What a DIY tour actually costs

The honest answer to “what does a tour cost” is that it depends on how many of you there are, how far you drive, and how many nights you pay to sleep. But the places the money goes are the same for every band, and the people on this podcast have been specific about each one. Here they are, biggest first.

The vehicle

From episode 17 · June 6, 2025

The Russian White

The Russian White on the van build, the hotels it replaced, and why they skip days off.

From episode 38 · July 20, 2026

Bellhead

Bellhead on maintenance, the merch order, and where the gas can would go.

The Russian White bought a Chevy Express, pulled the back seats, and built a bunk with storage underneath for gear and merch. Blackout curtains on tent poles, rechargeable USB fans clipped to them. It sounds like a project, and it was, but the number is the point: on a six or seven week run “I think we only got like three hotels that entire time.” They splurge on a room only when it is “really super hot, really super cold.” Episode 17, 10:10

Bellhead did the other math. They put West Coast to East Coast miles on their own vehicles and were “pouring in so much money for maintenance, like every tour.” Their conclusion: “it’d be cheaper, believe it or not, to either do a rental or to work with a friend.” Episode 38, 40:26 A thousand dollars in brakes, then gas on top, in a car with no room for a gas can or a seventh shirt design. Episode 38, 42:02

Whichever way you go, the vehicle is the first line on the budget, and repairs belong on it before they happen.

Hotels

From episode 40 · August 10, 2026

Ali Mojallal

Ali Mojallal on what a festival pays for rooms and flights, and how he asks bands to share it.

The Russian White again, on why the van pays for itself: hotels are “100 to 200 bucks a night,” you get in at two or three after load out, checkout is early, and you have paid all that money “to sit in this hotel room for maybe five hours.” Episode 17, 11:25

Ali Mojallal runs the Mechanismus festival in Seattle, and from the other side of the table hotels are the biggest cost he has: the room the bands stay in “is about 270 a night,” which is why only headliners get one. He looks for people willing to house bands, and that is not a small favour. Episode 40, 16:02

On the Divine Creatures tour the same idea came up from the band’s side. A town where the promoter puts you up and feeds you is worth playing “even if the pay isn’t as much,” because “those things go a long way in helping smaller budgets go further.” Curse Mackey’s example was street tacos. Episode 42, 62:33

Days off

This surprised me the first time I heard it, and now I agree. The Russian White do not like days off on tour: “we’re not playing any shows, people aren’t seeing our music, we’re not selling any merch, we’re not making any money.” So if a show is on the way, even a strange one, “we’d rather play a show than not play a show.” Episode 17, 11:59

A day off still costs food, fuel and a bed. It just does not earn anything back.

Merch

Merch is the income line, and it is also the easiest place to lose money before the tour starts. Bellhead’s first project began with shirts and “a 500 run of CDs” before they had asked anyone whether the design was good. Their advice now: “Before you sink that much money and time into something, ask a few people.” Episode 38, 12:29

Curse Mackey spent his last Sunday before a tour folding and labelling sixty shirts fresh from the printer, so he would not be “staying up late on the night before tour frantically trying to get done.” Episode 21, 18:14 And once you are out, the table takes time you did not budget for: Bellhead go behind it thinking they will be a minute, “and we’re there for three hours.” Episode 38, 46:08

Order what you can carry. Count what you sell. Both go on the same sheet as the gas.

The deal

From episode 19 · June 20, 2025

JC Lobo of Ritualz

JC Lobo of Ritualz on a first tour routed the expensive way, and the money he did not ask for.

JC Lobo of Ritualz did his first European tour flying out of London to two or three shows in a country and back again, five or six times. His two lessons: that routing was “expensive and a waste of time,” and he should have asked “for more money. I did those shows for very little money at the time.” Episode 19, 19:37

Ali, who is the one paying, would rather you asked and heard a plain answer: “If you can’t pay the band what they want, just tell them you can’t pay them.” For international acts he now splits the flights and visa costs across the other US shows the band plays, so no single show carries all of it. Episode 40, 20:02

And one cost that lands on the deal after the fact, from promoter Elizabeth Inglese: backline rented at the last minute “becomes a show expense that gets deducted from all the things before the artist gets paid.” Episode 9, 18:25

The guarantee is not what you take home. What you take home is the guarantee minus everything nobody wrote down.

Who paid for what

From episode 42 · August 25, 2026

Nuda, SINE and Curse Mackey

The Divine Creatures tour on splitting the gas, the driving, and the work.

The last cost is the one that ends bands: the argument about who bought the gas. On the Divine Creatures run the three acts kept every expense on the sheet, “like I got gas this round and then Rona got gas on this round, and we can just detail it out.” Episode 42, 39:10 They split the driving the same way, and Curse’s view was that this is what kept a small tour from grinding down the way he has seen bigger ones do. Episode 42, 36:34

What “in the green” looks like

The Russian White have been at this ten years, and their measure is modest and real: “we generally make money, or we’re in the green, or break even at worst case. There’s not too many bands that can say that in 2025.” Episode 17, 21:59

That is the target for a DIY run. Not the total, which nobody can give you, but a tour where every guarantee, every expense and every gas fill is written down as it happens, so you know before the last show whether you made it. That page is what Tourouter keeps per tour, and it is why settlement night has no surprises.

Quotes are lightly tidied from the episode captions. Each timestamp links to the moment it was said.