[Editor's Note: To fully grasp this article, it may be a good idea for the reader to take a look at Jiggle the Handle's web site, and review all of the dates on their April tour.]

It's April 15 and Gary Backstrom, Chris Q, Greg Vasso, Paul Wolstencroft, Jack Comeau and Aaron Cohen are waking up in a motel somewhere in North Carolina. The six-man travel squad consists of the four musicians in Jiggle the Handle plus the band's sound man (and unwilling road manager), Comeau, and their merchandise-rep, Cohen. On the date of this article's publication, the band will be just a bit more than halfway through their second Southern tour of 2000. In April, Jiggle has already played ten shows and has eight shows to go before returning back to New England.

For most fans the tour began on April 5 when the band played at The Stanhope House in Stanhope, NJ. In reality, however, the tour began months before as Andrew Stahl, Jiggle's manager (and my boss at Gamelan), began confirming dates in mid-February. As the band's manager, it is Stahl's job to make sure that the dates get booked. In many cases, that means making the calls himself and working out all of the details. In other cases, that may mean working with promoters and booking agents in other cities or leaning on his support team at Gamelan.

There is much more that goes into a tour than booking the dates, though. Most importantly, the band needs to figure out what markets they want to focus on. This country is obviously quite large and there only is so much time to play in all of the places you want to play. In this case, Jiggle had just completed a run of the South in February of 2000. Things went decently at first and then really took off for the last 70% of the tour. The tour's success can be partly attributed to the solid sales down South (thanks to the support of The Homegrown Network) of the band's first live CD, "Live from the Stone Coast." After feeling good about the February run, the band and Andrew agreed that the South should be focused on and hit-up again. The band was understandably nervous, though, because of the rare circumstances that were facing Stahl and the entire Gamelan team.

As most of you already know, Gamelan's office burned down to the ground on February 9th (which was the subject of my first column for jambands.com). So, not only did Andrew need to think about rebuilding his company but he also had to capitalize on the success of Jiggle's last tour and book another tour through those markets immediately. For the April tour to be promoted properly, Howard Turkenkopf, Gamelan's Marketing Director and Jiggle Publicist, would need at least a month and a half lead-time. With no time for relocation, Stahl proceeded to book numerous dates for Jiggle's April tour from the kitchen of one of our partner's apartments.

For a tour to take shape, "anchor dates" usually get booked first. An "anchor date" is basically a gig that the band will take and route around for one of many reasons. Maybe the gig is a high-paying private party like a fraternity party. Other examples are a great slot on an outdoor college festival or an opening slot for a national act at a specific venue. These dates are sometimes easy to get because the college/fraternity will probably call Gamelan about the band and express interest. In contrast, getting most club dates requires Andrew being proactive and making calls to venues in whatever city the band wants to play in. In most cases, though, the band will have a relationship with a specific venue so the dates are not all that difficult to secure.

Unique circumstances also influence how a tour gets booked. For example, April 20 is a very desirable date to have a good gig because of its importance to most pot-smoking music lovers. If you don't understand this, well…don't worry about it. Jiggle the Handle's show at Be Here Now was locked-up before earlier dates on the tour just so the band wouldn't have to worry about where they would be throwing their 4:20 party.

Another special situation surrounds the fact that the band has no show on April 18. The 18th is the only date from April 4-April 22 that Jiggle will be off. On this day, guitarist Backstorm will be flying back to Boston early in the morning to meet his wife, who is pregnant with their first child, so that he does not have to miss Lamaze class. On the morning of the 19th Backstrom will get back on a plane and meet up with the band in time to get to their show that evening in Chattanooga, Tennessee. The band knew well in advance about the Lamaze class and this was another detail Stahl had to take into account when booking the tour.

The only part of the tour I was personally involved in was booking the band's show on April 13th, which was at The Booth in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. As the tour was getting booked several possibilities were in the works for that date, but they all ended up falling through. So, the entire tour was booked with a hole on April 13. As Andrew is a very busy man, he gave me the challenge of finding Jiggle a show somewhere near Atlanta. The band has played in Alabama before so we decided that Birmingham or Tuscaloosa might be markets to focus on. I picked up my handy copy of Pollstar (an industry publication with listings of venues all across the country) and started making calls. I over-nighted a package down to The Booth after a promising phone conversation and the date was confirmed two days later towards the end of March. I was proud of myself because it is the first date I have ever booked in Alabama. The routing might not be ideal, but it is better to have a show than to have a day off.

Once all the gigs are in place, Howard can go to work and publicize. As Turkenkopf said, "it is the publicist's job to get the word out and get the people out…the fans need to know about the shows so that they can plan accordingly." The job of a tour publicist includes: sending out press releases to over 125 different periodicals; organizing phone interviews; arranging radio station appearances; setting up radio air-play on the appropriate stations; making sure the band's mailing list and email list are contacted; listing the shows on various music-related Web sites; and coordinating the "Friends of Pete" who are Jiggle the Handle's grassroots team throughout the country. It is the band's job to play well, but it is Howard's job to make sure that people come to the shows.

Booking, publicizing, and executing a tour takes much more planning than most people probably realize. Wolstencroft, Jiggle's keyboardist, conceded that sometimes even the people in the band do not understand exactly what goes into planning a tour. As far as I am concerned, that's the way it should be. For the musicians to flourish at what they do, playing music, all of the other details need to be taken care of. As Vasso, the band's drummer, put it: "I'm not a public relations person…the way that I ensure that people will come see us again is by playing well on the tour we are on."

As always, I welcome any comments on my articles. Feel free to email me at leemseelig@hotmail.com with any remarks. If you have a great idea for a future column do not hesitate to enlighten me. Until next month…

Jiggle the Handle's remaining dates in April: