Words by Luke Murphy
In honour of Friends Fest that Making Friends run every year, I thought I’d demystify the process of running an all-dayer. We’ve been running the How To Make Friends fest (briefly renamed Nothing Feels Good one year) since 2018, so we’ve learnt a few things along the way. I keep having the same conversation with folks who want to put on an all-dayer and have talked themselves out of it before they’ve even opened a spreadsheet. It usually lands on some version of “that’s a completely different beast to a normal gig though, isn’t it?”
It isn’t. It’s a normal gig with more bands in it and a longer day. The logistics are the exact same logistics… venue, bands, promo, budget, running the thing. I’ve already banged on about at length in a previous issue. You do all of that once and get seven bands out of it instead of three, which is probably a better return on the same amount of emailing.
Getting the right lineup for an all-dayer
The logistics won’t get you, but the bill might. We put False Advertising on way back in 2008, right after they’d signed to This Is Now and Alcopop. On paper, it was a coup (A label we love! A real booking agent! Proper buzz!). Twenty people watched them. Nothing to do with the band, who are excellent and who you should go and see, but they just didn’t have much of a London draw yet.
Buzz isn’t draw, and neither is an agent or a label. What I do now is think back to gigs I’ve been to in London where the room was rammed, and work out who those bands were. Not who’s being written about, but who put bodies in a room, in your town, this year. It’s a weird one because you’d think buzz or streaming numbers translates, but it doesn’t always. A great example is Buds and Fightmilk, who have been grafting for years, but don’t get the ridiculous press of some other folks. But they always attract a banger crowd (because they are both awesome).
The other thing I look for is whether a band actually gives a shit. You can usually tell pretty quickly, and it’s probably the most useful signal you’ve got. Do they reply within a week? Do they ask what time they’re on? Do they post about it without you having to nag them four separate times? A band like that is worth more to your day than a band with a bigger Spotify number who treat the whole thing as an inconvenience (and you can spot those in about two emails as well).
Put yourself higher up the bill than feels comfortable
If you’re a band putting on your own all-dayer, which is most folks doing this, there’s a weird instinct to hide. We’ve done it in Brutalligators loads of times. Booked the whole thing, paid for the whole thing, spent six weeks shouting about the whole thing, but then stuck ourselves on at four in the afternoon because headlining our own event felt a bit grabby and gross.
Every time we’ve ignored that instinct and gone high up the bill, we’ve had a great crowd. Which makes sense the second you think about it properly, and we probably should have worked it out sooner. Most of the people in that room are there because of you, or because they know you, or because you’ve been in their feed since February. Putting yourself on at 4pm means those folks watch you and then pretty reasonably decide their day is done.
So go on late, and make it a party. Nobody is going to accuse you of arrogance for headlining a gig you booked, funded, and spent your entire Saturday running (and if they do, they can fuck off and put on their own).
Break-even is a much lower number than you’ve decided it is
Open a spreadsheet before you commit to anything, and work out two numbers. What does it cost you to break even? And what can you afford to pay everyone if only half the room turns up? That’s the boring financial exercise, and ours has about four columns in it.
We plan every all-dayer around 50 to 60 paying folks through the door, which is well under capacity for the rooms we use, but that’s sort of the point. If the day works at that number, it’s safe before you’ve sold a single ticket. Everything past it is upside. Going over is probably the nicest problem you’ll have all year, because it means that at the end of the night you get to hand each band a bit more than you told them they were getting.
Don’t kill yourself trying to do all of it 100% properly, either. Loads of the stuff that looks compulsory probably isn’t. Nobody has ever left an all-dayer early because the running order wasn’t laminated.
The best hundred quid in the budget
Doing the door and merch yourself is fine. It’ll save you money. But those two are also the first things I’d spend on the second, if there’s any slack in the budget.
About £100 gets you someone on the door and someone sat with the merch, but what you’re actually buying is a day where you’re not chained to a cash tin. You’ll make better calls at 7pm because you’re not frazzled. You’ll actually get to watch some of the bands you booked. You’ll have the space to sort out the thing that inevitably goes wrong at half five (there is always a thing, and it is never the thing you planned for). Everything else in the budget is for other people. That bit is for you.
Feed people, it’s really not expensive
If you can make it work financially, always do a food buyout. A tenner a head is standard, and it’s always a bit of a warm fuzzy when you hand over the cash buyout and the bands go ‘what!?’. Do a drinks rider too. It’s probably fifty quid. Loads of venues will sort you out, but most of the rest will at least let you bring a few cases in from the supermarket, which is obviously way cheaper (check first, always). Turning up with a trolley of Lidl lager unannounced is a great way to never get booked there again…
Think about the shape of the day
This is the one thing that’s actually specific to all-dayers rather than being a normal gig repeated seven times, and it’s the bit I got wrong for years. Spread your draws out. If you’ve got three bands who reliably bring people with them, don’t stack them all at the end. Put one on early, one mid-afternoon, and one late, so there’s a reason for the room to have folks in it all day. A half-full room at 2pm feels like a party, but eleven people and a sound engineer at 2pm makes everyone who walks in decide to come back later, and a fair few of them won’t.
Then build in food gaps. People are going to leave to eat whether you’ve planned for it or not, so you may as well be the one deciding when. A longer changeover, somewhere around five or six, means everyone goes, eats, and comes back, rather than trickling out one at a time during a band you specifically booked because you love them (we’ve been that band).
That’s about it, really
It’s a spreadsheet, about thirty emails, and one long Saturday where you’ll be too knackered to watch half the bands you put on, but that’s pretty much the deal. I only realised recently that people probably find it daunting because they’re comparing it to organising a festival, when it’s just a gig you didn’t stop booking… The worst realistic outcome is that fifty folks have a lovely day, one band is a nightmare about their soundcheck, and you’re forty quid down. I’ve had considerably worse Saturdays for a lot more money.
