What Does A Tour Cost? (US Edition)
I guess this could become a series, although…
When I wrote my last newsletter counting the cost of my tour around North, South and Central America back in February (here), I got quite a big response from people. I got some messages from non-DJs saying how interesting it was to lift the lid on the practicalities of touring. I got messages from other DJs relating to what I’d written and sympathising with some of the challenges I’d described. Interestingly, I got a few responses from DJs who are playing and earning magnitudes more than me and yet found things I said still resonating.
When I wrote that piece, I guess I needed to vent a bit about how difficult I’ve been finding it to make a living off these trips, but I wasn’t necessarily trying to make everyone wake up to the ‘harsh reality’ of touring, or get sympathy from my peers. I think I want to be honest about what my life is like, not sugarcoat or gloss over the difficulties, but also not contribute to some dramatisation of the DJ struggle. DJing is and always has been a privileged profession. Yes there some struggles and grind and whatever, but it’s usually the least precarious position in the club. Working down a mine this is not.
Now, as I started writing this follow-up for my recent US trip, I found myself going on and on about how expensive everything is over there. In fact, on the tour itself I kept catching myself complaining about it to everyone. How dull. So I’ve actually gone through and edited out most of the moaning from this look-back, leaving only the most egregious examples of expense in for posterity. Instead, this rundown actually focusses more on the music over the finances, though you’ll still get to see what I put in and what I came back with. There are also even fewer photos than last time cos I basically didn’t take any, sorry!
The tour
This was my itinerary:
9/4 Fly from Lisbon to NYC and stay at my sister’s place
11/4 Train to DC, stay three nights at promoter’s place
12/4 Play for Dance Club at DC9
13/4 Train back to NYC, stay at my sister’s for five nights
17/4 Train to Boston, stay at promoter’s place
18/4 Train back to NYC, play at Signal and stay one night in a hotel
19/4 Train to Philadelphia, play at VOID and stay that night at the promoter’s house
20/4 Train back to NYC and on to JFK, red-eye flight home to Lisbon
The gigs
That’s four gigs in 10 days, including a three-in-a-row sequence from Thursday to Sunday on the second weekend. Two of the gigs in DC and Boston were small promoters throwing low capacity (<200) nights in established local venues — DC9 in DC and Middlesex in Boston. The gig in Philly was at a small, fully DIY late-night space I’ve played before. Then the gig in NYC was at a ‘proper’ club and paid more than twice as much as any of the other events. In total I was paid around 3000 EUR across all four nights, which is actually low for the US (it’s not uncommon for me to be offered 1k for individual gigs over the pond) but reflects the small size of three out of four of the events.
I enjoyed each of the parties in their own way. I didn’t really know what to expect from the first gig for Dance Club in DC but it turned out to be a banger, with a sick Void sound system, excellent lighting and an up-for-it queer-leaning crowd. At the start of my set it took me a moment to adjust for the fact that there was basically no monitoring, but once I’d got past the epic delay between headphones and the room I entered full-on bar/wedding party mode and had a whale of a time. I’ve realised over the years that if I get to the point where I play Clark ‘Jak To Basics’ then I’m enjoying myself, and boy did I play the hell out of it at this party.
The gig in Boston for Steep was a straighter affair and quieter too. I let this discourage me for a stretch during my set, especially when I played the wrong track off a Soso Tharpa record Joyce from the DC crew had gifted me a few days earlier. What I wanted to play was ‘Ruminating On Blue’, a kind of meditative but propulsive housey dub techno track with cool stop-start drums. What I actually played was ‘Evolution’, a techno banger that starts off mega trippy and only gets trippier. It was way too much for the time and vibe and I’m certain it sent a section of the floor home. I had a moment of feeling terrible but caught myself, took a breath, and course corrected. What would the remaining 20 people actually want to hear at 1am on a Thursday night? Deep, moving music. So I quickly switched to tunes like Will Hofbauer’s ‘Scrumble’, Ben Nevile’s ‘Awashashen’ and, to close, John Tejada & Diamond Day’s ‘How I’m Wired’. This was very far from my original gameplan and involved searching through previous gig playlists for the right tunes — something I don’t really like doing — but it was worth it to meet the last dancers where they were at. I think we all enjoyed it.
Friday back in NYC was interesting because it was a pretty new club — Signal — where Gene On Earth had played all night the night before. My crowd expectations were therefore low, but actually when me and Gwenan came on at midnight there was a good dancefloor going. Apart from a few queer friends who came it felt like a very straight vibe, but the sound and setup were super on point, so I enjoyed playing vinyl and testing out the bass. I again had a moment of playing a tune that was more aggressive than I expected — this time Mono Junk’s ‘I’m Okey’ — but soon calmed down again. We finished a bit early due to the (by then) thin crowd and I enjoyed making Gwenan smile with the vocal version of Breaky D’s ‘The Theme’ right near the end. She then turned in for the night but I went over to see SPRKLBB closing Basement/Studio for another couple of hours.
