March 6, 2025

What Does A Tour Cost?

On the night before Bonanza Festival kicked off a couple of weeks ago (review here), I was in the bar at Rio Hostel drinking a beer when I got talking to two guys, one of whom turned out to be from my hometown of Birmingham. We exchanged anecdotes and discovered he grew up on the road where my secondary school was. This Birmingham chat turned into a weird kind of refrain during the rest of the festival, as I then unexpectedly bumped into another Brummie DJ friend and encountered several other people with some kind of connection to the city. Indeed, over my subsequent travels around South and Central America, this discussion about Birmingham and its musical reference points (or lack thereof) popped up again and again. One person was a big Black Sabbath fan. Another had been to the NEC. Most had heard of UB40 or even seen them play; very few, I was sad to note, knew about Jamelia.

Anyway, another question that came up in my conversation with those two guys at the Rio Hostel bar, and which comes up often when people find out I’m travelling around DJing, was about how the money works. Do I get my travel paid for? And other expenses? Or do I have to pay everything out of the fees I receive for playing? I told them what I tell everyone: it depends. But on tours like this one that involve several different promoters, long-haul flights, gigs of wildly varying type, and many in-between periods where I am not necessarily being hosted by anyone in particular, more often than not the simplest approach for all concerned is to agree all-in deals and I just sort out the practicalities myself. That’s how this tour panned out, and I figured it might be interesting to do a bit of a summing up, so anyone curious can see what goes into — and comes out of — this kind of operation.

(I’d like to mention upfront that two of these gigs were booked by my agent Gio, who is no longer my agent but is still a great friend. Thank you Gio!)

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The tour

Here’s an itinerary of where I’ve been over the past four weeks:

4/2 Fly from Lisbon to NYC and stay one night with my sister

5/2 Fly from NYC to Seattle and stay three nights with promoter

7/2 Play for Research (review here)

8/2 Fly from Seattle to San Francisco and play for Ekstasis with Gwenan; stay at promoter’s friend’s place for three nights

11/2 Fly from San Francisco to Bogotá and stay with a friend for one night

12/2 Fly from Bogotá to Santa Marta for Bonanza; stay in a hotel organised by the festival (2x extra nights organised by me)

14/2 Play at Bonanza Festival

18/2 Fly back to Bogotá and stay with a friend for four nights

21/2 Play at Paradisco

22/2 Fly from Bogotá to Lima and stay for three nights in a hotel

25/2 Fly from Lima to Mexico City and stay one night in a hotel

26/2 Bus to Tepoztlán and stay three nights with a friend

27/2 Play at El Bicho

28/2 Bus back to Mexico City to play for Discos Movimiento; stay at promoter’s place for four nights

1/3 Play at Roca Hi-Fi

4/3 Fly from Mexico City back to Lisbon via Madrid

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The gigs

That’s seven gigs across four long weekends: two DIY situations, one at night and one in the evening; one festival slot; one smallish bar-club where people danced; two smallish bar-clubs where they didn’t; and one out-and-out club gig. The fees I received for these ranged from a hundred euros to over a thousand euros, adding up to a total of 5100 EUR. Not bad for a few nights of playing some choons while gallivanting around the world, eh?

I’m not going to go into detail about all the gigs here — I’ve linked to two of the reviews I already wrote above — but I will mention that all of them gave me fulfilment in some way. I take it as a point of pride that I can play such varied settings and 1) do a good job in all of them and 2) learn something new from each of them. I did four extended b2bs along the way, both with old friends and new ones. I played from 80bpm to 140pm. I did the warm-up and rocked peaktime. I played deep as fuck at peaktime. I took the crowd into account but never pandered to them. I played the 15 records I brought with me multiple times in entirely different contexts, and made them work mixed in with digital. Musically and creatively I feel validated by the whole experience.

But we’re not talking music or creativity here, we’re talking cold hard cash.

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The travel

If you include flights with connections/layovers, that’s a total of 10 flights and over 60 hours of travel time. The only ones I didn’t pay for out of my fees were the flights from Bogotá to Santa Marta, which were covered by Bonanza Festival — the rest cost a total of 1700 EUR. I booked most of these flights between late December and mid January and opted for some pretty uncivilised flight times in order to get cheaper deals. I did, however, book myself civilised seats on most of the flights because I’m not a masochist. I also did the entire month with only a cabin bag because 1) I’m too weak to carry a bigger bag around all that time and 2) it saves a lot of time and money.

