Advancing

Booking ends with a signed contract. Advancing starts there and ends with the settlement after the show. The point is that nobody has to decide anything on the night. Every time, place, name and number is agreed and written down while it can still be changed.

For a club show, advancing covers a few dozen details in eight areas: the deal, who pays for what, travel, hotel, ground transport, the schedule, tech and hospitality, guest list and promo. Most of them take one line. The ones that cause trouble on the night are usually the times that depend on each other: landing, pickup and set.

Example

Say the contract for a Saturday in a 600-capacity club is signed six weeks out. The advance goes to the promoter the same week, with the deal, the riders and the promo assets. Flights are booked four to five weeks out. The promoter fills in the hotel, the driver, the on-site contact and the set times by three weeks out. Two weeks before the show the advance is confirmed, and in the last week it becomes the day sheet.

What to watch for

• Sort things out on the phone if that’s quicker, then write them into the advance. A promise made on a call and never written down is the first thing two people remember differently. Until it’s in the advance, it isn’t agreed.
• Every open item has an owner and a date. “TBC” with no name next to it stays TBC until the night.
• Changes after confirmation are marked as changes, with the old and the new value, so nobody works from an outdated version.
• The usual deadline is two to three weeks before the show. By then the timetable mostly exists, and flights can still be changed.