How to be a good support act: Part 2 - Dealing with the show day

Welcome to the second part of my incredibly non-definitive ‘How To Be A Good Support Act’. If you haven’t yet read the first part (YOU CAN READ IT HERE), I ought to stress again that most of this is based on my band(s) having made many of the mistakes I mention below. It comes from a great deal of personal experience on both sides of the support act fence, not from a position of presuming I know everything. I don’t!

Anyway, having already dealt with getting the support slot and preparing for it in part one, here’s my advice on dealing with the show day itself.

As someone who has turned up late to some rather large and important shows, I cannot emphasise this enough. It looks bad, annoys everyone (especially local crew whom – as I also cannot emphasise enough – you do not want to annoy!) and creates a stressful atmosphere that is very unlikely to lead to a good gig. Allow plenty of time for traffic and then add a bit extra on just to be sure. No-one ever made a bad impression by being early. Once again – do not be late!

No matter how big your ego is, always remember you are second fiddle (or possibly third if there are two supports!). You are not the act that have sold the tickets for the show and you are very much a small cog in a larger machine. If the headliners don’t want to move equipment, work around it as much as you reasonably can. That includes your sound and lighting people – your sound engineer may not be allowed to use their full channel list or any outboard, and your lighting guy or girl might be told they can only use two or three lights. Make sure they don’t have a strop about it!

We have a lot of equipment when we play – and we try to be accommodating, but sometimes it’s a tight squeeze. When we’ve gone out of our way to be helpful to support bands I have to admit I find it extremely annoying to hear people moaning about a lack of space. It’s easy to find out in advance how much space there is likely to be and to adapt your setup accordingly.

On the flipside we would never expect to be able to bring our full setup to a support slot and we make sure we’re cleared to use, for example, one large TV set rather than two and several small ones.

Hopefully this isn’t too much of an effort! Be nice to the local crew who help you load in. Be nice to any touring crew who help you set up and move gear around to accommodate you.

I think it’s best to wait to gauge how friendly the headliners are themselves before you go over and start high-fiving them, but if they don’t introduce themselves after a short time then make sure you do. Just saying hello, shaking hands and saying thanks for having us can make a big impression. If you want more support slots with the headliner, who do you think they’ll ask again – the band who were nice and friendly, or the surly and uninterested ones?

You are dealing with sometimes quite large and unpredictable egos, a lot of insecurities, crew who may see you as a nuisance and it’s all in the quite stressful atmosphere of setting up and running what is potentially a big show with many hundreds – possibly thousands – of people attending it. Don’t be the idiots, basically.

One sure-fire way to annoy everyone in the venue is to decide that your half-hour slot isn’t quite enough and that people really do need to hear those seven extra minutes of your big set-closer. They don’t. Half an hour from a band you have never heard before is more than enough – it’ll leave those who like you wanting more and your prompt departure will be a merciful blessing for those who can’t stand you. I’d rather finish two minutes early than go a minute over and I’m sure most local crew and crowds would agree with me.

Also, think carefully about the set you play. You should probably adjust your set to suit the show you’re playing and there are likely to be a lot more people present towards the end of your set compared to at the start. If you have a really strong song in the first part of your set, consider moving it to the end.

And the worst thing of all – the thing so terrible that I can’t believe that several bands I’ve seen have thought about it, let alone done it (they have) – never, ever, ever even think about doing an encore. You’re a support band. You do not play encores.

I was watching The Voice with my good lady a while back (this is a cross-BBC plug so it’s allowed, honest) and Ricky Wilson was giving his reason for not turning around to a hopeful contestant. He told them that during the early days of the Kaiser Chiefs supporting other bands he was trying too hard, trying to force his band down people’s throats and alienating crowds as a result. I have to say he is absolutely right. Simply by being there in the first place you are basically being shoved down people’s throats – they haven’t, ordinarily, come to see you. There is definitely something to be said for not trying too hard to impress – you need to let people come to you, to a certain extent.

The other part of this is one that may come as an eye-opener to many younger bands. If you have secured a run of reasonably large support slots it may well be the biggest exposure you’ve had to date, in which case you need to be aware that some people – possibly a majority of people – may hate you. They may shout things at you. Hopefully they won’t throw anything, but it’s a possibility. The ones who are bored are far more likely to take to Twitter than those who are enjoying, or merely tolerating, you. They will probably say some mean things. Bloggers who’ve come to review the main band and who sit through your set with barely disguised contempt may be savage in retrospect. Don’t worry about it. Playing support shows will toughen you up, and that is no bad thing.

While it may be important to allocate one band member to head straight for the merch desk to try and earn back your petrol money, all five members don’t need to do it and leave one sound guy lumping all your gear off-stage. Make sure everyone knows who’s doing what after the show and above all get your equipment off quickly so that the headliners aren’t rushed.

It’s kind of an unwritten rule in band etiquette that you should at least make a token gesture of watching some of the support band. I do try wherever possible to do this when we’re headlining, but I certainly don’t get offended when we’re the support act and the main band don’t watch us. That’s because I’ve been on the other side of the coin and know what it’s like to be touring for weeks on end. You see so many bands and can be so tired that sometimes you just don’t want to watch. More often you’re inundated with interviews that run right up to the point where you’re supposed to go on stage, especially at the bigger shows. Equally, sometimes there just isn’t time – after soundcheck you need to go and get some food with your buyout money and by the time you get back it’s all over. It’s not deliberate, so don’t be offended by it.

This is a crucial part of the jigsaw – remember to enjoy the show! You may well be playing some of the biggest venues you’ll ever play, to the biggest audiences you ever play to. Make sure you take it all in, learn what you can from it but, above all, do try to have a good time.

There are many, many things that I’ll have forgotten when writing this piece, and there will also be many things that other bands will disagree with. I don’t expect anyone to treat these articles as gospel, but I do think that bands who follow the above advice reasonably closely are far more likely to be a good support act than those who don’t even think about it.

Anyway, after reading all of this you may be under the impression that being a support band is a never-ending, Kafka-esque nightmare of persecution, oppression and psychological torture. It’s really not. There is a reason bands, managers, agents and labels fight for support slots with big bands – if it works and the crowd appreciate you and your music then it can change your band’s future for the better, immeasurably. It’s definitely worth trying to do if you are a band looking to grow your audience and reach new people (and who isn’t, really?). And it can be really fun, a chance to play bigger venues to bigger crowds and get a glimpse into another (better!) world in the process. But if you fail to do a lot of the above then it certainly isn’t going to go very well for you. Trust me – this is all learned from bitter experience!

Oh – and one final piece of advice, of sorts: good luck.

Read the first part of J. Willgoose's guide on being a good support act here and have your say in the comments below.