Touring Fundamentals

Introduction

A tour is the same show in a different building every day, built by people who slept on a moving bus. That one sentence contains everything that makes touring different from any other AV work: the repetition, the strangers who help you, the truck that decides your morning, and the fact that tomorrow happens whether or not tonight went well.

The craft is not new to you. Audio, video, lighting and rigging on a tour are the same disciplines they are anywhere. What is new is the system around them — the advance, the day sheet, the load-in order, the local crew, the bus call, the carnet — and the discipline of doing it at speed, in an unfamiliar room, tired.

What this book covers

• The show-day cycle, hour by hour, from the truck arriving to the bus leaving.
• The advance and the paperwork that decide the day before you get there.
• Who is who, on your crew and in the building, and who touches what.
• Trucks, cases, labelling and the spares a tour carries.
• The road itself — buses, hotels, per diems, food, laundry and sleep.

• Health on tour, from hearing to backs to fatigue.
• Borders, carnets, visas and freight.
• Festivals, shared systems and twenty-minute changeovers.
• Comms, networks and show files on the road.
• How people are hired onto tours and how they move up.

Who this is for

Technicians who want their first tour, crew who have done one-offs and want to understand the full cycle, and anybody joining a touring department who has never lived out of a bunk. It assumes AV Fundamentals 101 and the conduct taught in Set & Stage Etiquette.

How to Use This Book

Read it before your first tour and keep it for the first month. The chapters follow the tour itself: what kind of tour you are on, what was agreed before you arrived, who everybody is, then the show day, the truck, the road, your body, and the border.

Keep a notebook

Write down the load-in order that worked, the case numbers you keep losing, the venue quirks, the local crew chief's name, and how long each part of your own build actually takes. By week two you will have a personal system that makes every following day quicker.

A note on the words

Touring vocabulary is regional and inconsistent: a get-in and a load-in are the same thing, a runner and a driver may be one person, and what is called production in one country is the office in another. This book uses the words most widely understood and names the alternatives where they matter.

A note on safety

Load-in and load-out are the two most dangerous hours of a touring day: heavy cases, moving vehicles, work at height, time pressure and tired people. Nothing here qualifies you to rig, to operate a lift or to do electrical work. It teaches you to recognise the hazards, to work within your training, and to stop work that is unsafe.

Where this book sits

This book assumes you know what a console, a rig and a truck pack are, as AV Fundamentals 101 names them, and that you conduct yourself well on a crew. It does not assume you have ever been on a tour.

What pairs with this

• Set & Stage Etiquette — the conduct a crew you live with expects
• Safety Awareness & Rigging Basics — the load-in hazards this book works around every day

Where it leads

These are not steps in an order. Take whichever one fits.

• Production Coordination — Touring — the advance, the itinerary and the paperwork from the office side
• Monitor Engineering — Touring — a touring craft role, from the inside
• Stage Management — Touring — running the stage and the show day for the whole crew

Before You Begin

What Touring Is

Touring is a production that moves. The same show, the same crew and the same trucks arrive in a new building, build the show from nothing, run it, take it apart and leave — and do it again somewhere else the next day. Everything that makes touring hard and everything that makes it worth doing comes from that.

This chapter covers what a tour is made of, how long the parts take, and what is the same in every city and what is never the same twice.

Taking a show on the road, city to city.

The road

Touring is taking a show on the road — performing it in a series of cities and venues over a run (a tour), rather than in one fixed location. A touring show (a concert tour, theatre tour, or roadshow) travels with its crew and gear, setting up and performing in a new venue (often a different city) each show day, then packing up and moving to the next. Touring is the part of the live industry that brings shows to audiences everywhere, and it is a major field of AV work. Touring brings the show to city after city.

This makes touring distinctive: it is live-event production (the show in each venue) plus the road (the travel, the daily cycle, the traveling crew, the endurance). Tours can range from a few dates to months on the road across continents, and they employ large numbers of AV crew (audio, video, lighting, rigging, and more). Touring is a major, distinctive part of the live AV world.

The touring cycle

Touring runs on a repeating cycle — the show-day cycle: travel to the venue, load-in (the gear and set come in and get set up), soundcheck/rehearsal, the show, load-out (everything packs up), and travel to the next city, then repeat. This cycle is the rhythm of touring life, repeating day after day (often with travel overnight or between shows). Understanding the touring cycle is fundamental — it is the structure of everything in touring. Touring crew live and work by this cycle. The show-day cycle is the heartbeat of touring.

Each part of the cycle is a coordinated operation (load-in must be efficient, the show must run, load-out must pack everything to travel), and the whole cycle repeats reliably so the tour reaches each city and performs. The cycle is demanding (long days, repetition, travel) but becomes a well-drilled routine. Touring is the show-day cycle, repeated across the tour.

The same show, a different building

What travels is the show: the design, the gear, the crew and the file that makes it repeatable. What changes is the building — its dock, its power, its rigging points, its house crew, its rules and its stairs. A touring technician's real skill is landing that fixed show into a different room every day without the audience ever seeing the difference.

This is why touring crews are obsessive about systems. Cases are numbered and always packed the same way. Cable is dressed the same way in every city. The show file is the same file. The repetition is not a lack of imagination; it is what makes a twelve-hour day possible in a building nobody has seen before.

What is the same everywhere, and what never is

The same everywhere: the running order, the show file, the case numbers, the crew, the way your department builds, the times on the day sheet, and the bus call. Those are yours to protect.

Never the same: the dock and how far it is from the stage, the power and where it comes from, the rigging points and their capacity, the house crew and their local rules, the stairs, the catering, the weather, and the parking. Those are what the advance tries to find out before you arrive, and what the first hour on site confirms.

The day, in hours

A typical arena show day runs roughly like this. Trucks arrive early, often 07:00 or 08:00. Rigging goes up first, then the floor builds under it. Audio and lighting build through the morning, video through the middle of the day. Soundcheck happens in the afternoon, sometimes with the artist, sometimes only a line check. Doors open in the early evening, support acts play, the headline show runs, and load-out starts the moment the last note ends.

Load-out is fast — often two to four hours for a show that took eight to build — because everything has a packed place and everybody knows the order. Then the bus leaves on its call, which is decided by how far the next city is and how long the driver may legally drive.

