30 March 2012
I sincerely appreciate all your pleas to come to your particular country/city but if we don’t get serious offers of shows then we can’t make it happen. There are lots of places in the World I want to play where I know there are fans but in a lot of cases not enough to sustain a serious show that makes financial sense to either the promoter ( who’s ass is primarily on the line if it fails) and mine (who’s ass is secondary on the line if it fails).If I won Euro millions and didn’t have to bother about keeping a roof over my head then I am sure I would love to take an extremely long “busman’s holiday” touring the World at leisure, seeing the sights and playing shows to a few hundred fans in a small town or a club somewhere every few days. As is I can’t.Our running costs in Europe are a minimum of 3500 pounds a day.That is day on or day off which means a day off still incurs those costs and has to be paid out of gig income.
In the US with all the bureaucracy/visas/air transport to get there etc etc you can practically double that. It is a huge investment and a huge gamble for promoters and us to take this on and all it takes is a couple of gigs to go down through lack of numbers and a busted promoter and I am on the edge of the abyss.
In Denmark on the Fishheads tour which had the lowest costs ever we still lost 2 shows and only Copenhagen made money.The promoter squeaked.
Spain on “13th Star” the local promoter was distraught in San Sebastian which had been put in to give us the run to Portugal which died in Porto and balanced in Lisbon, worked in Barcelona and then the run out with days off still kerchinging!
Yatta has an extremely difficult job routing tours so we don’t have too many days off and can procure enough income to support the circus.
I have to be very careful how I deal with touring and still have savage and painful memories of experiences in the 90’s when I took huge risks and eventually put myself in horrendous debt trying to break out into a different league that would sustain bigger productions and longer touring activities.It didn’t work and I am very cautious these days.
We do what we can do and as I said sincerely appreciate that there are fans out there desperate for me to come to their country/city/town.
I have to be realistic and believe me if an opportunity arrives we take it.
For now you just have to hope you have a local promoter who believes it will work and has the infrastructure to make it work and a bank balance that won’t destroy him if it takes a hit. They are people like you and me who also have families and responsibilities and there is no feeling worse than picking up the gig fee from someone adhering to his contract and his word when you know he has taken a huge hit no matter how good the show was or how much the small turnout enjoyed it.This business is not about ripping people off and I want everyone involved with a show to walk out the venue happy and feeling good on all levels.
We try our best to make it happen