Has The Breakfast Ever Thought About...

[ds673488]

I\'ve preached this issue for too long dave. I think it\'s the most important move that hasn\'t been made for whatever reasons. The friendships that have been built in the jam scene are enormous for fan bases, and The Breakfast don\'t really have a close relationship with any other band. I guess Raq has come the closest, but they\'re in the same boat and need to hook up with UM, tDB, .moe, TLG, etc.

i agree man...

although i do like Leiths point with co-billing.  When UM and bisco werent very big yet, they used to co-bill a lot and feed off each others fanbases.  I think Raq and TB have very similar fans, so doing a co-bill national tour would be a great idea, IMO.

[tyzack]

Co-Billing > opening.

Also, festivals are a great way, and the breakfast have been showing up at a good amount of those recently.

[Lexington]

is that GE Smith of the SNL band? sick!!

[Jim Cobb]

whoever thinks that doing 6-8 weeks on the road opening for a larger act is not a good idea is absolutely clown shoes!

doing that can ONLY help.  it\'s a good move for just after festival season when a lot of those bands will be following up the season with headlining tours.  i say they should be pursuing this possibility but then again what do i know?

[Wolfman]

whoever thinks that doing 6-8 weeks on the road opening for a larger act is not a good idea is absolutely clown shoes!

Really?  Alright Jim Cobb, let’s get it on  I’ll make the case against “doing 6-8 weeks on the road opening for a larger act” and you make the case for it.

(The point isn’t to see who wins it’s just to prove that this is a complex issue and nobody is “absolute clown shoes” for being on either side.)

Here we go…

Two months on the road without headlining a show?  Playing 45 minutes a night for 25 shows?  That’s a solid quarter or more of the year’s touring schedule without any serious musical accomplishment.  How is the band supposed to get any momentum going playing 5 songs a night?  Matt and the new bass player might even forget how to play the tunes.  And would we ever see anything like the Middle East/Toad’s/Electric Company run of serness?  All that touring and not a single epic set II or encore to show for it.  If you’re in a band, you’d have to hate that.  I don’t want the guys to go on a tour that they wouldn’t like playing.

How about money?  Opening acts get chump change.  The band doesn’t need to be driven broke to pick up a couple more fans.  They do well enough on their own.


Do we really know for sure that fans of these types of bands even like opening acts?  A lot of big bands that The Breakfast might open for almost never have openers.  Their fans expect a full night every time.  Some will like it.  Some won’t.  Some won’t care and will show up late or drink in the back.  

Would The Breakfast really make more fans doing 6-8 weeks on the road opening for a larger act than they would on their own?  I’m not sure.  What I am sure of is that they would play a lot less music, build a lot less momentum, and make a lot less money.  There are better ways to not headline.  Festivals?  Absolutely.  Late-night afterparties for bigger bands?  Yes, please.  Opening act?  Not worth it.

You\'re up Jim.

[siflandollie]

The Breakfast needs to be figuring out a Co-Bill tour with someone if anything.
It is a proven way to fill a room and no one gets the shaft.
Co-Bills feature sets of similar length by both bands. if the same Co-Bill is on tour the bands switch opening the shows.

That sounds like a good call.  A breakfast/raq/the bridge/lotus/hannah montana or whoever would be pretty ill.  It would be nice to see the breakfast play along with another good fun band, instead of whatever local band ends up opening for the breakfast.

[Wolfman]

"The Braq-Fest"  The Raq and Breakfast will be cobilling 8 northeast shows!

"Tea Leaves For Breakfast"  The Breakfast will be opening for Tea Leaf Green for 5 shows in California in June, then TLG heads out east to open 5 Breakfast shows in MA, CT, and NYC in July.

"Breakfast Brothers"  Brothers Past and The Breakfast team up for a three-week east coast romp!


I\'m against the opening-slot tour.  Instead, these are 3 headlines I would love to see.

[sallyalli]

euw I dont want to pay to see raq! Every time I have seen them they have been sucky. except for the solar fest which was okay...but that donkey show song is horrible.
and whats the deal with the keyboardist, he thinks he is king shit. Does anyone else remember him saying at the solar fest @ UNH after the breakfast that solar power sucks.
anyway I think it would be great for the breakfast to open for a band...as long as the band wa sa kick ass band with a huge ass fan base. I think that sounds like a hard gig to book though.