A show day, in rough hours

The shape varies by show size and venue, and the order almost never does.

Fixed and variable

The two lists a touring technician carries in their head.

On the job

Two arenas, a week apart. In the first, the dock is level with the stage and forty metres from it; the build is done by noon and the crew eat early.

In the second, the dock is a street-level ramp with a lift to stage level that takes two cases at a time. Nothing about the show changed, but the load-in takes three hours longer, the local crew call was booked for the first venue's timing, and the soundcheck is cut to a line check.

The tour survives the second day because the advance flagged the lift, the production manager booked more local crew, and every case was numbered so the lift could be loaded in the order the floor needed.

How to do it

1. Walk from the dock to the stage and count the obstacles.
2. Find the power, and who controls it.
3. Find the rigging points and the house rigger.
4. Find the toilets, catering, the crew room and the exits.
5. Meet the house crew chief and the steward if there is one.
6. Confirm the day sheet's times against what the building can actually do.
7. Tell your head of department anything that will cost time.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Answer for a show you have worked, or for the last one you watched.

The Shapes of a Tour

"Touring" covers jobs that share almost nothing on the day. A full production arena tour carries everything and builds a world; a fly date carries a laptop and uses whatever is in the building; a festival gives you twenty minutes on somebody else's system. Knowing which kind of tour you are on decides what you pack, what you can promise, and how the day will feel.

Full production

The tour carries its own PA, lighting rig, video, staging and crew in trucks, and builds the same show in every venue. Load-in is long, the crew is large, the local crew is booked in numbers, and the show is exactly as designed. Most of this book describes this shape, because everything else is a reduction of it.

Fly dates and carried packs

The crew flies and the show travels as freight or is hired locally. What you carry is small: consoles or show files, a handful of critical items, and your own tools. What you are handed is a rider-specified local system you have never touched.

Fly dates reward preparation. Everything hinges on the advance being right, on your show file being portable, and on knowing how to make an unfamiliar system behave in three hours. They also mean weight limits, adapters, voltage differences and freight that can be delayed.

Festival

At a festival you share a stage and a system with several other acts. There is a changeover window, often twenty minutes, in which your gear goes on, gets patched, gets a line check and goes on stage. Nothing is rebuilt; everything is prepared in advance on rolling risers and labelled looms.

What you carry is a prepared rolling pack, and what decides the day is how much of it was made ready before the truck left. A festival rewards labelling and rehearsal of the changeover itself far more than it rewards cleverness on the day.

Support slot

A support slot on somebody else's tour is the same discipline in a different building: you get the headliner's leftovers — space, power, time — and you are a guest in their build. Your pack is small because there is nowhere to put a large one.

The work is to be quick, quiet and easy to have around. Support crews who are pleasant to the headliner's crew get more space, more power and more time than the ones who argue for it, and they get recommended when that crew needs somebody.

Routing, travel days and days off

The routing is the order of cities, and it decides everything about how tired the crew is. Short drives mean a bus arriving at 02:00 and a lie-in; long drives mean an overnight and a day room. A day off may be a genuine rest or simply a long drive with nothing at the end of it.

Read the itinerary for the shape of the week, not just tomorrow. Three shows, a travel day, two shows and a day off is a different body-clock problem from six shows in a row, and the laundry, the sleep and the food all have to be planned around it.

Four shapes, four jobs

What changes between them, for a technician on the floor.

Reading a routing

What the itinerary is telling you about the week ahead.

On the job

A five-week run mixes all four shapes: two weeks of full production in arenas, a fly date in another country, a festival weekend, and three support shows on a bigger act's tour.

The crew packs differently for each. For the fly date the monitor engineer carries a show file, a small drive and their own headphones, and advances the house desk a week ahead. For the festival, everything the band uses is built onto two rolling risers with a single loom out, so a twenty-minute changeover is possible. For the support shows, everything is smaller still and nothing is assumed about the space.

The tour manager's itinerary says which day is which, and the crew reads it a week ahead rather than the night before.

How to do it

1. Read the itinerary a week ahead, not the night before.
2. For fly dates, advance the house system and make your show file portable.
3. For festivals, build onto risers with a single loom and label everything.
4. For support slots, ask the headliner's crew what space and power you have.
5. Pack tools and adapters for the country, not for home.
6. Plan sleep, laundry and food around travel days and days off.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Say what you would carry and how the day would run.

The Advance and the Paperwork

Almost everything that goes well on a show day was agreed weeks before, by somebody sitting at a laptop asking a venue questions. That is the advance, and the documents it produces — the rider, the day sheet, the itinerary — are what the whole tour runs on.

A technician who reads them is never surprised. A technician who does not spends the day asking questions everybody else answered a month ago.

What the advance is

The production manager, and each department head, contacts the venue and the promoter ahead of the date and confirms everything the show needs: dock access and truck sizes, rigging points and capacities, power and where it comes from, local crew numbers and call times, catering, parking, showers, internet, curfews and noise limits.

For a technician, the advance is where your requirements become somebody else's booking. If your department needs three local hands at 08:00 and a hundred-amp feed at stage left, that has to be in the advance, not mentioned on the day.

The rider

The technical rider is the document that says what the show needs: the system, the power, the rigging, the stage, the crew, the timings. The hospitality rider covers catering, dressing rooms, towels and the rest. Together they are part of the contract, and venues are held to them.

Read your department's part of the rider before the tour starts. It tells you what was promised, which is what you will be given — no more. When something on the rider is missing on the day, it is raised through the production manager, not argued about with the house crew.

The day sheet and the itinerary

The day sheet is issued daily and is the touring version of a call sheet: today's venue and address, the schedule from truck arrival to bus call, hotel details, catering times, wi-fi, showers, the local emergency numbers and anything unusual.

The itinerary is the whole tour: every city, venue, hotel, travel time, day off and flight. Read it for the week ahead, keep a copy on your phone that works without signal, and check the next day's bus call every night.

What a technician checks

Before a show day: your call time, the load-in time, how many local crew your department has and when, the power you were promised, any curfew, and the bus call. During the day: changes, which are normal and are announced by the production manager.

And a personal habit worth forming: photograph the day sheet each morning. Paper gets wet, phones die, and the times are the one thing everybody asks you about.

What the advance settles

The questions asked weeks before, and who lives with the answer.

