From the Road

The purpose of starting the advance weeks before the show was simple:

Resolve the production requirements before we arrived.

Lighting.

Video.

Audio.

Stage.

Hospitality.

Transportation.

Anything that needed clarification had weeks to be discussed, confirmed and closed.

Show day should've been about executing what we'd already advanced.

It wasn't.

Our inbound flight was delayed, so the video check had to be moved to show day.

We arrived at the venue at approximately 1:00 PM.

Production wasn't ready.

So we left.

We came back later to do our programming.

They still weren't ready.

We left again.

We came back again.

They still weren't ready.

At this point, this wasn't one delayed production check.

We were repeatedly rearranging our show day around production that should've already been ready for us.

Nearly two hours after our original arrival, production still wasn't ready.

Doors were already open.

Another artist was soundchecking.

Lighting and truss work was still being completed.

And we were still trying to get through production items that should've been resolved before show day.

The problems weren't limited to production.

Hospitality wasn't being executed as advanced.

There was no artist liaison assigned.

And after the show, our transportation wasn't where it needed to be. After waiting nearly 40 minutes, we eventually walked outside the festival grounds ourselves.

Individually, each one of those things can look like a separate problem.

They weren't.

The failure happened much earlier.

The advance never reached a point where the show was actually under control.

We started more than five weeks out.

There was enough time.

But time by itself doesn't advance a show.

Sending an email doesn't advance a show.

Starting a WhatsApp conversation doesn't advance a show.

Having someone's contact information doesn't advance a show.

Unresolved information is still unresolved information.

And when those unresolved items keep getting pushed forward, eventually there's nowhere left for them to go.

They land on show day.

That's what happened here.

We arrived.

They weren't ready.

We left.

We came back.

They still weren't ready.

We left again.

We came back again.

They still weren't ready.

At that point, the advance wasn't protecting show day anymore.

Show day had become the advance.

The show still happened.

That's important.

Because it's easy to look at a completed show and assume everything worked.

But a show happening isn't the same thing as a show being properly advanced.

Every unresolved production item that reaches show day becomes something somebody has to solve while they're supposed to be executing the show.

Every missing confirmation creates another assumption.

Every last-minute personnel change creates another opportunity for information to disappear.

And every time the artist team has to leave, come back, wait, leave again and come back again, you're burning time that was supposed to be used somewhere else.

Eventually, you're not executing anymore.

You're reacting.

The production advance started more than five weeks before the show.

That time needed to be used to drive each department toward confirmation.

If information wasn't coming back, it needed escalation.

If a department couldn't provide what was required, that needed to be identified early.

If production personnel changed, the confirmed information needed to transfer with them.

If something couldn't be resolved before show day, it needed to be clearly identified as outstanding—with an owner and a plan to close it.

And if the artist team was given a time to come to the venue for programming, production needed to be ready at that time.

By the time the artist team arrived, everyone should've known:

What's confirmed.

What's changed.

What's still outstanding.

Who's responsible for it.

Instead, too much of that work followed us all the way to the venue.

When I questioned it, the promoter explained that the contract indicated a 75-minute performance.

And that's fair.

The contract matters.

But that's not where the problem was.

If the contract says 75 minutes and the advance says 60, there's a discrepancy that needs to be resolved.

Instead, the running order was changed to 75 and the change never made it back to the artist team.

So now both sides were operating with different information.

The promoter believed we were playing 75.

We were preparing 60.

Both sides thought they were right.

That's exactly how something that should've been handled before show day turns into a show-day problem.

Nothing catastrophic needed to happen.

We simply could've shown up and done exactly what we had been advanced to do:

Play 60 minutes.

Then at midnight—or in this case, after 60 minutes—you've got one side expecting another 15 minutes while the artist and his team believe the performance is finished.

Now you're trying to resolve something during the show that should've already been resolved during the advance.

The moment somebody identified:

the discrepancy needed to come back to the artist team.

Confirm which one is correct.

Get the appropriate approval if required.

Update the running order.

Make sure everyone is working from the same information.

Done.

Things change on the road all the time.

That's not the problem.