[oldnewbie]

a. raq would never co-bill with the breakfast (imho) because THEY would fear getting owned. this has supposedly been verbalized by their management.
b.tlg opening for the breakfast on the east coast is laughable at minimum and absurd in reality. tlg fills rooms on the east coast that the breakfast cain\'t even book. (i saw them on 1/1 and reed mathis is gonna kick them to the next level. mark my words)
c. the slots opening for moe. two summers ago helped signifigantly at first. i personally know numerous moe.rons that made it point to see them after those shows. the recent success in the midwest can certainly be credited in some way moe.rons coming out AND spreading the word. the erratic touring has unfortunately wasted any of that momentum.
d. two years ago even moe. and gov\'t mule co-billed together on the west coast where neither band kills it in every city. it was extremely successful with the opener doing an acoustic set and along with lot\'s of sit ins.
just a few of my thoughts. i think any decent opening oppurtunities AND any appropriate co-bills can, will and are being persued.

[Wolfman]

euw I dont want to pay to see raq!

This is what it\'s all about right here.  It\'s hard to keep people happy with multi-jamband bills.  For everyone that likes it, someone else doesn\'t.  Maybe it\'s a provincial thing...sometimes I feel that midwest and west coast people are much more accepting in general than northeast people.  

And Duane, you\'re totally right that TLG outdraws The Breakfast out here.  That\'s why I\'d love to see TLG open for them!  Heehee!  Never said it was realistic, just would love to see it.

BTW greatest co-bill of all time: Widespread Panic and Phish - New England \'86.  They played the UMass Student Union Ballroom, and every time I walked in there during college I would always think: Damn, I\'m just 15 years too late!

[characterzero]

I think some co-bills with raq could really help the Breakfast out.  For example, it could help get them into the Ballroom at Higher Ground, because that\'s raq\'s homebase where they already have Ballroom shows (even though they need a few supporting acts for it).  
Combine that with the pretty strong attendance of FF9 and I think it means after a show or two with raq that the Breakfast could definitely pull off headlining the Ballroom.  

The same can happen with other venues too, and eventually the Breakfast might be able to get the bigger rooms at the clubs they\'re playing.

[oldnewbie]

i agree that RAQ is a perfect fit.....with one exception. there is no way that it benefits RAQ to bring the breakfast into their territory just to have the inevitable happen. a west coast or dirty south co-bill makes much more sense.

[jking]

to break it down and be completely honest, what the band *really* needs to do is tour. a lot. opening for someone, co-billing with someone, after partying for someone, doesn\'t matter. what matters is that they get on the road and stay there. no more of this one or two months on the road and ten or eleven months of weekend warrioring around the northeast. in fact, if anything (sorry NE\'ers) they need to spend ten or eleven months *outside* of the northeast where potential new ears are. everyone up there has had their chance to heard the band. it seems to me like most people up thataway made their decision about these guys years ago and have no reason/desire to go check out their latest incarnation (which is why toad\'s places doesn\'t keep getting more full), especially since they know they can see the breakfast on pretty much any given weekend if they really want to. get out on the road to new ears who haven\'t had a chance to see the band they may have heard about. and once a tour is done, start scheduling the next one within a month and don\'t let eons pass before they get back out that way. its simple, really. difficult to do, but simple to figure out. tour. tourtourtourtour. tourtourtourtourtourtourtour. not one single jamband has ever made it without spending a year or two on the road nearly non-stop. why does tlg outsell the breakfast in their own hometown? tlg toured like hell. why are um and bisco selling out sizeable places around teh country? why hasn\'t max creek ever really done anything and still can\'t fill up places outside of their hometown? why did barefoot manner have to break up? they didn\'t tour and thus it wasn\'t feasible to be a band any longer. its called putting in your dues. now, this band has paid some hefty dues over the years, but in terms of promoting the band and increasing the fan base, not so much. spend two years on the road and then they can coast with the 70/80 shows a year and less intensive travel. but until then, the same exact frustration will cause these same threads to appear every so often. now, the good part seems to be that this is closer to what the guys seem to have in mind with v4.0. so, they\'ve got that going for them.

[Vassillios]

amen jking

[Buquebus]

part of the reason there is no more save is because of his desire to stick around the ne.  all g00d things, in all g00d tym3 kidzzz