The three documents

What each one is for, and how often it changes.

On the job

A monitor engineer joins a tour mid-run. On day one she reads the rider and finds the show was advanced with twelve wedges and a stage-left power drop; the venue has provided ten wedges and no power where she needs it.

She does not argue with the house crew. She tells the production manager at 08:20, who calls the promoter. Two more wedges arrive from a local supplier by 11:00 and the house electrician runs a feed during the lighting build.

The same problem raised at soundcheck would have been unfixable, because the local supplier closes at noon and the electrician goes home at 14:00.

How to do it

1. Read your department's part of the rider before the tour starts.
2. Read the itinerary for the week, and the day sheet every morning.
3. Photograph the day sheet, so you have it without signal.
4. Check your call, your local crew and your power before the trucks open.
5. Raise anything missing through the production manager, early.
6. Check tomorrow's bus call before you sleep.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Using any day sheet or rider you can find.

Who Is Who on a Tour

A tour is two crews working as one for twelve hours: the touring crew, who know the show, and the local crew, who know the building. The day works when each respects what the other has, and it goes badly when a touring technician treats local hands as helpers rather than colleagues.

Who travels with the show

The tour manager looks after the artist, the travel, the hotels and the money, and is the tour's centre of gravity. The production manager runs the show: the schedule, the crew, the trucks, the advance and the budget for production. Under them, each department has a head — audio, lighting, video, rigging, backline, wardrobe — with technicians and sometimes a crew chief.

You will also meet the stage manager or show caller on larger shows, the backline techs who look after the instruments, riggers, carpenters on staged shows, the bus and truck drivers, and the runner, whose job is to fetch and carry all day and who is more useful to you than almost anybody.

The building's people

The house crew chief runs the local crew. The steward, where there is one, looks after the union agreement and is the person to ask what your department's hands may and may not do. The house rigger owns the roof and every point in it. The house electrician owns the power. The venue manager owns the building, the curfew and the rules.

The local crew are hired for the day, often by call: a load-in call, a show call, a load-out call. They may be highly experienced or new, and you will not know which until you work beside them. Treat everyone as experienced until shown otherwise, and say clearly what you need.

Jurisdiction, and who touches what

In many venues and countries the agreement decides who does which work. A touring technician may direct and supervise but not carry out the work with their own hands; certain equipment belongs to certain departments; and moving another department's case can cause a formal complaint or stop the work.

When you do not know, ask the steward or the house crew chief before you do it. Asking costs a moment. Getting it wrong can cost the production money and the goodwill you need for the rest of the day.

Working with people you have just met

Give a clear brief: what is being built, in what order, and what "done" looks like. Show once, then let people work. Say thank you specifically. Learn names and use them — on a twelve-hour day, being called by your name is the difference between a crew and a queue.

And remember that local crews meet a different touring crew every day and compare them instantly. A tour that treats local hands well gets its show up faster in that city for years.

Who does what on a touring crew

Who does what on the road, and what they need from you.

Who does what in the building

The five people in any venue who can make your day easy or long.

On the job

A video technician on their second tour arrives at a venue and starts wheeling the LED cases to the stage himself, to save time. The steward stops the work: in this building the local crew move cases, and the touring technician directs.

Twenty minutes are lost to a conversation that did not need to happen. The following week, in a similar venue, he asks the crew chief at 07:45 how they prefer to work, is given four hands and a route, and the same load-in takes half the time.

Nothing changed except asking first.

How to do it

1. Find the house crew chief before you touch anything.
2. Ask how many hands your department has, and for how long.
3. Ask the steward, if there is one, what your hands may and may not do.
4. Brief the work in order, with what "done" looks like.
5. Learn and use names.
6. Check in at breaks, and say thank you at the end of the call.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Answer for a venue you have never worked in.

The Show Day

The show day is the tour's unit of work, and it runs to an order that barely changes: the trucks, the rigging, the floor, the systems, the check, the doors, the show, the strike, the bus. Each stage depends on the one before it, which is why a delay in the first hour is still costing time at midnight.

This chapter covers the order of the day and its hazards.

Load-in, show, load-out — the daily operation.

Load-in and setup

The show day begins with load-in — bringing the show into the venue and setting it up. The trucks arrive, the gear and set are unloaded and brought in, and the crew rigs and builds the show: the staging, the rigging and overhead, the audio, video, and lighting systems, all set up in the venue, often on a tight schedule. Load-in is a big, coordinated operation — getting a whole show built in a new space in hours. Then soundcheck/rehearsal prepares the show in that venue. Understanding load-in and setup is fundamental to touring work. Load-in builds the show in each new venue.

Load-in is physically demanding and time-pressured (the show must be ready by doors), and it requires coordinated teamwork across all departments. Touring crew spend a large part of each show day on load-in and setup — it is core touring work. A good, efficient load-in sets up a smooth show day; a chaotic one causes stress and problems. Building the show each day is the heart of touring work.

Show and load-out

After setup and soundcheck come the show (the performance, run like any live show) and then load-out — packing everything back into the trucks to travel to the next city. Load-out is load-in in reverse, usually fast (often late at night after the show, with the next city ahead): the show is struck (taken down), the gear and set packed and loaded, and the trucks sent on. Load-out is demanding (late, tired, fast) but essential — the tour must pack up and move. Understanding the show and load-out completes the show-day picture. Load-out packs the show to move to the next city.

The show day thus runs from load-in through the show to load-out — a full, demanding day of building, running, and striking the show, repeated in each city. Touring crew know this rhythm well: build it, run it, pack it, move, repeat. Efficient load-outs get the tour moving and the crew to rest sooner. The show day is build, show, strike — every day on tour.

Arrival and the first hour

The trucks arrive, the dock opens, and the first job is to find out how the building actually works: where the dock is relative to the stage, what the route is, where the lift is and what it holds, where power lands, and where your department is building.

Then the local crew arrive on their call, the production manager briefs the day, and the rigging call starts. Everything that hangs from the roof goes first, because nothing can be built underneath a moving load, and because the rest of the day's schedule is measured from when the points are in.

Load-in order and the critical path

A load-in has a critical path: rigging, then the gear that hangs on it, then the floor packages that live under it, then the systems that connect them. Departments that are not on the critical path at that moment stay out of the way and prepare.

