When you’re booking a show, there are a whole lot of actions you need to take before you actually get into the venue on the day of the show, and one of those actions is called advancing. To do this, you write an email to the venue in preparation for your show with your tech rider, your hospitality rider, your questions about the run of the show, and any other information you may have, including your stage plot as well as your input list.
The hospitality rider is often what the band sends to the venue to make sure that they’re hydrated, and that they have everything they need in terms of a backstage setup. That includes water, drink tickets, towels, a mirror, chairs, and other things you might need to make sure that you take care of yourself in order to put on the best performance that you can.
In some cases, hospitality riders can actually be pretty funny. Some people will put that they only want green M&Ms. Some people will put that on Monday, they would like Doritos, and on Tuesday, they would like Ruffles. Some people have puzzles on their riders. They like to keep things fresh backstage and have something to do. A lot of people have newspapers from the area on their riders. Some people have even put kittens and puppies on their riders and actually received them.
One of the most important things to remember when you walk into a venue is that you are in control of your show. I don’t mean that you need to be overconfident about the way that you take up space in the room. What I do mean is that your kindness to your bandmates, your kindness to the employees of the venue, the front-of-house engineer, and everyone else who’s working is really paramount to everything else. You are in control by the way that you treat everybody and the way that your generosity comes through while playing the show.
If you’re interested in finding out more about how artists interact with venues, in addition to many concepts and lessons about working and succeeding in the music industry, think about giving online music education a try. This is the only form of music education that requires nothing more than an internet connection, and ideally a passion for the subject.