Then, finally, VOID on Saturday night: five hours of unadulterated pleasure in a restaurant basement in Philly, a sick sound system, a Rane rotary and a wonderfully diverse, up-for-it crowd composed of femmes, muscle queens and a handful of digger bros all dancing from the word go. Can you ask for much more? There was a moment about 90 minutes in when I was playing this very unassuming and specific-sounding DBX x Cabanne remix of John Thomas’s ‘Talking Machine’ and I realised everyone was really locked in. It put a big smile on my face. Later on we stretched out a bit into techno, bass, even a pop flourish from Gwenan that I need to ask her about. I finished with a Splitradix tune, something which has become almost a cliche for me but frankly never fails (this time it was ‘Lucan 303 Distribution Service’). VOID is the product of tireless work on behalf of Chris and the team working there, who were sweeping out floodwater from the basement up to the minute the doors opened. I hope me and Gwenan did their effort justice with our set.
Anyway, on to the logistics.
The travel
The biggest outlay for this tour was my transatlantic return flight. I spent quite a few weeks umming and ahhing over how long to stay and whether to try and fly back home from Philly instead of NYC, since the VOID-Amtrak-LIRR-Air Train pipeline to JFK is a real punisher before an overnight flight. (It does help if you sleep beforehand, which I did this time.) Well, whatever contortions I tried to perform on Google Flights, the cheapest option was always going to be a return flight to JFK, so that’s what I ended up buying at an eye-watering 760 EUR. Luckily, the flight cost was offset rather by the fact I could do the rest of the trip by train: six of them for a total train time of 18 hours. It’s a good thing I like trains! In total my travel costs came to 1125 EUR, which is higher than I would have wanted, but makes sense given the time window in which I booked everything.
As for the rest of getting around, remember how in the whole of my February tour I managed to keep my ground transport costs to 100 EUR? Yeah, that was a bit of a miracle and was never going to happen here. The NYC subway is $3 a ride (compared to €1.85 in Lisbon) and I was going to be there for over a week. Nevertheless, that’s still significantly cheaper than getting Lyfts the whole time, but part of the problem with staying in Brooklyn — which is where my sister’s place is — is that the transport network in Brooklyn is really shit. If you want to get from your dinner in Williamsburg to your gig in Bushwick you’ll spend over twice as long doing it by metro and bus than you will in a car, so often the latter becomes the sensible option despite the price. (Or you walk. And I did a LOT of walking on this trip. My sister lives on a street that leads directly to Ridgewood, where all NYC DJs seem to live, so you just walk along that street for ~50 minutes and then you’re in DJ town.)
Anyway, over the whole trip across all cities, I spent 60 EUR on taxis and about the same amount on public transport, for a total of 120 EUR. Could be a lot worse, but that translates to over 10 EUR a day just to get around, compared to 3.5 EUR a day on my tour in February.
The accommodation
Part of the point of this trip was to stay at my sister’s while she was away on holiday. Ostensibly I was on tour; in reality my main role was to keep my brother-in-law’s cats fed. I performed this task diligently enough in exchange for free accommodation in NYC, which is obviously not something to be sniffed at.
The only hotel I stayed in all tour was on the night of the Signal gig, since the club offered it as part of the deal. In the event, they forgot to book the hotel until a few days before the gig, so it ended up costing them nearly 500 USD — money which to be perfectly honest I would have happily pocketed and slept on a bench somewhere. It’s moments like these that remind me of my previous corporate life and the sheer amount of dosh swilling around between companies, hotels, airlines and whatever else. It’s gross, yet there I was in my bank-breaking hotel room actually quite glad for the privacy and unexpectedly scented shower gel.
In DC, Boston and Philly each promoter was kind enough to put me up in their own home, so I actually paid nothing for accommodation at any point of this whole trip. Again, like in February, this must be the single most important factor determining the profitability or not of a tour.
The food
Yes I brought Huel on this tour and yes I was very glad of it. Since I needed fewer clothes for a shorter trip (and had access to my sister’s washer/dryer), I had enough space in my luggage for two bags of the stuff, which I pretty much polished off over the course of the 11 days.
Conventional wisdom has it that you only have to step out of the house in NYC to spend at least $20 on food, so the first thing I did on arrival was go grocery shopping so that I could at least make breakfast and lunch at home rather than eating out every meal. The groceries cost $40 for barely anything, but if I tell you that a single brunch I had in DC cost almost the same amount, you’ll see why it makes a difference.
