A question I get asked all the time by local level bands is ‘How much should we be playing locally?’ and this is a tricky one. There are so many good tours coming through all the time that need opening bands. This isn’t even touching on your friends coming through who you want to play with just so they don’t have a bad show in your hometown. I know how tricky it is to find this balance, it’s not an obvious one to figure out and it’s one that is going to routinely give you headaches. So in this article, I wanted to break down precisely how many times you should be playing in your hometown in a year, why I think that and how you can implement a strategy around that and then how you can decide which hometown shows you want to be playing. Continue reading →