“Dude, it sounds like so much fun! Can I come out on tour with you guys? I swear I’ll do whatever you need me to do, just let me come on the next one!”

If you have any plans to hit the road with your band, get ready to hear these words from just about everyone you’ve ever known.

Going out on tour is awesome, but before you invite your old high-school beer-pong partner to come manage your tour, keep in mind that this is a business, and the less your crew does (or knows), the more slack you will have to pick up yourself.

In the world of touring, less is often more. Less people in the van, more comfort for those traveling inside. Less equipment, better gas mileage and easier set-up/breakdown. Less responsibility, more relaxation which leads to better performances. The list goes on, but I’d like to focus on the last example primarily.

For my first two tours, our personnel included band members and one merch guy. Comfort and space during traveling was optimal and all was good. But without a proper tour manager, there were many duties delegated between the 6 of us. And not a single one of us had enough time or energy to take the reins, which resulted in problems like this:

BAND MEMBER A: “Okay, who has our guarantee?”

Everyone looks around at each other with the “Not my job” look on their faces. Arguing ensues.

Or problems like this:

Band pulls up to hotel at 3AM.

BAND MEMBER A: “Someone go book the room.”

BAND MEMBER B: “Dude, I did it last time, tell BAND MEMBER C to do it.”

BAND MEMBER C: “Come on man! I’m not 21, they wont let me do it, you do it!”

Arguing ensues.

To someone who hasn’t spent time touring, these sound like silly, petty arguments. But when you’re living in such close quarters with people for months at a time, keeping a calm environment is beyond crucial. Who wants to get on stage every night and play their heart out with the guy who booked the crabs-tastic Super 8 the previous night?

But a tour manager’s tasks seem menial, you say. All you’ve got to figure out is what time we play that night, the venue’s name and location, whether there’s WiFi or not, and what the nearest eating establishments were, right? Maybe throw in what city we’re playing tomorrow (in case we have friends in that city), and whether or not we’re staying in town that night (in case we want to make new ‘friends’).

Why can’t my buddy from home do that?

Because you don’t realize how much more there is to take care of. It wasn’t until we hired a tour manager that we saw first hand how a tour was actually “managed.”

For example, do you know what back-end deals are when it comes to touring?

We didn’t either. In touring, a headliner will be paid a guarantee (guaranteed payment, a sum decided before the tour) every night, but if the show sells a certain number of tickets (usually close to the capacity of the room), the band is then entitled to WAY more money.

Sounds great, right? It is. But we found out the hard way that promoters aren’t always going to go out of their way to make sure you got what you were entitled to. In other words, we packed up, said our goodbyes, and headed off to the next city on three or four separate occasions with our well-earned back-end money (which we didn’t even know about, and which was sometimes close to $2,000) in the pockets of promoters.

If your culinary-school-bound best friend is going to be your tour manager, chances are you’ll never find out about something like back-end. But if you hire someone with a little experience, you can be sure he or she will never leave a city without putting every last cent you are owed into your lockbox.

There are also less obvious responsibilities. There are politics in the touring world, and often times your tour manager acts as a representative of your band, whether it’s in front of promoters, companies that endorse you, radio stations, or even the other tour managers on the tour.

Plus, if things ever go sour, do you really want to have to fire your best friend? We took friends out a couple times, but I always voted against it, simply because I’m fine with reprimanding or setting a hired worker straight. But it’s much harder to be upfront when it’s someone with whom you have a personal relationship with prior to the tour, because you are worried about their feelings.

So if you are thinking about hiring a friend as a crew member, consider just inviting them out for a few days rather than placing the responsibility in their lap. Touring is only a party if your band’s enjoying life on the road, and qualified crew members are essential for that to happen.