Real-Life Math
Math skills are important to road managers as they juggle the ebb
and flow of cash on tour. Often the road manager is the one responsible for
doling out payroll and daily allowances to the crew, buying and renting, keeping
track of receipts and wrangling payment out of a venue after a show.
"You're
usually the one in charge of taking care of all the money," says road manager
Ben Richardson. "You get paid a certain amount of money at the end of a gig,
either in cash or a check. The next day you pay a per diem to your crewmembers
for the week, you pay for the hotel, you give your bus driver a float so they
can pay for gas. You stay on top of everything and make sure all the money
is accounted for with proper receipts."
"I have to price out all the
travel, all the logistics, all the crew salaries, all the insurance, all the
expenses of a tour," says road manager Gordy Gale. "You're dealing with
budget concerns every single day. Like if something breaks, what's the
cheapest you can get it? You follow standard procedures of price estimating."
Road
managers have to maintain a weekly budget, which averages at around $25,000
in the U.S. for a medium-sized act. The money either comes out of the band's
pockets or is fronted by their record company. The acts are paid for each
show they do. Although a tour rarely breaks even, Gale says touring pays off
in the long run.
"It's the cheapest kind of promotion there is,"
says Gale. "You play for two hours a night to hundreds of people, and the
music's impact is better than any newspaper ad because it gets a lot
more people excited and generates a lot more interest."
With budgets
of that size riding on their shoulders, road managers can make or break a
tour by how well they spend and procure money. It's up to the road manager
to be the bad guy in order to get the band's money at the end of the
night. This means being able to tell whether venue owners are
honestly paying their dues.
You're a road manager for a band that's
just wrapped up a well-attended concert. You go find the club owner to settle
the show -- get paid for the business the act brought into his establishment
that night. The band should be paid a percentage of total ticket sales. The
owner gives you $1,740, saying there were 580 tickets sold for $10 each.
His
math is right, as that's the correct percentage of 580 tickets. But you've
been hanging around clubs your whole career and you know there were certainly
more than 580 people at the show tonight.
You ask to see the ticket
stubs, but the stub bucket has fallen on the beer-soaked floor and most of
the stubs have already been swept up. You remember a table of people who were
the first to arrive for the show. You ask to see their tickets. The lowest
stub number at the table is 1,045. You look at the leftover ticket roll and
see its next number is 1,956.
Use this information to decide, first,
how many people were at the club tonight, and second, how much of a percentage
and total amount is owed to the band.