A tour usually starts with one set of production documents. A few weeks in, there can be several.
At one venue, the audio team is working from an input list drawn up before the extra keyboard player joined. Lighting has the new stage plan, but the venue's production manager is building to the old one. The hospitality numbers still reflect the touring party from the first leg. Nobody made a big mistake. Each date was advanced from whatever version someone had to hand.
That is drift, and the longer a tour runs, the harder it makes each date to prepare.
Venue differences are not the problem
Venues differ in obvious ways: stage dimensions, power, rigging points, house equipment, curfews, load-in access, local crew and deadlines. Advancing exists to deal with exactly that. You send the show's requirements, compare them with what the venue has, and agree how to close the gaps.
Those differences are part of every advance. The trouble starts when the production's own information stops being stable. If each venue receives a slightly different starting point, each venue is preparing for a slightly different show.
How drift creeps in
It rarely comes from one decision. It builds up through ordinary, sensible actions.
- A local fix becomes the new default. A reduced stage plan for a small room, or a different console for one festival, gets saved over the master and is sent on to later dates.
- Departments are advanced in separate threads. Audio, lighting, backline and hospitality each have their own email chain. A change reaches one department and not the others.
- Answers stay in the inbox. A venue confirms something, or the band agrees to a workaround, but the decision never makes it back into the documents. The next venue asks the same question, or gets a different answer.
- Files lose their version. A PDF called "rider_final_v3" says nothing about what changed, when, or whether it is still current. Promoters and agents sometimes forward a version from an earlier booking.
- The show itself changes. An extra musician, a new playback setup, a different backline brand. The change is real, but it reaches the documents in pieces.
None of this is unusual, and none of it is one person's fault. The common factor is that there is no single place where the current version lives.
Why it is hard to spot
Dates are rarely advanced one after another. Several are usually in progress at once, each with its own contacts and deadlines. Drift spreads when one date's file or decision is reused for another without anyone checking whether it still applies.
It also tends to surface late. Many of these mismatches only become visible when someone compares the documents side by side, or at load-in, when the stage is already marked out or the patch is already built. By then the options for fixing them are fewer and more expensive. A question that would have taken one email three weeks earlier now takes time out of the day and adds pressure on the crew.
Keep what is fixed separate from what changes
Much of the drift can be prevented structurally, by separating the information that belongs to the show from the information that belongs to the date. The exact documents vary from tour to tour; the separation is what matters.
What the show needs, such as the input list, stage plan, backline, RF equipment, power requirements and hospitality needs, belongs in the touring rider and its attachments. It changes only when the show changes. What each venue provides and agrees, such as local adjustments, substitutions, frequency coordination, available power, contacts and schedules, belongs in a separate show pack for that date.
When a venue needs an exception, it goes into that date's show pack, not into the touring rider. When the show genuinely changes, the rider is updated first, and the change is passed on to every date still being advanced.
Same source, not necessarily the same document
Every department needs current information, but not every department needs the same document. A monitor engineer, a venue production manager and a catering manager are looking for very different things.
What matters is that each of them receives information taken from the same confirmed version. A department briefing, a contact sheet and a show pack should all point back to one source. Documents that are maintained separately tend to drift apart.
Someone has to own the versions
Someone has to decide which version is current, record what changed and make sure the change reaches everyone affected, including venues that were advanced weeks ago.
On many tours that responsibility is spread across the tour manager, the production manager and individual crew members, each of whom is already busy with their own work. That is usually where things slip.
A simple routine helps. Before you send anything to the next venue, and whenever the show changes, check three things:
- Which version is each venue working from, including dates that were advanced weeks ago?
- What has changed since then?
- Who has been told, and who still needs to hear about it?
If those questions are hard to answer, the information is already drifting.
Where PréPro fits
PréPro's Pre-Production work is built around this problem. We coordinate the artist team, venues and suppliers, check requirements against each venue and prepare venue-specific show packs, working alongside your tour manager and production team.
If you have a run of dates coming up, tell us what you're planning and we'll discuss the preparation your production needs.