Playbooks · Bands & Touring
The between-tours playbook: keeping venues warm when you are off the road
A repeatable sequence for bands and touring artists: who to thank, when to re-ask, and how to turn a one-off room into a repeat room.
Playbooks: Step-by-step sequences you can run as-is, with gates and follow-ups named. · 6 min read
The routing problem is a relationship problem
Rooms do not book bands; people book bands. The promoter who liked your draw last spring is the reason next spring works, and that memory has a shelf life.
Treat every venue, promoter, and house-show host as a relationship with a cadence, not a line in a spreadsheet you rebuild each tour.
Run the same seven touches every time
Thank-you within 48 hours. Numbers and photos within a week. A check-in at the two-month mark with nothing to ask for. A soft availability note at four months. A routing ask at five. A confirmation follow-through. A post-show thank-you that starts the loop again.
Written down, it is a playbook. Left in your head, it is the thing you meant to do.
Let the system make the ask visible
The hardest touch is the ask, and the reason it gets skipped is almost never nerve — it is that nobody surfaced it on the right day.
When the next right move shows up on a short list each morning, the ask stops being a decision and starts being a habit.