While flights are the biggest part of the financial puzzle when it comes to travel, other costs of getting around can quickly add up. I prefer to take public transport wherever I can. A lot of airports have public transport connections that are not only cheaper but also faster than getting a taxi or private car: for example, I got a 3am bus from my hotel in Lima to the airport for the princely sum of 6 EUR. Then again, if I’m in a country where I neither speak nor read the language and the promoter insists on organising a car, I’m not exactly going to argue. I got many lifts from willing promoters and friends of promoters.

I walked a hell of a lot and saw the sights while doing it. I also gratefully accepted and rinsed my artist care’s login for the Ecobici streetbikes in CDMX, which helped a lot for zipping around the city and avoiding its seemingly constant gridlock. Through this combination of public transport, generously offered lifts and streetbikes, and using my own two legs, I managed to keep the overall spend on ground transport for this trip to just over 100 EUR, which is kind of insane. And I read a lot of books while I was at it.

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The accommodation

Out of 28 nights on the road I was housed for free by family, friends and promoters for a total of 18 nights. Bonanza festival put me up at a hotel for 4 nights, and I paid for 6 nights in various other hotels — a total of 416 EUR. (This hotel bill would have been higher were it not for getting a discounted rate at one of the places thanks to a promoter’s connection.) Of all the potential costs of a tour, accommodation has to be the one with the biggest potential for breaking the bank, since you’re having to fill in a lot of dead time between gigs. If it weren’t for the generosity of friends, friends of friends and promoters (that is, new friends) giving me their spare rooms, their own beds or, in one instance, since they were away, their entire stunning house, I would have had to spend a vast amount of money on accommodation, navigating dodgy Airbnbs or hostels or whatever and generally feeling adrift. As it was, I benefitted from the kind hospitality of a whole string of lovely people, and was made to feel at home every step of the way. I just hope I can return the favour at some point in the future.

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The food

I’m someone who finds it quite difficult to feed myself properly even when I’m at home, let alone when I’m travelling around a lot. It’s not that I don’t like food or cooking — I do — but I have a complicated relationship with my metabolism (lightning fast), dealing with stress (a lifetime project tbh) and making sure I don’t miss meals (I find it surprisingly easy to run on fumes, though my mood obviously suffers). Routine is key, and that’s the first thing to go out of the window as soon as I hit the road.

One thing that has helped me is drinking Huel on top of my main meals, and if you’ve hosted me at your party or home over the past few years you’ll have seen me whip out the shaker and powder on the regular. The thing about travelling with Huel is that it’s heavy, and when you’re only taking a carry-on bag with you it can quickly cause issues. I decided to bring a full 1.7kg bag with me on this trip, which would last me 17 days of one-Huel-a-day. This was suboptimal for various reasons: 1) I was going to be away for 28 days, so it would run out halfway through the tour; 2) I often have two Huels a day, especially if I’m playing all night and need one during or after my set (it’s a regular late-night lifesaver); 3) that 1.7kg put me even further over the baggage weight limit than my 15 records already did, meaning I had to do some highly inventive repacking at Lisbon airport to avoid them charging me 80 EUR to check my bag in.

“Why don’t you just buy/cook enough food en route?” would be a reasonable question. Well, first, buying food is expensive. If wanted to make up my average Huel calorie deficit every day with additional snacks, and I was in, say, San Francisco, where simply thinking about going into a cafe costs you 20 USD, you can see how it would all add up. As for cooking, I’ve never been a particularly resourceful or improvisational cook, so although sometimes I can stretch to making some pasta or whatever in an unfamiliar kitchen, I don’t make a habit of it, and buying ingredients on the move is a shortcut to food waste. I won’t deny, either, that being able to eat all the tasty food in all these different places is one of the major perks of doing all this. It really comes down to where you are. If you’re somewhere like Hanoi, you can eat all the tasty food and feel healthy and solvent afterwards. But if you’re in NYC or SF, you can eat all the tasty food, but you will end up both bloated and broke.

I spent about 750 EUR on food over the whole month, a disproportionate third of which in only the first 6 days in the US. This is obviously an absolutely eye-watering amount to spend on food compared to a normal month at home. I also haven’t mentioned the significant food+drink credit I got at Bonanza festival and the multiple meals made or bought for me by friends and promoters, so that number could well have been much higher. If I was being more meticulous about my budgeting for trips like this — and if I was relying more on making proper money (more on that below) — this would probably be the main area where I’d try, with some difficulty, to exercise some restraint.

