Offer Tours to Bands

Assembling a tour in an unfamiliar area is hard work as a contra dance band (or caller). You need to figure out when the dances are, whether the schedules align, who the bookers are, how far out they like to book, and probably other things I'm forgetting. This is enough work that many tours that would be great just don't happen.

One thing I've been on the receiving end of a few times is bookers offering a tour. This is so great, and I wish more series would give it a try! It's generally much easier for organizers to offer than for bands to put it together: you often know your fellow organizers and can put together a single block of dates to offer. If the band says no, you can offer it to another.

From an organizer's perspective, the big advantage is you can book great bands that live a little farther away and wouldn't normally be able to make it out to you. Dancers typically enjoy the variety, and I think there are substantial musical cross-pollination benefits.

Probably works best for dance communities 1-4hr apart that aren't all on Saturdays. Too close and the dances compete, too far and the driving gets impractical. For example, several times now (and again this coming February 17th through 20th) Kingfisher has played Princeton Wednesday, Philly Thursday, DC Friday, and then one of several places on Saturday. These are all farther from Boston than would make sense for a single dance, but together it's ~16hr of driving, and 4hr/dance is not a bad ratio. [1]

If you have a weeknight dance within driving distance of other dances, consider reaching out to other organizers to sort out offering a tour as a block! I expect this works best if the groups agree on a specific set of dates, collect how much each group can pay, and then designate one person to book the dates as a single block.

(I'm not writing this as a secret request for tours: while they're really fun I have a lot going on with my day job, and as AI continues to make the world weirder I don't expect this to let up in the next few years.)

[1] There have been times when I organized tours with much worse ratios, including 6.7hr/dance and 6.2hr/dance (if one dance hadn't been snowed out).

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