A substitution call is a failure, not a negotiation.
Every act that has toured has had the call. It is avoidable, and it is avoided the same way every time.
A rider is a document a band wrote because they know what they sound like on it. It gets sent well ahead, and somewhere between there and the stage a supplier reads it, finds two items they do not hold, and picks up the phone to propose alternatives. Now a tour manager who was thinking about the set is thinking about equipment instead, three days out, with no ability to verify anything.
The fix is upstream and it is unglamorous: hold the standard the rider is written to, and read the rider when it arrives rather than when it is needed. Most riders are met from stock when the stock is the stock a rider expects. The ones that are not get flagged in the advance, in writing, weeks out, when there is time to source properly and the answer can be checked.
Where something genuinely has to change, the substitution is proposed with the reason and the closest equivalent, once, early — not presented as a fait accompli on the day. That is the whole of the discipline, and it is why this page is about the process rather than about a list of what is in the shop.
Everything the band plays, and the things that hold it up.
Categories rather than a catalog — a model number is a depreciating asset on a page nobody re-reads, and the shop re-fleets.
- Drums and percussion
Kits to the specification a rider names, with the hardware, cymbals stands, thrones, and the shells and sizes a player asks for. Heads are a consumable and are treated as one: a kit that arrives on dead heads has technically met the rider and failed the job.
- Amplification
Guitar and bass amplification at the tier a touring rider is written around — the difference between an amp that is the right name and an amp that is the right name and actually works being service history, which is ours to keep.
- Keys
Stage pianos, synthesizers and organs, with stands, benches, sustain pedals and the power and audio to get them to the desk. Keyboard rigs fail on accessories more often than on instruments, so accessories are specified rather than assumed.
- What holds it up
Drum risers, keyboard risers, skirting, carpet, and the wedge or in-ear provision that goes with each position. A riser is a staging item, a backline item and a monitor item at once, which is why it is quoted on the same estimate as all three.
If the show needs it, we have it.
Somebody has to be behind the amp line.
Backline delivered is not backline covered, and the difference shows up during the show rather than before it.
A backline tech tunes and changes heads, keeps strings on, swaps a failing amp without the audience noticing, resets the stage between acts, and stands where they can see a hand go up. On a one-act show with a settled band that is sometimes unnecessary. On anything with a changeover, or on a bill where the acts do not travel with their own crew, it is the difference between a show and a series of gaps.
It is also the cheapest insurance on the stage. The thing most likely to stop a performance is not the video wall or the line array, both of which are redundant by design. It is one instrument, played hard, by somebody who cannot stop and fix it themselves.
A multi-act bill is a scheduling problem in disguise.
The gear question and the running-order question are the same question, and answering them together is where the time comes from.
Put four acts on a stage and the constraint is not what each one needs. It is the minutes between them. Every item that has to be struck and replaced is minutes; every item that can be shared is minutes given back.
So a festival backline package is designed around what is common. A house kit the drummers share with their own snares and cymbals, a house amp line the guitarists plug into, keys that stay put — then rolling risers for what genuinely cannot be shared, so a kit is built offstage while the previous act is still playing and arrives as one move.
That conversation belongs in the advance, not on the day. An act that expected to share and did not know is an unhappy act; an act that agreed to share six weeks ago is a professional doing a festival. It is the same equipment either way. The difference is entirely in when somebody asked.
Five answers, and the package writes itself.
The rider answers most of it. These are the ones a rider usually does not say and somebody has to.
How many acts
One settled band, or a bill with changeovers between them
What is shared
Kit, amp line and keys — agreed in the advance, never on the day
Who travels with crew
It decides whether a tech is a luxury or the whole show
Risers
Rolling or fixed, which is a changeover decision before a staging one
How long the advance is
Weeks means sourced properly; days means substitutions
Send the rider as early as you have it, even in draft. Almost every problem on this page is solved by the rider arriving while there is still time to do something about it, and almost none of them are solvable in the week of the show.