One Night Live Tour: A new model for Emerging Musicians
The just announced One Night Live tour offers a new collaborative touring model for emerging artists.
Playing live successfully is harder than ever for musicians and the independent venues that host them thanks to rising costs and increased competition. Live Music Society, D-TOUR, and Salt Lick Incubator have joined forces to explore a new model that could make successful touring – even for emerging artists – possible again.
One Night Live brings together singer songwriters Ellie Williams, Sofia Lafuente, and Farayi Malek for a collaborative 3-week tour on May 16 in locally owned independent venues in the East Coast, South, and Midwest.
A New Model For Touring
On One Night Live each musician will perform their own set nightly, and, as part of an effort to create a more efficient touring model, will serve as backing musicians for the others. Local and regional artists selected by each venue will open each show.
Multi-act tours, expense sharing, combined marketing and using popular local openers are not new booking strategies. But most are underutilized and perhaps never have they been used together and with experienced third party support.
With One Night Live, three established organizations are working together to make the tour a success and improve the entire independent live music ecosystem:
- Non-profit Live Music Society supports a growing network of small U.S. performance venues through multiple grant programs paying out over $4 million via 210 grants to 180 venues since 2020.
- Salt Lick Incubator supports independent artists in building sustainable careers with writing camps, collaborations, gig opportunities, and branding/marketing support. All three One Night Live artists are incubator participants.
- D-TOUR is a network of independent venues and promoters focused on working with emerging artists and small independent venues to route tours.
Live Music Society is providing financial support for the tour, and nearly half of the venues have received funding through Live Music Society’s grant program. Salt Lick Incubator is providing financial support, marketing and tour logistics in addition to their incubation work with the three artists. D-TOUR organized the routing, identified local support acts and will help market the shows.
Together they are experimenting with a new touring model that enables rising artists to play new markets, build a fanbase, tap into local scenes and network with other artists. The tour also highlights the potential of artist incubators and the importance of independent venues to the artist development ecosystem.
“artists need places to play, places to stay, and people to listen”
“The venues in our community want to, and need to, present new artists and welcome touring acts and new customers into their spaces,” says Cat Henry, executive director of Live Music Society, “but it is becoming financially harder and harder to go on tour, and harder to run a smaller venue… Artists need places to play, places to stay, and people to listen, and with our partners in One Night Live, we can help make this happen and demonstrate a model that might increase the odds of success for all involved.”
One Night Live tickets are on sale now with more dates to be added.
- 5/16 | GRAMPS | MIAMI, FL
- 5/17 | CROWBAR | TAMPA, FL
- 5/19 | WILL’S PUB | ORLANDO, FL
- 5/20 | ALTAR (MASQUERADE) | ATLANTA, GA
- 5/21 | FLAT IRON | GREENSBORO, NC
- 5/22 | SONGBYRD | WASHINGTON D.C.
- 5/23 | SMILING MOOSE | PITTSBURGH, PA
- 5/24 | JILLY’S MUSIC ROOM | AKRON, OH
- 5/26 | THE SOUTHGATE HOUSE REVIVAL | NEWPORT, KY
- 5/27 | THE MONARCH | LOUISVILLE, KY
- 6/01 | DRKMTTR COLLECTIVE | NASHVILLE, TN
Bruce Houghton is the Founder and Editor of Hypebot, a Senior Advisor at Bandsintown, a Berklee College Of Music professor and founder of the Skyline Artists Agency
