Long Island drummer Will Noon and Pennsylvania vocalist and guitarist Chris Cerulli saved money by doing it themselves.  Noon, who currently plays with Straylight Run, booked a tour for Eyeball Record’s Zolof The Rock and Roll Destroyer with his own booking agency “Super Hot Booking,” and Cerulli recently booked his first tour for his own band, Motionless In White.

Here’s what these “do-it-yourselfers” had to say:

Decide where you want to go—Take out a map or an atlas and sit down with your bandmates. If you have friends in neighboring states, try to go there first.  Not only will they have friends to bring to your show, but they’ll also offer you a place to crash. Sleeping in a van sounds like you’re living the rock star life, but remember home offers comforts, like a hot shower.

Keep your tour small—Don’t try to go cross-country on your first go around, “It’s hard work, so just be ready for it,” says Will Noon, who is also the stickman in the hardcore band Breaking Pangaea, based out of Philadelphia. “Start small.  Play locally and then slowly expand. There’s no point in booking a four-week national tour when you’ve never played the surrounding cities.”

Noon also suggests spacing out your touring schedule. Most bands take their first tour during Spring Break or over summer vacation when most bands and people who go to shows are out of school.  If you only have one week for your first tour, you may want to try to play as many shows as possible, but that’s probably going to burn you out.

Remember you can always tour again—You don’t have to go everywhere that first week; you can book some time to tour throughout the year.  “The first Breaking Pangaea tour, I think we wanted to play 10 shows in 11 days,” says Noon.  “We ended up playing four shows in seven days I think.  Ha!” Lesson learned?  It’s important to pace yourself.

So, let’s say you’ve dotted the map and gone online to find clubs where you want to play. One easy way to do your search is to type “list of venues” plus a city name into yahoo.com. Once you find a few good spots, you can cold-call them and send out demos.  Cold calling is fine as long as you limit your calls. After ringing the club once, follow up about a week later.  If you don’t book something right away, don’t despair.  Ask if the venue received your press kit and tell them you’ll call back once they’ve given your CD a listen. When you do book a show—and you will—call about a week before you perform to confirm.

In June, 2003, Mourning Maxwell showed up at the Kansas City Festival and started playing in a parking lot. After a week of impromptu parking lot shows, “Tour Creator” Kevin Lyman invited the guys inside to play. The band was asked back the next summer, but ironically, during the 2004 tour, half the band quit.  The remaining members kept putting up their tent every day, attracting new fans and pushing merchandise, what they called merch,’ so they could support themselves.  “We were having too much fun to quit,” Smith explains. “The Warped Tour is the best place to hear good music, meet cool people, sell lots of CDs and have lots of fun.  It’s an experience that you don’t want to [have] end.”  No wonder they didn’t want it to end.  The band’s debut EP, “Our Collective Voice,” released with Bob Hoag (The Ataris, The Format, Scary Kids Scaring Kids) sold over 9,000 self-released copies.

Okay, so let’s talk money here—when you’re touring, how much green can you expect to live on?  Smith says allot $10 per person per day for food.  Your total daily budget for the band should be about $50 to $100 for food and gas—per day.  That’s it.  “Staying in a hotel room is rare,” he admits, “But if we have a good show where we sell a lot of merch’, we might get a room.  [Otherwise] we sleep in the van.  We have a bed built in the back of our van that can sleep two to three, [and] we have two bench seats. It’s actually not that bad sleeping in the van, but it’s nice when people let us crash, use their showers and eat their food.”

Budget, Budget, Budget

When you’re touring, don’t rely solely on the generosity of strangers, you need to plan ahead. The costs you can expect to incur while on tour include gas, food, oil changes, tires and merch’—t-shirts, hoodies, CDs, stickers and buttons—which you should stock up on just before going on tour.  Of course, that list doesn’t account for any unforeseen mishaps that may occur along the way.

Here’s a huge tip: Log your expenses while on tour.  Then when your tour is over, sit down and go over the list to see where you can cut corners the next time around.

Mourning Maxwell’s Smith and guitarist Alex Kling usually set up the band’s budget, which they keep track of in a notebook.  And that notebook becomes the band’s financial bible—the guys carefully track how much money is going in and out of the cash box and exactly where the money is going.  They discuss how many miles the band is traveling and how many people they anticipate will buy their merch’.  Then, they sum up those numbers and create a tour budget from that.