What to know<\/p>\n
Toronto up-and-coming alternative band Spring Colours just finished a four-date tour in Toronto, Hamilton, Montr\u00e9al and Ottawa. <\/p>\n
As a small band, they learned the art of DIY touring, including booking venues, booking transportation, and remembering to take care of themselves while on the road.<\/p>\n
Spring Colours is playing two more shows in Toronto in May. One\u2019s at Dance Cave on May 10 and the other is at Supermarket on May 23.<\/p>\n
For a small band to go on tour, it takes almost a year of planning, stable day jobs, and a delicate balancing act between making money and keeping prices cheap.<\/p>\n
Just ask Toronto five-piece Spring Colours<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n The self-dubbed chiptune, indie, and noise-pop band has been steadily making a name for themselves in the city\u2019s alternative music scene. They released their debut album, The Courage Cloak, at the end of March and recently got back from a four-date tour in Toronto, Hamilton, Ottawa, and Montr\u00e9al. They\u2019re playing a few more dates in Toronto this month.<\/p>\n As an up-and-coming band, the members of Spring Colours often have to handle the logistics of putting together shows by themselves, including booking, transportation, and merchandise. Now Toronto sat down with the band to learn more about how they put on their recent tour.<\/p>\n DIY touring is a risky business<\/p>\n As a small band, touring is mostly a DIY endeavour. Without a promoter to help with booking venues and handling the administrative stuff, like emails, Spring Colours had to front personal money.<\/p>\n Thankfully, the five members all have stable day jobs that cover the bills, so the financial aspect of touring wasn\u2019t as impactful.<\/p>\n \u201cA big thing with DIY is definitely putting that financial risk on yourself, because it\u2019s just the five of us in this band. We put down personal money to secure the room. That was the big thing,\u201d David Dellio, the band\u2019s guitar and synth player, explains.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve done a lot ourselves, and we\u2019ve done a lot with promoters. Promoters typically front that cost and get you the room. You get less of a payout, but then you have [to handle] less of the logistics.\u201d<\/p>\n The cost of booking a venue, says vocalist and guitar player Lukas Lyjak, can range from free to $500, with the higher end eating into how much artists earn at the end of the day.<\/p>\n In a perfect world, they would play in free DIY spaces, but Lyjak says the logistics of Spring Colours\u2019 performances don\u2019t always allow for that.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve gotten really good at it, and we\u2019ve gotten very flexible. But we do need a certain number of outputs to run our synths and microphones,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n Like every touring artist, Spring Colours is always aiming to make a profit after each show \u2014 or at least break even.\u00a0<\/p>\n But as a smaller band, Dellio says they can\u2019t set ticket prices at an unreasonable amount. After balancing costs versus profits and how much people are usually willing to pay, the band settled on approximately $20.<\/p>\n \u201cIt makes people want to come out and spend their night there and have a good time without feeling like they\u2019re breaking the bank,\u201d he says.\u00a0<\/p>\n At the end of the day, after splitting the profit with the three or four other bands on the bill, the $100 or so the band comes home with \u201ccovers the costs to get to the venue and back.\u201d<\/p>\n Start way earlier than planned<\/p>\n Spring Colours booked their four-city tour for the last week of April. But they started planning it back in August, eight months before hitting the road.<\/p>\n The band\u2019s other synth player and vocalist Amani Sabry, advises artists to start planning earlier than they think.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHowever much time you think you would need? Double that. Book a year in advance and send out feelers as soon as you can,\u201d she says. \u201cIt\u2019s boring, it\u2019s not fun, it\u2019s lame. It\u2019s not the romanticised version of tour life, but a lot of it starts off as spreadsheets.:\u201d<\/p>\n She says any promoter or venue booking agent would be more than happy to tell you their situation and how far in advance you should book things if you really want a certain spot.<\/p>\n Additionally, car rental companies usually need quite a bit of advance notice to rent out vehicles like sprinter vans, as most of them are now reserved for Amazon delivery drivers. The band says there\u2019s no fix to not having reliable transportation to haul instruments and gear from venue to venue.<\/p>\n Take care of yourself<\/p>\n Lyjak says the band played Hamilton and Montr\u00e9al back to back, which took driving the hour from Hamilton to Toronto, waking up early the next day, and then driving the six hours to Montr\u00e9al.<\/p>\n \u201cThat takes a physical toll on you. Obviously, I\u2019m not gonna say take a break every single night between shows, because that\u2019s economically not feasible,\u201d he explains. \u201cBut if you\u2019re not paying the cost through your body, you\u2019re paying the cost through your wallet.\u201d<\/p>\n Without a tour manager to dictate every waking moment of life on the road, Sabry says it\u2019s important to take care of yourself, especially your voice. She says she let the \u201crock and roll lifestyle\u201d get to her head.<\/p>\n \u201cI wasn\u2019t taking care of my vocal strain in between shows. By the last show, my throat was a bit burnt out,\u201d she warns. \u201cTake care of yourself when on tour, especially if you\u2019re playing so many shows back to back.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cTaking it easy is important because if you\u2019re already spending all this time and money on logistics and figuring everything out, you might as well be good to go for every show.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Spring Colours will be performing at the Dance Cave with Gully Boys on May 10 and at Kensington Market\u2019s Supermarket<\/a> on May 23. They\u2019ll also be participating in an album listening experience hosted by Spin Class Local at Danu Social House on May 10.<\/p>\n