Knowing where the critical path is at any moment tells you whether to work or to wait — and where to help. A video technician whose wall cannot go up until the rigging is trimmed is more useful helping unload than polishing a case.

Soundcheck, line check and the run-up to doors

Soundcheck is the artist on stage with the system, and it is the only rehearsal the day has. Line check is the crew proving every input and output without the artist. Both happen against a clock, because doors are a fixed time and the building will not move it.

After the check comes the last working window: fixes, focus notes, spares laid out, batteries changed, the stage reset to the top of the show, and the crew fed. Then positions, comms live, and doors.

The show, and what a technician does during it

During the show your job is either operating or watching. If you are not on a console you are at your position with a torch, a radio, spares within reach, and your eyes on the part of the system you own. Faults during a show are handled by the rule from troubleshooting: restore first with the spare, repair afterwards.

You are also part of the audience's safety: know the exits, the evacuation procedure and the show-stop process, and keep your position clear of the routes people would use.

Load-out

Load-out is the reverse of load-in at four times the speed, in the dark, with tired people and a truck with a departure time. It is also where most injuries on a tour happen.

The order is fixed: your gear comes down as its part of the rig is released, cases are packed the same way they were packed in the shop, cable is coiled the way the tour coils it, and cases go to the dock in the order the truck wants them. Nothing is unclamped or unbolted until whatever is above it is down and released by the riggers.

The order of a load-in

Whatever the show, the order is close to this, and it is dictated by what hangs from what.

Load-out, in order

The reverse, at speed, in the dark.

On the job

A 22:00 curfew city. The show ends at 21:50 and the building wants everybody out by 01:00, with a fine for every fifteen minutes after.

Load-out starts the second the house lights come up. Because every case is numbered and every cable is coiled the tour's way, the floor is clear by 23:30 and the last truck door closes at 00:40. The crew makes the bus call at 01:00 and sleeps through a five-hour drive.

The same load-out in a tour that improvises its packing runs to 02:00, costs the production a penalty, and arrives in the next city with a crew that has lost an hour of sleep it will not get back.

How to do it

1. Walk the building and find the dock route, the power and your position.
2. Unload to the pack order and stage your cases where they will be used.
3. Stay clear while rigging works; prepare on the floor.
4. Build as space opens, dressing cable as you go.
5. Be ready before line check, not during it.
6. Fix what the check found, lay out spares, change batteries.
7. Take your position at doors with a torch, radio and spares.
8. During the show, restore with the spare first and repair afterwards.
9. At load-out, wait for release, strike to the case and pack the tour's way.
10. Report anything missing or damaged tonight, and make the bus call.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Plan tomorrow's day in a venue with a lift from dock to stage.

Trucks, Cases and Spares

A tour's gear lives in cases, travels in a planned order, and is found by number. That sounds like housekeeping and it is actually the whole logistics system: it is why a load-in can start before anybody thinks, why a load-out can finish in two hours, and why a missing item is noticed in the building rather than in the next country.

The truck pack

A truck is packed so that it unloads in the order the floor needs. Rigging and the first packages to be used are at the doors; the last things needed are at the nose. Weight is distributed for the drive, tall cases are strapped, and every case has a place it goes back into.

The person who owns this is the head carpenter, the crew chief or the truck loader, depending on the tour, and their plan is not negotiable at 01:00 in the rain. Bring cases to the dock in the order they ask for, and let them build the pack.

Cases, numbers and the case plot

Every case carries a number, often a department colour, and a short description. A case plot lists what is in each one. That is how a tour finds a spare capacitor at midnight without opening forty lids, and how a load-out is counted.

Pack a case the way it was packed in the shop. Foam is cut for particular items, weight sits where the wheels can take it, and the next person to open it expects what the label says. A case packed "close enough" is a case somebody else searches.

Spares, consumables and the workbox

Tours carry spares because nothing can be bought on a Sunday in a strange city: cables of every kind, a spare of any unit that would stop the show, lamps, batteries, tape of several kinds, connectors, fuses, cable ties and tools. The workbox is the rolling workshop where soldering, testing and repairs happen.

Consumables run out, and a tour restocks on days off through the production manager. The technician's job is to notice at half empty rather than at empty, and to say so in time for a runner to find some.

Losing and finding things

Things disappear at load-out, in the dark, at speed. The defences are counting against the case plot before the truck closes, labelling everything including your own tools, and a rule that anything found loose goes to one agreed place rather than into the nearest case.

When something is missing, say so that night. A tour can hire a replacement in the next city if it knows at midnight, and cannot if it finds out at soundcheck.

How a truck is packed

The principles behind a pack that looks like chaos and is not.

What a tour carries as spares

The list varies by department; the principle is that anything which would stop the show has a spare within reach.

On the job

Thirty minutes before doors, a wireless receiver fails. The audio tech goes to case 14, takes the spare receiver that has travelled unused for three weeks, patches it, and re-syncs the transmitter. The show starts on time and the failed unit is repaired at the workbox during the support act.

On a tour without that spare, the same failure is a channel down for the whole show, an apology to the artist, and a courier arrangement in the morning.

Spares are boring, heavy and expensive to carry, and this is what they are for.

How to do it

1. Learn your department's case numbers in the first week.
2. Pack every case the way it was packed in the shop.
3. Keep the case plot updated when anything changes permanently.
4. Count cases against the plot before the truck closes.
5. Report anything missing or damaged that night.
6. Watch consumables and ask for restock at half, not at empty.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Answer for your own department.

Life & Work on the Road

Touring is a job and a way of living at the same time, and people who leave touring usually leave because of the living rather than the work. Sleep, food, laundry, money and other people are all logistics problems with practical answers, and getting them right is what makes a long run survivable.

The realities of touring life and the crew.

Life on the road

Touring means living on the road — traveling constantly, working long demanding days, sleeping on buses or in hotels, eating on the road, and being away from home for the run of the tour. It is a distinctive lifestyle: exciting (travel, shows, camaraderie) and demanding (long hours, constant motion, time away, fatigue). Touring crew must manage the realities of road life — rest, health, pacing themselves, and adapting to constant change. Understanding life on the road is essential to touring — it is not just a job but a lifestyle. The road is demanding, and touring crew live it day to day.

