A successful slow tour
Well, my beautiful little solo autumn tour has finally come to an end, and my heart is full of love and gratitude to everyone who was involved - my fellow artists, audiences, venues, festivals and more.
I devised the idea of creating and playing a "Slow Tour" after finding myself seriously burnt out at the end of last year. I knew I wanted to play shows,but I was also feeling financially and energetically drained after my album release. This idea felt like the best way forward. It was born from the concept of "slow productivity," which I'm a huge fan of! Check out The Tending Year for more about that!
For anyone who is interested, particularly independent artists who have been playing along at home, I thought I would share some of the experiences and things I have learnt from touring this way.
❤️ I ACTUALLY MADE MONEY! This is huge, especially in this current climate. But because I kept my tour local (ish) and solo, I avoided the huge expenses of flights, accommodation and taking care of a full band. Ticket sales helped, but selling merch was a game changer!
❤️ I played in towns where I already had connections. This helped with accommodation (thank you beautiful friends for looking after me!) and audience numbers.
❤️ While playing solo was heaps of fun, I eventually asked my brother Pete Carr to join me for the final few gigs and it sounded so much better! So even if touring a full band is impractical, I'd think about bringing a duo or trio.
❤️ Stretching the time between shows was so good for my nervous system but in hindsight sometimes the gaps between shows were a little too long and it was hard to sustain momentum and excitement during those long pauses.
❤️ The music industry is so fucked at the moment, and I'm not willing to "play the game" any more. Instead I will just work within my personal resources to do what I can, when I can. I felt so proud of myself for not giving a shit about what touring “should” look like and instead curating something that worked for me and my family.
❤️ Pre-selling gig tickets in this post-pandemic and cost of living crisis world is still so stressful. I absolutely loved playing festivals and music clubs where a lot of the burden and responsibility on the artist to "bring a crowd" is taken away. More shows like that in the future, please!!!
❤️ My kids barely noticed I was touring! For anyone trying manage a music career while raising a family, I couldn't recommend devising a 'slow tour' more!
❤️ Winter always feels like an important time of year to be slowing down, so that's what I'll be doing over the next month or two. Some exciting things are brewing though!! Stay tuned.
So anyway, there you are - some lessons I've learnt along the way. I still want to tour interstate and overseas. But that is going to take some serious budgeting and I'm not there yet. In the meantime, I'm so glad I did this!
Please reach out if you have any questions! I think it's so important for artists to share our experiences so we can all learn and support each other.
LOTS OF LOVE
Mezz xx