Advancing a Show: The Checklist That Saves Your Tour

Advancing is the unglamorous half of production management: the emails, calls, and venue specs you chase down weeks before the trucks arrive. It's also the difference between a smooth day and a catastrophe.

Three weeks out

• Power: how many amps, what service, where are the tie-ins?
• Rigging: get the venue's rigging plot and weight limits — not the promoter's summary of it.
• Dock: how many trucks at once, dock height, push distance to the stage.

One week out

• Curfew: hard or soft? Who enforces it and what does a violation cost?
• Local crew: call times, head counts, and meal break rules.
• Parking: trucks, buses, and the artist convoy all need somewhere to be.

Day before

Reconfirm everything. The venue contact who promised you the dock at 6 AM may have gone on vacation and told nobody. The reconfirmation email takes four minutes and saves four hours.

Keep all of it — contacts, times, notes — attached to the show itself, not buried in an inbox. Your future self at 5:45 AM will thank you.