How to Route a Tour That Doesn't Lose Money

Quick Reference

Tour routing is the art of putting your shows in an order that makes geographic and financial sense. Bad routing means 8-hour drives between shows, wasted gas money, and arriving exhausted. Good routing means short drives, back-to-back shows, and coming home with more money than you spent.

Two routing models:

• Linear: A to B to C to D, moving in one direction. Works for longer runs.
• Hub-and-spoke: Base yourself in one city and do short trips out and back. Works for regional touring on a budget.

Start with Anchor Dates

Don't route from scratch. Start with 2 to 3 shows you know you can book, then fill in the gaps.

An anchor date is a show with a built-in reason to exist: your hometown release show, a festival slot, a confirmed hold at a venue that wants you, or a show trade with a band in another city. These are your tent poles. Everything else routes around them.

Example: You have a confirmed show in Portland on March 14 and a show trade in San Francisco on March 22. Now you're routing the 7 days in between. That's a linear run down the West Coast. You need 2 to 4 more shows between those anchors, each within a reasonable drive of the next.

The Drive Time Rule

Keep your drives under 4 hours between shows. Under 3 is better. Under 2 is ideal.

Here's why: a 6-hour drive means you're spending most of the day in the van. You arrive tired. You don't have time to promote locally, eat a real meal, or rest before load-in. Your performance suffers. Your mood suffers. Your van's gas tank suffers.

On a map, draw a circle with a 3-hour radius around each confirmed show. The next show needs to be inside that circle.

Common West Coast routing: Seattle > Portland (3 hrs) > Eugene (2 hrs) > Ashland (3 hrs) > Sacramento (4.5 hrs, pushing it) > San Francisco (1.5 hrs)

Common East Coast routing: Boston > Providence (1 hr) > New Haven (2 hrs) > NYC (1.5 hrs) > Philadelphia (2 hrs) > Baltimore (2 hrs) > DC (1 hr) > Richmond (2 hrs)

The East Coast is dense. You can play a different city every night with short drives. The Midwest and West are spread out. You'll need to accept some longer drives or plan rest days.

Days Off

Plan them. A 7-show run with no days off sounds productive. In practice, it means 7 load-ins, 7 soundchecks, 7 sets, 7 settlements, 7 drives. By night 5, everyone in the band is running on coffee and resentment.

Build in one day off for every 3 to 4 shows. Use it to sleep, do laundry, eat something that isn't gas station food, and remember why you're doing this.

Place your day off strategically: in a city where you have a friend's couch or a cheap place to stay, ideally somewhere between two show dates so you're not backtracking.

Avoiding Dead Miles

Dead miles are miles you drive that don't have a show on either end. Backtracking is the most common cause.

Bad routing: Seattle > Portland > Vancouver. There's no show between Portland and Vancouver, so the drive back north past Seattle is about 5 hours of dead miles.

Good routing: Vancouver > Seattle > Portland > Eugene. One direction, and every drive ends at a show.

If you can't fill a gap in your route, skip the market. An empty date in the middle of a run is better than a 5-hour detour to play for 8 people in a city you've never been to.

The Budget Check

Before you confirm a route, run the basic math:

• Total miles × your van's cost per mile (gas + wear, roughly $0.30 to $0.50/mile for most band vans)
• Lodging costs for nights you can't crash on a floor
• Food: budget $15 to $20 per person per day minimum
• Tolls and parking

Add it up. That's your break-even number. If your total expected show income (be realistic, use your worst-case draw estimate) doesn't cover that number, the route loses money. Shorten it, cut a show that's causing a long drive, or add a show in a gap.

Routing Tools

• Google Maps with multiple stops will calculate your total drive time and distance. Use it.
• Indie on the Move has a routing feature and venue database searchable by city.
• A shared spreadsheet with columns for: date, city, venue, status, drive time from previous show, estimated payout, expenses for that stop.