Guides

Advance the show so nothing goes wrong on the day.

Saying yes to a gig is the easy part. Between the yes and the day there’s a whole run-up: the deal, the rider, the times, the crew, who drives, who gets paid what. In the business it’s called advancing, and it’s where good nights are made or quietly ruined. Here’s how to do it without living in your inbox.

What advancing actually means

Advancing is confirming every detail of a show before you get there, so nobody is guessing on the day. What time is load-in? Where do we park? Is there a backline? Who’s our contact? What are we getting paid, and how? None of it is hard on its own. It goes wrong because it’s scattered across emails, texts and one WhatsApp with the venue that you can’t find at 4pm on the day.

Nail the deal first

Before anything else, the money has to be clear: the fee, what it includes, when it gets paid and to whom. A deal you agreed out loud is a deal you’ll argue about later. Get the number and the terms written down in one place, tied to the show, so there’s nothing to misremember when it’s time to settle up.

Send the rider, once

Your rider is what you need to play: the technical side, the backline, the hospitality. The venue can only deliver what it knows about, so the rider has to reach the right person early, not the night before. The trick is having one rider ready to send, to the actual production contact, instead of rewriting your needs into every booking email.

One schedule, with all the times

The day only runs smoothly if everyone works off the same clock: load-in, soundcheck, doors, set time, curfew. When the times live in one person’s head, that person spends the day answering the same question. Put every time in one schedule, and share it, so the whole show day is one agreed timeline instead of a hundred small questions.

The crew, and the deps, get their own call sheet

Most shows involve more than the band. A sound engineer, a driver, a dep sitting in on bass because your regular player can’t make it. They need the details for this one show, not access to everything your band does. Invite them for the gig, with their role, and hand them a call sheet that covers exactly that day: where, when, who to find. In, out, done.

Sort the travel plan

Getting there is half the show. Who travels how, what time you leave, where you meet, when you’re expected. The hard part is the timing: with a pickup here and a gear stop there, “leave around six” isn’t a plan. You want the route worked out with a real time for every stop, so you know exactly when to pull away from each one and still hit load-in on the dot.

And the people waiting shouldn’t have to text “where are you?”. When the driver sets off, everyone getting picked up gets a heads-up that they’re on the way, with an ETA, so nobody’s standing on a kerb guessing.

Settle up, and turn it into an invoice

After the show comes the least glamorous part: the settlement. What came in, what went out, what everyone’s owed. This is where the deal you nailed at the start pays off, because there’s nothing to reconstruct. And the settlement shouldn’t die in a notebook: it should become the invoice you send, so getting paid is the last step of the show, not a separate chore weeks later.

Kurtt keeps the whole run-up in one place

In Kurtt, advancing lives on the show itself. The deal sits with the gig, so the fee and terms are never in doubt. Your tech rider goes straight to the production contact. Every time, from load-in to curfew, sits in one schedule, and the crew and deps you invite for the show get their own call sheet and see only that day. The travel plan works out the route and a time for every stop, and when the driver sets off the band gets a notification that they’re on the way. And when it’s done, the settlement turns into the invoice, so the money closes the loop instead of hanging over it. See what Kurtt does, or what it costs.