Tourniquet’s Scott Discusses Life on the Road as Touring Director

Patrick Scott - operator at Tourniquet - has been touring for a long time. At times, he’ll serve as tour director, managing the entire process, and for other bands, he serves as front-of-the-house engineer. But he’s always intimately involved in making sure a show runs smoothly and the artist’s vision gets executed. 

He’s been on the road for several years, and has seen it all, remarking that there have been so many improvements to quality of life, quality of sound and, as a long-time vegan, quality of food (he went from piling cashews into veggie subs to get enough calories to having his pick of delicious vegan meals in places like Omaha). 

“I started mixing shows to see shows I wanted to see for free,” Scott says. “That’s at the root of it - experiencing live music.” 

He jumped on a video call with me shortly after returning from Coachella to discuss how tours have changed, what decisions bands have to make to be successful, and why he still loves what he does. 

The beginning of the road

Almost every tour conversation begins with a budget. 

“[We] can’t ask any questions without an answer to that question,” Patrick says.

Budgets are often a reflection of what venues and money are being offered and what type of show the band wants to put on. Getting all of the information, the routing from the booking agents, and the band’s vision for the tour is crucial before delving into specifics. Then the tour director starts assembling the right crew members for the job - many of whom are free agents 

“I have my people who I like to work with, and artists often have people they like to work with. If you have a crew that works, that’s magical,” Scott says.

When it comes to venues (e.g. sizes), sometimes the band has a strong perspective on the venues they want based on the album they’re supporting. 

He says planning a tour is much easier to make happen when the artist has a vision. 

“Then we say, ‘Let’s make this thing happen from a technological standpoint,’” Scott says.

Regardless of the band’s vision; management will often try to pick the venues that maximize their amount of tickets they can credibly sell.

But last summer was the summer of half-filled arenas and cancelled tours, demonstrating some bands and some management perhaps misjudged their popularity. Patrick says one culprit for this is it has “become a lot more difficult to judge an artist’s ability to sell tickets lately.”

Making the leap

He touched upon the rise in the phenomenon that an artist may begin a tour as an unheralded act and suddenly find themselves top of the world. Recent such acts include Chappell Roan and, to a lesser extent, Wet Leg (my example). “How Chappell Roan started last summer is not how she ended,” he says. 

While a positive step for the artist or band in question, it creates a lot of challenges for the tour. Going from a theatre tour to an arena tour causes your crew size to double. 

“There’s now a lot more space to cover - more PA, lighting, staging, and more trucks,” Scott says.

It also puts strains on your existing crew, especially if you had to originally hire cheaper, less experienced members because of budget. When an arena tour blossoms, the existing crew may not know how to handle that expansion in size or the artists may want to bring on bigger names. 

It’s a challenge for the artists or bands too. 

Patrick says that bands often start out knowing everything there is to know about their show, but as they graduate to larger venues, they get to the point where they only know their own part of the equation.

I asked what happens if you’re suddenly too big for your booked venues. 

“It’s a bad look to cancel shows because you got too big,” Scott says. 

What usually happens is the artist management will try to work with the promoter to scale up within their network of venues, Scott says. This is where the large companies like Live Nation/AEG, MSG Entertainment or AEG’s Bowery Presents, which may have multiple venues to choose from.

“When Amy Winehouse first toured the states, she was originally booked in a 100-cap room in Chicago. The best they could do was bump her up to the 2,000 cap room,” Scott says.

I asked at what point in time bands reach a certain threshold where they stop carrying their own stuff. He says it depends mostly on the artist but that “the growth of production should be parallel to the number of personnel handling production.”

At the same time,” You can’t have your finger-picking acoustic guitarists risk getting their hands smashed” if you can avoid it. 

Sometimes situations arise that require all hands on deck - like if the venue forgot to secure parking passes and the touring act has fifteen minutes to completely unload a van.

“Sometimes the bands help out, sometimes they say I’m only going to get in the way… and they’re usually right.”

How tours have changed

Scott says tours have gotten more complicated, in a good way. All artists - even those starting out - seem to be bringing more production on tour than ever before. 

He thinks back to the first tours of bands like TV on the Radio and The Strokes, where bands rolled in and used whatever was on hand. Now, everyone is a bit more savvy - understanding the value of bringing in your own equipment. 

Some of it also has to do with the improved access to information - no longer do production staff have to look up information on microfiche or pull out pages from magazines to figure out how to optimize sound and lighting. Much of the advanced information is now available online. 

Of course, the audio technology has also improved significantly provided the venues your band is playing at has upgraded. 

“What you can do with the speaker in the room is exponentially better now than it was ever,” Patrick says. “But there’s also a significant difference in the way a weatherbeaten point source system is compared to a contemporary line array.”

Also more venues have experienced sound (and lighting) people who understand best practices and work more closely with the touring team. 

Fans are more informed too. I asked him about whether he felt fans had a good understanding of the sheer amount of work that goes into putting on a show night in and night out.

He says touring staff are getting more exposure these days, both from artists filming more behind-the-scenes content and general awareness of the super fans who follow the tour to multiple stops.

“For a number of artists, we’ll see familiar faces at multiple shows and, we think, didn’t we just see you [in the previous city]?” Scott says. Those same fans may find and friend the touring staff on social media as well. 

What animates Scott these days

I asked Scott what he still loves about touring this far into his career.

“It comes down to the ability to get to places that I wouldn’t normally get to - I’m in Buenos Aires or on some airport runway in Poland  with a bunch of my friends,” he says. “Or, when you’re mixing a show, there’s a point where it feels like you are acting as a conduit for the audience and the band.”

His favorite venue is The 9:30 Club because of how they treat the people who play their venue, especially shouting out venue production manager  Ed Stack, who now has a senior role within the parent company of the club. 

“If you hang around enough touring people long enough, you will see plenty of t-shirts, hoodies, socks, etc. that have 9:30 on them,” Scott says. “There’s a reason for that, they’ve been around forever and are great at what they do.” 

The worst part is when venues - he won’t name names - opt for short-term revenue or make brand decisions over making the lives of the bands and their touring staff more comfortable.

There’s a simple recipe for being a great venue, he says: create an audience- and crew-friendly space, embrace communication, and have a sense of humor and flexibility. 

“[And, for artists, if you] have a reasonable schedule and treat people well, people will go the extra mile,” Scott says. “I can’t believe how many times I’ve said, ‘I wouldn’t do this for anybody but this band.’”