Tips for setting up a tour in october (german "party" band)

Klipp

Hey

my name is sebastian and im very new to this board. I live in germany and im looking for some informations for a planned tour with my band in october 2013. To give you an idea of what what and who we are, i start with a short information about us and what we are usually doing here in germany.

we're a top 40 coverband from treves, the oldest city in germany. In Germany we usually play amplified at village fairs with an audience from 2000 to over 10.000 people. Besides that we play, as a acoustic band, once a month (from September to May) in the local irish pub. We are all well experienced musicians playing together for years and work in part as instrument teachers. We are 5 people between 24 and 26 years old.

Now we are planning to come to ireland in october 2013. Our plan is to play some pub gigs in the west of ireland. Prefered citys are cork, limerick, galway and everything else around there.

Flights, rental cars and the cheapest holiday home cost about 2500€ altogether..

So the big questions are: How much money could you ask for a gig in a pub in october? Are there big differences between citys as galway and smaller towns like killarney? Is it usually that pubs have their own pa's, or do we have to bring our own?
to cover our costs we have to play 7 gigs for 400€ each. Is it realistic?

Im done

Sorry for bad english. i hope you can at leat guess what i wanted to say
and thank you for any answer!
Sebastian

galwaybabe

Hi Sebastian,

Welcome to boards.ie. In answer to your question about gigs, I don't honestly think you will get €400 per gig. It is difficult even for well established bands here to get that amount. Realistically you would get about €250 per gig. It is difficult to get gigs on mid-week nights for this amount even. You will generally find that venues in smaller towns will pay better than the big cities. This is because the cities already have a lot of bands available and the fees are lower as a result.

I would suggest trying to source cheaper accommodation so you can cut your costs a bit. It would not make sense to have a single holiday home anyway as there are quite long distances between some of the venues. You might find that some of the venues will offer accommodation as part of the deal. PM me for details of some possibilities.

A lot of venues expect you to bring your own PA but there are enough out there that have in-house PAs also so you shouldn't have to worry about bringing one with you.

I hope this helps and feel free to contact me if you would like some ideas of where to play.

Klipp

Hey, thanky you!

I think its hard to find any cheaper accomodation in ireland. We have to pay only 480€ for 2 weeks in a holiday home that has 13 sleeps.
If we take b&bs it woud be more expensive. (b&b is about 35€/per Person/per Night) Thats 2450€ only for accomodation. I forgot to mention that were not planning to come alone. We have a local tv broadcaster that is interested in documenting our "tour". They will also stay in the house. If some of our girlfriends decide to come with us, house is full.

Where we might cut costs is the flight. If we take our equipment from germany, we have to book an extra seat in the plan for each instrument. Thats about 500€ or more just to get 3 guitars, a bass and a cajon over to ireland.
Is there maybe a cheap way to rent instruments in ireland?

Some ideas of where to play would be great! Maybe we could play a gig together?