Managing road life well (getting rest when you can, staying healthy, pacing for endurance, handling the lifestyle) is part of being good touring crew — the road tests people, and those who manage it thrive. Understanding what road life is really like helps prepare for touring. Knowing the realities of the road frames the touring lifestyle. Touring is a lifestyle as much as a job, and managing it matters.

The touring crew

A tour travels with a crew — the touring team that builds, runs, and strikes the show each day and travels together. This includes the technical crew (audio, video, lighting, rigging, staging, backline, and more), the management (tour manager, production manager, stage manager), and others, all working together on the road. Touring crew work as a tight team (you build, run, and travel together, day after day), and the team and its culture are central to a tour. The crew is the team that takes the show on the road.

Touring crew roles span the AV disciplines (a touring audio tech, video tech, lighting tech, rigger, etc.) plus touring-specific roles (tour manager, backline tech), and good touring crew are skilled, reliable, hardworking, and good to be on the road with. The team works closely and depends on each other. The touring crew is a skilled, tight team living and working on the road.

Bus call, driver hours and the overnight drive

Bus call is the time the bus leaves, and it leaves. It is not a preference: driver hours are regulated, and the driver must start the drive in time to finish it legally and rest before driving again. A crew member who is late does not delay the bus; they find their own way to the next city.

Long drives happen overnight while the crew sleeps. Short drives may mean arriving at 02:00 and sleeping in the bunk in the car park. Both are normal, and both are why the bus is quiet and dark from bus call onwards.

Bunks, buses and living with other people

A tour bus has a front lounge, bunks in the middle and a back lounge, and its rules are simple and absolute: nothing solid goes in the toilet, the bunks are for sleeping and are quiet from bus call, everybody cleans up after themselves, and headphones exist for a reason.

Pack a bunk bag with what you need at night so you are not opening bags in a dark corridor. Keep the bunk curtain closed when you sleep, and treat other people's bunks as private space.

Hotels, day rooms and showers

Hotels appear on day offs and after long drives. Day rooms are hotel rooms booked for the daytime only, so the crew can shower and sleep on a show day after an overnight drive. Venues sometimes have showers, which are listed on the day sheet.

Sharing a room is normal on smaller tours. Sleep is the point of the room: agree with the person you share with about noise, light and alarms rather than assuming.

Money -- per diems, settlement and getting paid

A per diem is a daily cash allowance for food and personal costs, paid by the tour manager, usually weekly and often in local currency. It is not wages; wages are invoiced or paid by the employer on their own schedule.

Keep your own record of days worked, per diems received and any expenses the production owes you. On international runs, carry some local cash and know that cards do not work everywhere a tour stops.

Food, catering and laundry

Catering feeds the crew at fixed times, and missing the window means finding food in a strange city late at night. Eat when catering happens, not when you feel like it, and take fruit for later.

Laundry happens on day offs, in hotel machines, in a laundrette near the venue, or through a service the tour arranges. Two weeks of clothing and a mesh bag is the practical answer, and washing before you are out of everything is the discipline.

The tour's rhythm off stage

The parts of the day that are not the show, and what each one needs from you.

Bus rules that are not negotiable

Every tour has these, and a newcomer who breaks them is remembered for it.

On the job

A new lighting technician goes for food after load-out in a city with one late restaurant and misses a 01:00 bus call by eleven minutes.

The bus has gone. The tour manager is unimpressed but practical: the technician pays for a train at 06:00, arrives at the next venue at 11:30, and misses the rigging call their department needed them for.

The cost is not the train. It is that their department built without them, and everybody noticed.

How to do it

1. Know tonight's bus call before load-out starts.
2. Keep a bunk bag packed so you can sleep without unpacking.
3. Eat when catering happens, and carry food for later.
4. Do laundry before you are out of clothes, not after.
5. Keep a record of days, per diems and expenses.
6. Protect sleep on the nights that allow it.
7. Tell somebody if you are struggling — long runs are hard for everyone.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Plan your own first three weeks.

Health, Fatigue and Hearing

A tour asks the body to do heavy physical work, at irregular hours, in loud rooms, on poor sleep, for weeks. The people who tour for decades are not the toughest; they are the ones who protected their hearing, lifted properly, slept when they could and asked for help early.

Fatigue is the tour's main hazard

Fatigue makes people slower, clumsier and worse at noticing danger, and load-out — the most dangerous hour — happens at the end of the longest part of the day. Most injuries on tours happen tired, in the dark, carrying something.

Sleep on the drive, protect the hours you have, and say when you are too tired to do something safely, especially at height or with weight. On a professional tour this is respected; on a bad one it is still right.

Hearing

Touring positions are loud for hours every day, and noise-induced hearing loss is permanent, painless and gradual. Moulded musicians' earplugs reduce level evenly so you can still hear detail, foam plugs are cheap and effective when inserted properly, and earmuffs work for load-in noise.

Wear protection whenever you have to raise your voice to be heard a metre away, and always beside the PA during soundcheck. Carry a spare pair. A touring career ends when the ears do.

Back and joint injury

Cases are heavy, ramps are steep and the day is long. Lift with help, use the carts and lifts, keep loads close, and never take the downhill end of a case on a ramp alone. Gloves save hands; boots with support save feet and backs over a six-week run.

Stretch before load-in if you can, and treat a small strain as something to report rather than to work through. There is no replacement crew member on a bus.

Eating, drinking and staying well

Eat at catering because the alternative is a garage at midnight. Drink water through the day — dehydration is the most common cause of an afternoon headache on a show day. Alcohol on a tour is normal and, for a working crew member, is a decision with an early call attached.

Carry a small kit: painkillers, plasters, rehydration salts, earplugs, any prescription with enough for the whole run, and the name of your medication in the local language when you cross borders.

Burnout and isolation

Long runs are isolating: the same people, no privacy, a different city every day, and family somewhere else. Homesickness, low mood and anxiety are ordinary and common on tours, and they get worse when nobody says anything.

Keep contact with people at home on a schedule, protect one thing that is yours each day, and tell the tour manager or a colleague if you are struggling. Most tours now carry welfare contacts, and asking is treated as sense rather than weakness.

The four things that end touring careers

Each one is preventable, and each is ignored until it is not.

What to carry for yourself

A small personal kit that saves a dozen problems.

On the job

Week four of six. A video technician has been wearing earplugs at soundcheck, sleeping on drives, and eating at catering. A colleague has not, and by week four is exhausted, has a persistent headache and is finding the load-outs painful.

