The Big Dumb Show Always Said . . .

edited April 2011 in JoCo Music
There is NO Indianapolis date.

From what I've seen watching and waiting there won't be. Eventful has had the 100 "recommended" number for a few years now but I watch this get passed over like we're the assholes of the JoCo fans. No offense to those who live in Chicago but I'm not driving four hours to get there again. If you search this forum I'm not the only person who wonders why. This is common for the bullshit artists but I would have hoped that ass and catfood wouldn't prevail with Mr. Coulton. I was quiet for the first few years, now I wonder why our support is wasted.

Comments

  • Have you tried asking him? I was so determined to see JoCo in Vancouver a few years back that I contacted his booking agent. It turns out that local venues and reliable promoters are hard to come by; he'd been trying to schedule a date here for several tours, but something always fell through. (I emailed Armand fully intending to book the show myself if I had to, but they were already working on it.)

    Jonathan is genuinely a cool person, and I believe him when he says he wishes he could play everywhere--but even beyond his need to actually turn a profit from touring, there are many factors he can't control, including venue availability and local promoters.

    The following is speculation on my part:

    If I'm not mistaken, JoCo opened a new market this tour: Milwaukee. Judging from the Eventful numbers and comments from Paul and Storm, Milwaukee has been requesting a show for a while, and for whatever reason this time they were able to find a venue and a schedule that fit into the other tour dates. Hooray for Milwaukee!

    And yet, JoCo is making cracks about it being the smallest audience in years. Eventful demands are only a rough approximation of likely attendees, so whenever they book a new city there's a fair amount of guesswork. I think whenever they're planning a set of shows, they have to give priority to cities where they know they have an audience, and try to fit new cities around those shows.
  • It's been a while, I figured it best to cool down before posting. Yeah, I love the music that much. I'm a bit of a freak that way. I understand that any Eventful number will not likely reflect on actual attendance and the tickets are what pay the bills. As far as contacting him, I've done so with no response. He has a few things going on so I understand that a reply would be several notches below anything even remotely unimportant. I guess what irks me is I watch dates and a couple of years ago he skirted around us like the red state we are I suppose. I had to work during both the shows in Ohio and since then he hasn't come remotely close.

    Although briefly, I got to meet Mr. Coulton along with Paul and Storm, all were great guys. I was in a rush so I also met them by the grace of the fans already in line during a quick pass. Everyone involved are great people, of that I have no doubt. I'd just like to see the show without hundreds in travel expenses and the general shenanigans that pop up because of the logistics. Hell, I'd love to attend a cruise but being a single dad that will never happen aside from a coming out of retirement cruise.

    Anyway, I felt the need to elaborate as I was frustrated in my first post. I still love the music and the artist and hold no hostility towards him for the logistics of touring. I haven't seen "the band" but I'm actually kind of scared to, the JoCo I love is just an acoustic guitar and some fumbling. Thanks for the calm voice of reason in the face of a grumpy post Chicazul.
  • I can understand your frustration; I know that I'm one of the lucky ones. Even if a Vancouver show had never come together it's not impossible for me to get to a concert, which is just not true for many fans.

    If you are serious about making a show happen, I'd suggest contacting Jonathan's booking agent, Armand Sadlier. I'm pretty sure Armand handles all the logistics of tours for both JoCo and Paul & Storm, so you're more likely to get a response if you contact him directly.

    I quite like "the band" and the electric show, but it's not to everyone's taste so you'll have to come to your own conclusions. Rest assured that even if he's switched to an electric guitar, a certain amount of fumbling is still part of the set. (:

    Off topic: Is your username by chance a reference to the 90s rock band of the same name? It seems unlikely since you're not Canadian, but I can always hope!
  • Maybe this helps putting things into perspective - a map showing how many gigs JoCo has played so far in each state (courtesy of Setlist.fm):
    Sates JoCo has played concert in so far - as of 2011-05-10
    There are some empty spots there. And apparently, he doesn't hate California.

    Maybe it doesn't help putting things into perspective - it's still a nice map, I guess.
  • I would've thought he would play more in New York.
  • edited May 2011
    The wikis aren't exhaustive; there are certainly some shows that never got added. But as a general rule this pattern looks about right. In fact, it will look about right for most bands; the bigger cities are mostly on the coasts, so that's where most concerts are. (Bands touring Canada have a very predictable pattern; one of the perks of moving to Vancouver was getting to take advantage of it.)

    Regarding the lack of New York dates: in part it's the incomplete record, but also due to JoCo's non-standard touring history. In most cases an up-and-coming band plays tons of shows in their home town, then in nearby cities, and so on. Jonathan has called the idea of playing to empty rooms while trying to build a name for yourself "depressing," and may even have said that it was a method for young people. (I can't find the interview I remember this from, but I'm pretty sure on the gist of it.) Instead he used tools like Eventful from the start, to only play in places where lots of people wanted to see him. If I recall the story right, the first show he booked that way was in Seattle, which may hold the record as the city he's played most often.

    EDIT: fixing my poor grammar.
  • The Caribbean Sea should be coloured light green. :)
  • Jonathan has called the idea of playing to empty rooms while trying to build a name for yourself "depressing," and may even have said that it was a method for young people. (I can't find the interview I remember this from, but I'm pretty sure on the gist of it.)
    I agree, I'm sure he's said it a few times in interviews, but the best explication I've found after a cursory search was from Thing a Week Redux 27, Madelaine:
    This was the week I first started using Eventful to track where enough fans existed to allow me to do a live show (I was certainly feeling confident!). It was an incredibly helpful source of information those first couple of years when I was figuring out how to tour. Having done my fair share of poorly attended gigs in the city before I was even semi-famous, I simply could not stomach the idea of TOURING in that way where you doggedly play to empty houses in ever widening geographical circles, hoping that people who accidentally see you one time will want to see you on purpose in the future. Just awful. So I used Eventful to identify the cities where I could be sure that wouldn’t happen (the first test of this technique would happen in Seattle sometime later, we’ll get to that). It was a great strategy for me, and really the only way I could have made it work. It’s less useful to me now that I have enough well-known markets to keep me busy for an entire year, but I still rely on it every now and then when I want to open up new territory.
    At the risk of spoiling future Things a Week Reduces, the Seattle test of Eventful was at the end of August 2006, blog post here.
  • edited May 2011
    There is video evidence of that historic first Seattle show; see for yourself right here.

    And here is the interview he did the day before on radio station KUOW (mentioned in his blog post)
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