The Highs and Lows of Touring

Tour diaries, the current state of the club scene, promoting live gigs and some video highlights from the Birds Of Paradise dates in Barcelona, Scotland and London.

In the continued ‘festivalisation’ of the DJ scene, everything becomes a ‘tour’ or a ‘show’ rather than a plain old simple ‘gig’. Call me old fashioned, but the trend of DJ’s posting their ‘tour dates’ on the 1st of the month when all they are doing is their job of playing in clubs at the weekends is a small thing that sort of rankles. Pedantic over semantics perhaps?

Anyway - with this in mind, I’m pleased to present a report on the Auntie Flo ‘Birds Of Paradise’ album tour, which in reality was a few gigs over the course of a month where I got to mainly play live, showcasing new material, old favourites and tracks from the new album.

Here are some of the highs, lows, crippling stresses and unfiltered moments of joy - which may serve as insight to anyone working as a touring musician at the moment. I’m committed to using this A State Of Flo to be as transparent as possible, with the intention of demonstrating the stuff you see on social media is merely ‘best bits’! Here’s the other side…

Barcelona

I was excited to be playing in clubs again after a short break and a few festivals over the summer, connecting with people from cities I’ve spent a lot of time in and had great gigs in the past. I was interested to see if things have changed since before the pandemic, which is when I last played in the clubs we had lined up.

It started in Barcelona, with a gig at the Poly-Rhythmo night at La Paloma for which I made this track (in the video) especially for the night, and it overall it was a really fun one to do. My sister lives in the city and through her force of personality she managed to get dozens of friends down for a dance. I’m not sure what would have happened without them on the dancefloor as it wasn’t one of their busiest nights, but they definitely brought the energy all the way to 5am.

Scotland

I went on to play a solo live set at perhaps my favourite club in the world: The Sub Club in Glasgow. Growing up in Glasgow, I’ve had a 20 year relationship with the club, first playing there at Kinky Afro in around 2006/2007 supporting Ellen Allien and Apparat.

The Bodysonic Soundsystem is a still a visceral experience but I couldn’t help but feel that some of that unique Glasgow energy was missing - it could have just been the night but the ‘punch-the-ceiling’ and rave cheerleading wasn’t as evident as before the pandemic - perhaps a sign of the times with younger generations coming through?

I found similar at Sneaky Petes in Edinburgh a couple of weeks later. Like the Sub, it was a busy night but it was more heads down than hands up. It’s an incredible place though, run by brilliant people - in a city that, like many, has had it’s fair share of club closures over the years so no mean feat to keep its kind of programming going.

I was then meant to head to Dundee but unfortunately that gig got cancelled due to low pre-sale ticket sales. I appreciate all the efforts that the team put in there and it’s a shame it didn’t work out. Back in the day, no one would ever buy tickets for a club night, so perhaps it would have filled up on the night. I also appreciate that the costs involved means risks to do these things are much higher. Sorry to anyone who was planning to come see me.

London

This mixed bag of experiences lead me with some trepidation to the full live band show at the Jazz Cafe in London, the release party for the album on release day. It had been giving me some sleepless nights - ticket sales were shifting but as ever you have to wait to the week of the gig before you get a real sense of how busy it will be.

In the modern day, you now get an aggregated report every 3/4 days so you know where things are at. I’d be having a restless sleep if only a handful of ticket had shifted during between these updates, especially if it was twinned with a low performing social media post that I’d slaved over for a few hours. Everyday seemed to be an exercise in crawling through my phone book to see who I could personally invite. The stress of it all!

This anxiety, mixed with the cancellation in Dundee left me with a feeling of dread leading up to the show, ‘what if no one turns up?’. However, on few days leading up to the show, I started to get people popping out the woodwork, asking for guest lists or confirming that they were coming with a big group of friends. The best indicator that things might just work out - perhaps our relentless promotional campaign had reached a tipping point? (Is there an easier way?!).

We ended up with over 400 people in, very close to capacity and with all that build up, I’m happy to say we pulled off one of the best live performances I’ve ever been involved with.

It makes me think Auntie Flo as a live band is the way forward, certainly for festivals. What do you think?

The downside, however, is of course the financial one - putting on a band of 6 people, plus support and videographer is a tough one, even with some of the band are playing for free and we all live locally (trying to get Ambasa Mandela over to sing with us from Kenya turned out to be a bigger challenge than we’d hoped)! After the dust settled, I was left at break even point - perhaps not sustainable but let’s see the ripples from this helps us with future bookings (NB: Promoters reading this, contact jt [at] constelletalent.com).

We pretty much sold out at our merch stall though, so that put things in the black. TIP: Always do Merch!

Here’s some other highlights:

Freedom Of Birds:

Nobody Said It Would Be Easy:

Ga with Sarathy Korwar:

Ceibo:

Waiting For A (Woman) featuring Moncaya:

Paradise 23:

We live to fight another day. I’d be interested to hear from you if you have similar experience touring, live or as a DJ.