Both do the same job. One is enjoying it and will be asked back; the other is counting the days and will remember touring as something they could not sustain.

Almost all of that difference is habits formed in the first week.

How to do it

1. Wear hearing protection at every soundcheck and show.
2. Sleep on the drives and protect the nights that allow sleep.
3. Eat at catering, and carry water and food for later.
4. Ask for help with weight, every time, and use the carts.
5. Report small injuries early, before they become large ones.
6. Keep contact with home on a schedule.
7. Say something to the tour manager or a colleague when you are struggling.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Answer honestly for yourself.

Crossing Borders

An international tour is a customs operation with a show attached. Gear that cannot clear a border does not reach the stage, and a crew member without the right permission does not either. None of this is the technician's job to arrange, and all of it is the technician's job to understand, because the paperwork describes the cases they are packing.

Carnets and the manifest

An ATA carnet is an international customs document that lets a tour take professional equipment into a country temporarily without paying duty, on the condition that everything that goes in comes out again. It lists every item with serial numbers and values — the manifest — and customs may check any of it.

What that means on the floor: nothing leaves the tour and nothing joins it without being on the paperwork. A cable bought locally and packed into a carnet case, or a broken unit left behind, both create a problem at the next border. Tell the production manager about anything added or removed.

The border itself

Trucks cross with their paperwork and may be inspected; crews cross separately, by bus or by air. Border crossings take time that is built into the routing, and delays at a border are a normal cause of a late load-in.

Carry your own documents on you: passport, visa or permit, the tour's letter of employment where one is issued, and any medication with its prescription. Know the address of tonight's venue and hotel, because border officers ask.

Visas and work permits

Working in another country usually needs permission, and the rules differ by country, by nationality and by whether the tour is paid locally. Productions arrange this in advance and it takes months. Your part is to have a passport with enough validity and pages, to supply documents when asked, and to answer honestly at the border.

Never describe yourself as a tourist when you are working, and never travel on the wrong permission because it is easier. People are refused entry for this, and a refused crew member is a hole in the show and a mark on future applications.

Freight, fly packs and what travels separately

On fly dates and overseas runs, equipment travels as air freight or sea freight, and it travels earlier than the crew. Fly packs are built to weight and size limits, in cases that survive baggage handling, with fragile items hand-carried where allowed.

Batteries are the common trap: lithium batteries have strict air transport rules, and a pack that cannot fly is a pack that does not arrive. Declare them, pack them as the rules require, and check the limits for the airline and the country before the case is closed.

Documents a tour crosses borders with

Who holds each one, and what it does.

What breaks a border crossing

The four that actually happen.

On the job

A tour crosses from one country into another overnight. At the border the officer opens two cases at random and checks serial numbers against the carnet.

In case 22 there is a wireless receiver that is not on the manifest, bought three cities earlier after the original failed. The truck waits four hours while the paperwork is corrected, and the load-in starts at 12:00 instead of 08:00, so soundcheck becomes a line check.

The technician who bought the receiver did the right thing for the show that night and did not tell the production manager. Telling them would have taken one minute.

How to do it

1. Tell the production manager about anything added to or removed from the gear.
2. Keep serial numbers accurate when a unit is swapped.
3. Carry your passport, permission and prescriptions on your person.
4. Know tonight's venue and hotel addresses.
5. Pack batteries to the air transport rules on fly dates.
6. Answer border questions honestly and briefly.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Answer for an international run.

Festivals and Shared Systems

A festival day removes the thing a tour depends on: your own build. The system belongs to somebody else, the stage is shared with five other acts, and your entire load-in is a changeover measured in minutes. What replaces the build is preparation.

The changeover

A festival stage runs to a strict clock. While one act plays, the next act's gear waits at the side on rolling risers. At the end of the set, the previous act's gear rolls off, yours rolls on, patches are made to pre-run looms, a line check happens, and the act starts on time. Twenty minutes is common and fifteen is not unusual.

Everything that can be done before that window must be done before it: risers built, instruments tuned, wedges positioned, looms labelled and coiled to run out in one movement, and a patch list in the hands of the house crew.

Working on somebody else's system

The house or festival supplier provides the PA, often the consoles, sometimes the lighting rig, and a crew who know it. You bring your show file, your patch, your own microphones where the rider allows, and your manners.

Advance the system: know the console, the file format it needs, the input count, the monitor provision and what you are expected to bring. Arrive with the file in every format you might need, and a printed patch list, because networks and USB sticks fail at the least convenient moment.

Manners on a shared stage

The stage crew are running many acts and are the reason the day works. Be early to the stage, be ready when called, keep your crew small at the side, and get off promptly at the end. Do not re-patch the house system, do not move another act's gear, and do not exceed the time you were given.

The reputation for being easy at festivals is worth a great deal, because the same suppliers and stage crews work everywhere.

Outdoors, weather and wind

Outdoor stages add weather. Rain reaches equipment, wind has limits that stop shows, heat affects both people and gear, and lightning stops work at height and clears stages. The weather plan is the site's, and the calls belong to the production and the safety officer.

Your part is practical: covers for gear, cable off wet ground, gaffer tape and weights for everything light, sun protection and water for you, and a plan for getting your own gear off stage quickly if a weather hold is called.

Preparing for a changeover

What must already be true when the previous act finishes.

What the festival provides, and what you bring

Agreed in the advance, and confirmed on arrival.

On the job

A festival slot at 16:40, twenty-minute changeover. Your act has eight inputs and two wedges beyond the house provision.

By 15:30 everything is on two risers at the side of the stage, the loom is coiled so it runs out in one pull, the patch list is with the stage crew, and the monitor engineer has confirmed the house desk has the file loaded.

At 16:20 the previous act clears. Risers roll on, the loom runs out, the house crew patch to the printed list, a two-minute line check, and the band starts at 16:41. The stage manager thanks you, which is how you are invited back next year.

How to do it

1. Advance the system, the console and the file format weeks ahead.
2. Bring the show file in every format you might need, plus a printed patch list.
3. Build onto risers and label a single loom.
4. Arrive at the stage early and find the stage manager.
5. Brief your crew on the changeover order before the window opens.
6. Roll on, patch to the list, line check, play.
7. Roll off promptly and clear the side of the stage.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Plan a twenty-minute changeover for a five-piece band.