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The fun

Let’s get this out of the way first: I’m not a shopper. It helps, of course, that my single piece of luggage was already full from day one. But even with the option of buying an extra checked bag for the journey home, primarily to bring back a load of mezcal, I resisted. In the end the only non-food things I bought in shops on this trip were: a solitary LP on my pilgrimage to Dark Entries (this wasn’t even for me, but a gift for a friend; I’ll keep the DE-branded plastic bag though!); a copy of Times Square Red, Times Square Blue from a gay bookstore in the Castro (this cost me the best part of 30 USD lol); some very necessary flip-flops on the way to Bonanza; and, on my final day in Mexico City, with the remaining pesos I’d been paid in cash for one of my bar gigs, a shirt in a vintage shop picked out by a friend. We were in and out of the shop in about 10 minutes and I took zero decisions — my kind of shopping.

As for leisure, the main things I like to do when travelling are museums and galleries, botanical gardens, theme parks, swimming, bouldering and looking at views. To my regret I didn’t make it to Six Flags Mexico, but it’s on the list for next time. I also sadly didn’t make it to Colombia’s premier coffee-themed attraction Parque del Café. I went to museums and galleries in pretty much every city but through no real planning of my own somehow managed to hit the free entry days at most of them. In San Francisco my day of culture involved walking from the house to the Castro via Dolores Park and then up to Corona Heights to see the panoramic view. I went bouldering in Bogotá, Lima and CDMX. In Tepoztlán one morning we beasted up the climb to the El Tepozteco pyramid.

In CDMX I made an expensive but worth-it trip out to the suburbs to see the beautiful Casa Pedregal by Luis Barragán. All of this added up to about 250 EUR worth of entertainment. If I’d gone bouldering in the States it would be a different matter.

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The balance

If you add all of that up, these are the final accounts:

• IN: 5100 EUR

• OUT: 3300 EUR

• BALANCE: 1800 EUR

Some of the fees were cash in hand and some I will pay standard rate tax and social security on. On final balance I think I will come out slightly ahead, which I consider something of a result.

This brings me on to the subject of what I do for a living. Clearly, if this was all I did I’d be having a whale of a time, but I’d very quickly be broke. And last year, when my main source of income was indeed DJing, I very quickly did become broke. My other main job is as a translator and last year I lost one of my regular clients, so I looked to music to pick up the slack. It was, frankly, a disaster. I had major tours in the US and Asia and I had some months where I was booked and busy in Europe. But those tours, especially the US ones, actually resulted in net losses (my bad for having fun along the way), and there were other whole months where I had barely any gigs at all. I managed to fill in some of the gaps with freelance translation work and, from September onwards, a new part-time admin job, but it became painfully apparent that I would in no way be able to rely on DJing for making a living.

Luckily for me, with the admin job and a slightly more reliable stream of translation work, so far this year I am less reliant on DJing money to get by. A week into this trip I was asked to translate a two-hour play about a dystopian anti-feminist future/present, which I did while I was at Bonanza and in Bogotá. This meant I didn’t have to think too hard about saving on food and drink (though the money I spent on croissants and chai teas while working at a cafe in Bogotá certainly added up), and was also why I allowed myself to book the odd night in a comfortable hotel rather than slumming it in hostel dorms. But I look ahead to March and realise I won’t be making enough money from any of my three jobs to cover the bills, and I start to regret some of those croissants.

As I said, this newsletter has been about cold hard cash. I don’t know if you’ll have found this monetary post-mortem fascinating, surprising, deadly tedious or simply confirmation of your suspicions about what the lived experience of a middlingly successful DJ is like. To be cliched for a moment, though, I hope it goes without saying that when it comes to the creative juice and the worldly experience, I’m getting something you can’t really put a price tag on. I could easily have written a parallel newsletter about the gigs and the tunes I played and the fun I had — and maybe I still will. In the end, the fact that party organisers and friends will fork out their own money to have me travel halfway round the world and play some relatively obscure tunes to people is something I will always be amazed by, and deeply thankful for.

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What’s next

In March I’ll be staying in Lisbon and playing a few times:

08/3 — w/Budino, Cassy, CVLT and Jaye Ward @ Ministerium
14/3 — w/ Budget Pope at a quiosque in Cacilhas
29/3 — Spiritland in the evening; Outra Cena at night

In April I go to the UK and back to the States for a few gigs, and then in May I head to Amsterdam and E Asia. I will try and keep you updated on these things here.

In the meantime, quick-and-easy on-the-road pasta recipes are always welcome!