US TOUR 2019

A completely crowdsourced tour initiative, from the tickets up.  Once I’ve sold at least 50 tickets in a state, that state will turn red on the map below, and will become part of the tour.

AL AK AZ AR CA CO CT DE FL GA HI ID IL IN IA KS KY LA ME MD MA MI MN MS MO MT NE NV NH NJ NM NY NC ND OH OK OR PA RI SC SD TN TX UT VT VA WA WV WI WY DC



Paint the country red!  Tickets are $10 each. You can buy as many as you want. Each ticket gives you access to one concert.  Hover over a state with your mouse to see how many tickets have been sold so far.

When you buy a ticket you’ll be asked what state you’re in, and if you are willing and able to host a concert in your living room (no worries if you’re not up for the hosting part).  If you buy 10 or more tickets, I would love to list you or your organization as a cosponsor of the tour.  Another way to help with this tour-booking effort is to contribute to my Matching Fund.

Here’s what this endeavor is about:

I used to tour all over the US, regularly playing in most US states, visiting many of them at least twice a year.  For a variety of reasons, that all changed.  Nowadays, I can make a living touring in Europe, but I can’t book a US tour without losing money.  So around 90% of my gigs these days are outside of the US.  (And even making a living touring in Europe is hard, but it still works according to the old model.  To read about the details, here’s a recent blog post where I crunched the numbers.)

According to my emails, social media comments, and Spotify listener statistics, there are still people all over the country who would like to hear me do a show.  It’s just that there are very few people with the resources to organize the kinds of shows that are necessary if I am to tour without losing money.

So then it occurred to me to try doing things in reverse for a US tour, and see how that goes.  Instead of burdening a person with the task of organizing a gig that 50 people need to come to in order for it to really work out, what about selling 50 tickets first, and then organizing the gig, once we know 50 people are on board in a given state.  If at least one or two of those people is willing to host a house concert, I can do a tour of house concerts — an old tradition in the acoustic music scene in various countries including the US.  But wherever the shows are happening, your purchase of a ticket will be redeemable at a concert, hopefully one near you, if/when 50 people from your state join you in supporting this project.

My tour-booking plan will be to see how many states have turned red by the end of 2018, and then I’ll start making plans for small or large tours of the US during the course of 2019, depending on response.  The ideal scenario would involve a lot of contiguous states.  A sort of wildlife corridor for the traveling musician.

Note:  if you buy tickets to a show in a state that I don’t end up playing in by the end of 2019, your ticket will be transferable to any other future show, or a refund will be happily given upon request.