Comms, Networks and Show Files

A modern tour carries its own nervous system: intercom so the show can be called, a network so consoles, processors and media talk to each other, and a set of files without which none of the gear knows what show it is doing. All three travel in cases, get rebuilt daily and fail in ways that stop a show.

Comms on a touring show

The tour brings its own intercom: base station, beltpacks or wireless packs, headsets, and often a party line for departments and a separate channel for the show caller. It is built during load-in, tested before doors, and is the first thing everybody misses when it fails.

Standard practice is the same as any show: microphone off unless speaking, say who you want and who you are, keep the channel for work, and never leave a live headset hanging. Spare headsets and batteries live where anybody can reach them.

The tour network

Audio networks carry the console's inputs and outputs, video systems carry their own streams, lighting carries its control, and a small IT network carries files, remote control and sometimes the internet the production needs. They are usually separate networks that must not be casually joined.

Cases carry the switches, the patch panels and the fiber. The discipline is the same in every city: the same ports, the same colours, the same labels, so a fault is found by comparing against how it always is rather than by investigating from scratch.

Show files and backups

Every department carries files: console shows, lighting cue stacks, media content, processor settings, timecode lists. They change during the run — notes after a show, a new song, a rebalanced mix — and a lost file costs a rehearsal that does not exist on a tour.

Back up after every show, to more than one place, with the date in the file name. Keep a copy off the console: a drive in the workbox, a drive in your bag, and something in the cloud when there is internet. And keep the last known-good version, because the most recent file is not always the one you want.

Internet, phones and what depends on them

Venue wi-fi is unreliable, festival internet is worse, and an overseas run adds roaming costs and dead zones. Anything the show depends on must work without the internet: files local, licences offline where possible, and a printed copy of the day's essentials.

Where the tour does need connectivity — for streaming, remote control or file delivery — it is arranged through the production in the advance, not by borrowing the venue's office network on the day.

The three systems a tour carries

What each one is for, and what it costs when it fails.

Backing up on tour

The habit that saves a run.

On the job

A console dies during the support act. The monitor engineer takes the spare console out of case 9, loads last night's file from the drive in her bag, and is mixing the headline set forty minutes later.

The file is two shows old on one channel of reverb and identical everywhere else. Nobody in the building notices.

The same failure on a tour that never backs up means mixing a show from a blank desk, from memory, in front of ten thousand people.

How to do it

1. Build comms early and test every position before doors.
2. Label network ports and use the same layout in every city.
3. Keep networks separate unless the design says otherwise.
4. Back up show files after every show, with the date in the name.
5. Keep a known-good version as well as the newest one.
6. Keep spare headsets, batteries and patch cables where anybody can find them.
7. Assume no internet, and make anything essential work without it.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Answer for your own department.

What It Takes to Tour

Everything in this book so far is learnable in a week. What takes longer is the temperament: doing competent work at hour eleven, in a building you dislike, with people you cannot get away from, knowing tomorrow is the same.

Endurance, professionalism, and skill on the road.

Endurance and professionalism

Touring takes endurance and professionalism. Endurance — the stamina to sustain long, demanding days, the repeating cycle, the travel, and time away, over weeks or months, without burning out or dropping quality. Professionalism — doing your job well every single show (the audience in each city deserves a great show), being reliable and easy to work with on the road, and maintaining standards despite fatigue. Touring rewards those who can endure the road and stay professional throughout. The road tests endurance and professionalism, and good crew have both.

This means touring is not just about skill but about sustaining skill and professionalism under the demands of the road — the best touring crew deliver consistently, show after show, city after city, however tired or far from home. Endurance and professionalism are what make someone good touring crew over a whole tour. Touring rewards endurance and unwavering professionalism on the road.

Skill and teamwork on the road

On top of endurance and professionalism, touring takes solid AV skill (you do real technical work, often fast and under pressure) and strong teamwork (the crew depends on each other to build, run, and strike the show together). Touring crew must be good at their craft and good teammates — skilled enough to do the work well and fast, and team-minded enough to work closely with the crew through the demanding cycle. Skill and teamwork, plus endurance and professionalism, are what touring takes. Touring takes skill, teamwork, endurance, and professionalism together.

The touring crew that succeeds combines technical skill (doing the job well), teamwork (working tightly with the crew), endurance (sustaining the road), and professionalism (consistent quality and reliability). These together make good touring crew and successful tours. Combining understanding of touring, the show day, road life, the crew, and what it takes is touring fundamentals. This book has built the foundation for working in touring. This is the touring world understood from the ground up.

The conduct that a tour rewards

Be early, be ready, be findable. Do your own job completely and then help the department that is blocking the day. Say what you can and cannot do, and do what you said. Own mistakes immediately — a tour has no space for a hidden one, because tomorrow arrives anyway.

Keep your own state manageable: eat, sleep, protect your hearing, stay off the phone during the build, and leave the bad day behind when the bus leaves. A crew is a household, and the person who brings a mood into it becomes the day's weather.

Living with the same people for weeks

You cannot walk away from a touring crew. Small irritations become large ones by week four, so tours develop habits that stop them: privacy in bunks, respect for other people's time off, no gossip, and the strong preference for dealing with something directly and once rather than quietly and often.

Say the small thing early. A polite word about somebody's alarm at 06:00 on day three prevents the argument on day twenty-four.

When the day goes badly

A truck is late, a rigging point fails, a console dies, the weather takes the stage. The tour's answer is always the same: say what is true, say what you need, work the problem, and do not add drama to a day that already has plenty.

Calm is the most valuable thing a touring technician carries, and it is noticed far more than technical brilliance.

What a tour rewards, and what it does not

The reputation you build in the first two weeks is the one you keep.

On the job

Halfway through a six-week run, a lighting technician's rig has a fault that takes an hour to find, and the day is already behind because of a late truck.

He tells the production manager what he knows at the moment he knows it, says he needs two hands and thirty minutes, and works it with the house crew. It is fixed before doors. He does not complain about the truck, he does not blame the venue, and at load-out he helps audio because his own strike is quick.

Nobody mentions it. Three months later the same production manager calls him for a longer tour.