There are cheap options though if you know where to go. I went for dinner with a friend at Super Pollo in Ridgewood, where you can eat a pretty solid meal for about $25 between two. Unfortunately those choices are often more than outweighed by things like the $18 avocado toast I got in Boston or the $14 cookies I bought while waiting for a bus in NYC (there were three cookies). Overall, despite the various promoters covering several very lovely meals, I spent 215 EUR on food. Ouch.
Then there’s the drink! I didn’t even mention this category in my February round-up, I just subsumed it into the food costs. Well, this time I’m splitting it out, because I managed to spend 100 EUR on drinks in bars and clubs over the course of the trip. I guess when you consider that a glass of wine in NYC costs minimum $14 before tip, and a small draft beer around $6, this figure actually doesn’t look that bad. But thank god the bar at Basement had stopped serving alcohol by the time I walked up to it on Friday night. This is definitely something I could cut down on if I really needed to.
The fun
Really all of this newsletter has been a prelim to the headline figure of my whole trip: it cost me THIRTY-TWO DOLLARS to go climbing in Bushwick. What the fuck? And my quest for walk-in swimming pools in NYC continues… How does anyone stay fit in NYC?
I also went to many museums and galleries on this trip but I almost forgot to include them here because they didn’t cost a penny! In DC, all the main museums and art galleries are free, so I hit up the Hirshhorn and the Smithsonian and enjoyed both immensely. In Boston I had about 90 minutes spare before my train back to NYC so I walked over to the Harvard Art Museum, also free and also excellent.
The only other leisure activity I really leaned into on this trip, which I didn’t in February due to lack of luggage space, was record shopping. I went to A-1, Ergot, 690 Woodward Garage and Boom Service in NYC and Joint Custody in DC, buying 11 records for a total of 86 EUR. Yes there were tons of amazing records at $20 a piece (or more) in all these shops, but I’m a parsimonious record buyer and always conscious of having to lug them around for the rest of the trip. I knew the setup at Signal and Void would be great, though, so I wanted to buy some records to play.
Here are some of the records I got:
Spike Rebel & I.C.E. - Get On Up EP on House Jam (1989), which features a sick acid breakbeat instrumental and a pretty good original hip house vocal. I didn’t know it when I bought it, but this was already on my wantlist. Win.
John Tejada & Arian Leviste - Geriatricks EP on Playhouse (2004), because I make it a principle to buy Playhouse records whenever I see them, and I, like everyone else, am having my own modest microhouse moment.
WildPlanet - Moving On/Synthetic reissue on Under The Radar (2024). I used to own the original of this on 430West and then for some unfathomable reason sold it. I think I didn’t like the press on it? Anyway, I’ve wanted the reissue for a while, especially because it wasn’t available digitally, so when I saw it for $18 at Ergot I bit the bullet. Turns out it is totally available digitally (here), but I’m glad to have the record in my hands regardless. It sounded fit on the Signal sound system.
Donnah - Love With Direction EP on Echo USA (1990), which I bought because I like the Candy J 12s on the same label…but after playing it a couple of times I’m not sure will make the cut as is. Maybe it’ll work as an edit, but when I played it at VOID the bassline really got lost on the system for some reason, so I don’t have great hopes. We’ll see.
I love US record stores because they are full of tunes like the Spike Rebel & I.C.E. and Donnah ones above that you just don’t find in European bins. Even just looking at the labels as you flip through them is a joy.
The balance
Well I ended up writing a lot about money after all. But hopefully it wasn’t too complain-y. When I did the accounts after I got back to Lisbon I was expecting to have made a modest profit, but not a huge amount thanks to the bouldering and cocktails and avocado toast. In fact, I did pretty well:
IN: 3000 EUR
OUT: 1750 EUR
BALANCE: 1250 EUR
Pretty great, right? In April, between this tour and the two gigs I did in the UK on the first weekend of the month, I earned more than enough from DJing alone to get by. Amazing! But you have to offset this against March, when I earned a meagre 600 EUR from three local gigs in Lisbon. Like I mentioned in my previous newsletter, I have a couple of other side jobs that in some months fill in the gaps and in others don’t. But I’m still definitely in need of a job I can rely on to pay the bills.
Next up
In May I head to Amsterdam and then E Asia, so come and say hi:
10/5 Breakfast Club, Amsterdam
16/5 Modeci, Seoul
17/5 Snug x Peach @ Savage, Hanoi
24-26/5 Zhao Dai On Leave Festival, Qinhuangdao
Until then I will be in Lisbon swimming (2 EUR a pop), climbing (10 EUR) and eating as many cookies as I bloody well please.