It would be an understatement to say that the current economic situation is chaotic. Why is this important to mention? Well, it affects current touring bands and artists. Unless you’re in the mainstream, and preferably at the very top of it, you’ll face serious financial and logistical issues if you plan on going out there on the road. Even a band like Black Veil Brides had to cancel a festival set because their gear didn’t get there on time.
While discussing why his band didn’t tour this summer during his appearance on Z93… The Rock Station, Ghost frotnman and leader Tobias Forge touched upon this issue, explaining (transcript via Blabbermouth):
“We managed to do 50 shows in the spring, which was incredible considering where the state of the world was at that point with not only war and uncertainty, especially in Europe.”
“We were leaving for the tour not knowing if some of these countries [were] gonna be open yet, and that the tour actually happened — there was one show that was canceled because of some sort of safety concern — that was incredible.”
“But we had already decided to not do the summer festival route, just because 2022s lineup was 2020s lineups, so there was no place for us; they couldn’t cater to a new band coming in, because all the slots were taken since two years back.”
“So we decided, ‘Okay, so we’re gonna have the summer off. Fantastic. And then we’re gonna do a U.S. tour.’ And then we decided to sort of hunker down for some time.”
He then added:
“There’s just simply too much going on right now — so many bands out — and it’s just too crowded. And it’s hurting everyone, actually. I don’t wanna bring out the fiddles for rock and roll music, but trust me when I say that a lot of your favorite bands are really suffering because of…“
“Coming out of COVID, everybody’s trying to tour at the same time, and, obviously, people cannot see every band that comes through. So we just decided, ‘Let’s just stay out of [this shit].’ It’s just too much. We’re happy for what we got. We are ecstatic about this tour that we’re doing now, that people show up, and that’s a lot.“
“And also, not to sound too political or too aware of things, but we had a plan to tour in Europe also now in the winter, and Europe is just too weird right now. There’s too much going on, and there’s a huge energy crisis. So it was a nice relief to feel like, ‘Let’s come back in March’ or something. [Laughs] ‘Let’s do something else, like, just stay out.’“
“There’s plenty of things that we can do, and there’s plenty of others that need to do their thing. And we have so much going on in 2023 anyway. We’re gonna do the whole fucking world in 2023.”
Photo: pitpony.photography (Ghost Rockavaria 2016 (7 von 14))
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