optional expenses I’ve excluded). Do we care? Not really, no. I care that this is the reality for our band and bands like ours, but it doesn’t diminish the experience of a fun weekend for us. Being in this band is a joy. We had a great time in Dublin, the crowd/venue/promoter were lovely. It was so nice to meet so many of you outside in the drizzle after the show, and in pubs before and after. We’ll have great memories of time spent with our mates forever and we’ll always prioritise fun and comfort over profit. We’re lucky that we can afford to do that. But it hopefully illustrates why it took us 16 and a half years to make the trip back to Ireland. And why we don’t travel to mainland Europe for shows. Or why the likes of Australia or South America remain so elusive, despite the apparent demand for us to visit.

If there’s a take home message from this, it’s nothing to do with LC!, and everything to do with new and young musicians who’d perhaps like to progress to the level we’re at, and well beyond. Of course, a new band won’t have the level of outgoings as we do, but their show fee and especially merch income will also be much reduced. Without the backing/protection of wealthy family (and it’s clear to see that UK guitar/pop music is overrun by the middle class and private school rich kids), or being sold a dream by an albatross of a recording advance/management company, what hope does anyone have?