How to do it

1. Arrive early enough to be ready at the call.
2. Finish your own work, then help where the day is blocked.
3. Report problems the moment you know them, with what you need.
4. Own mistakes out loud, and fix them.
5. Keep the bus and the bunks the way you found them.
6. Say small things early and directly.
7. Leave the bad day behind at bus call.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Think about the last hard day you worked.

Touring as a Career

Touring hires almost entirely by recommendation. There is no application form for most tours: a department head needs somebody in three weeks and asks people they trust who is good and available. Everything about getting and keeping touring work follows from that.

An exciting, demanding AV career on the road.

The touring world

Pulling it together, touring is taking shows on the road — the show-day cycle of load-in, show, and load-out, the life and work of the road, the touring crew, and the endurance, professionalism, skill, and teamwork it takes. Touring is a major, exciting, demanding part of the live AV industry, employing many crew across all the disciplines, bringing shows to audiences everywhere. Understanding touring fundamentals — how it works and what it takes — prepares you to enter the touring world. Touring is a distinctive AV career on the road, and this book has introduced it. The touring world runs on the show-day cycle and the crew who deliver it.

For many, touring is a dream career (travel, shows, the live industry at its most adventurous) — and a demanding one that rewards skill, endurance, and professionalism. It offers progression (from crew to department head to management) and a tight-knit community. Understanding touring fundamentals is the entry point to this world. This book has built that foundation. Touring is an exciting, demanding, rewarding AV career path.

Getting into and growing in touring

Getting into touring usually means building solid AV skill first (in your discipline — audio, video, lighting, rigging), then getting on tours (often starting on smaller tours or as junior crew, building experience and reputation), and proving you can do the work and handle the road. Growing in touring means building skill, reliability, and reputation (touring runs heavily on reputation and relationships — good crew get rehired and recommended), and progressing from crew to senior crew, department head, and management roles. The touring community is tight, and a good reputation carries you. Deliberately building skill, road experience, and reputation is the path in and up.

From here, growing in touring means touring more and bigger acts, specializing or moving into leadership (department head, tour/production manager), and building a career on the road. It is a distinctive, community-driven career where skill, reliability, and reputation open doors. The foundation this book provides — understanding touring and what it takes — plus solid AV skill is the entry point; growth comes from road experience and reputation. Build your craft, get on the road, be great to tour with, and you grow into a touring professional.

Practical sign-off

Touring is learned on the road. The learner understands the show-day cycle, participates in load-in/out, handles road life, and works as part of the crew. A mentor signs off when the learner can work a touring show day.

• Explained how touring and the show-day cycle work
• Participated in a load-in and load-out
• Worked a show day as part of the touring crew
• Showed the endurance, professionalism, and teamwork touring takes

How people actually get their first tour

The routes that work: local crew work in venues, which puts you in front of touring crews every week; rental houses and production companies, who supply gear and often crew; smaller tours and support acts, where the crew is one or two people; and festivals, where you meet everybody in a summer.

Say yes to the awkward jobs, be the person who is easy to work with, and tell the people you meet that you want to go out. The call, when it comes, is usually at short notice and for a run somebody else dropped.

What a first tour asks of you

Competence in your department, obviously — but more than that, the ability to work in an unfamiliar building at speed, to take direction from a department head, to live in a bunk, and to be consistently pleasant at hour eleven. Nobody expects a newcomer to know the show; they expect them to be ready and to listen.

Bring your own tools, your own hearing protection, a bunk bag, and a notebook. Learn the case numbers in the first week, learn the crew's names in the first day, and learn the show's shape by watching it rather than by asking during it.

Growing on the road

The ladder is specific: technician, then senior technician or crew chief, then department head, and for some, production manager or tour manager. Each step adds responsibility for other people's time, the budget and the plan, and each is earned by doing the step below reliably for several runs.

Sideways moves matter too. Touring crews move between disciplines and between touring, corporate and festivals through the same network. Every tour ends, and the next job comes from the people on this one.

A touring life, honestly

Touring pays well, shows you the world from a loading dock, and gives you a crew that becomes close. It also costs: relationships at home, missed occasions, poor sleep, and a body that takes the wear. Most people tour for a period of their life rather than all of it, and move into installation, corporate, venues, production management or teaching afterwards, carrying skills that transfer completely.

Knowing that in advance makes the decision a choice rather than a surprise.

Routes to a first tour

Where touring crews are met, and what each route shows about you.

The ladder

Each step is earned by doing the one below reliably, for several runs.

On the job

A venue casual works local crew calls for two years and is the person who always turns up, listens and knows where things are. A touring lighting crew chief remembers him, and when a technician drops out of an autumn run he gets a call on a Tuesday for a Thursday start.

He packs a bunk bag, his own tools and earplugs, learns the case numbers in a week, and is asked back for the spring. Three tours later he is a crew chief, and the person who recommends the next newcomer.

That is what a touring career looks like from the inside: a chain of recommendations, each earned on an ordinary day.

How to do it

1. Work local calls, festivals or a rental house, and be easy to work with.
2. Tell people you want to go out, and keep your availability current.
3. Say yes at short notice when you can.
4. Arrive with your own tools, hearing protection, bunk bag and notebook.
5. Learn names on day one and case numbers in week one.
6. Do the job completely, help where the day is blocked, and stay calm.
7. Keep in touch with the crew after the run ends.

What goes wrong

Practice it

Plan your own route.

Glossary

What the gear actually looks like

Every device named in this book, in one place. Recognition is the whole point of Chapter 4 — use this page to attach a picture to each name before you meet it on a dock at six in the morning.

Audio

Dynamic microphone

Condenser microphone

Wireless handheld

Radio rack

Mixing console

Stage box / snake

Power amplifier

Main loudspeaker

Subwoofer

Stage monitor wedge

In-ear monitors

DI box

Video

Camera

Video switcher

Scaler / processor

Projector

LED wall panel

Confidence monitor

Lighting & control

Conventional fixture

Moving-head fixture

Lighting console

Dimmer

Show controller

Media server

Networking & infrastructure

Network switch

Patch bay

Equipment rack

Power distribution

Cable tester

A properly coiled cable

Connectors, close up

XLR

TRS / TS ¼-inch

SDI on BNC

HDMI

Cat5e / Cat6 (RJ45)

Fiber optic

DMX (5-pin XLR)

AC power — not signal