Key Takeaways
- A 10-city India tour for a national-profile artist requires a production manager, a tour manager, and a technical director — three separate roles that cannot be effectively combined
- Each city's production must be advanced independently — venue loading, local crew quality, PA supplier inventory, and permit requirements vary significantly between Indian cities
- Tour dates must account for travel time between cities — Bangalore–Delhi–Mumbai in a 3-day window requires flights, not road travel
- The tour production specification is built around the minimum technical requirement that every city's production can meet — not the optimum that the best city can provide
- Artist travel and accommodation management is a tour management function distinct from production management — both functions must be present on every tour
The advance process city by city
An artist tour's production quality is determined in the advance — the process of confirming each venue's technical capability against the artist's technical rider, identifying gaps, and either filling them through local procurement or supplementing from the tour's travelling kit. For a 10-city India tour, the advance process runs in parallel for all cities from week 12 of the production timeline. Key advance questions per city: What is the venue's PA system, and does it meet the rider? Is a specific console model available locally? What is the stage's dimensions and floor load rating? What is the load-in window? Who is the local crew lead, and what is their touring experience? Is an overnight stay required for the production team between load-in and the show?
The travelling technical kit
Most artists on Indian tours carry some technical equipment — consoles, monitor systems, specific backline items — that are not reliably available in all Indian markets. This travelling kit travels by road between tour dates where venues are within driving distance (Bangalore to Hyderabad, for example, is a 7-hour drive — feasible for a road freight case), and by cargo flight for longer inter-city legs. The tour production manager is responsible for the travelling kit's logistics: freight booking, customs documentation for international equipment, case tracking, and ensuring the kit arrives at each venue before the load-in window begins. The most common tour production logistics failure in India: the travelling console arriving 2 hours after the load-in window has started because the road freight truck was delayed at a state border checkpoint.