Thanks to COVID-19, aka, the coronavirus, pretty much all of the music industry has halted touring, including Eli Young Band. But in normal times, even after touring for 20 years, the guys still spend many months of the year traveling and playing live shows. Besides the fact that they love what they do, bass player, Jon Jones candidly says, “Not to delve too deep into the financial side of being a band, but when you split everything four ways, you’ve gotta play four times as many shows. There’s the simple math.”
And it’s not just their families that they want to make sure are financially secure and taken care of. “We have a lot of guys that have been on the road with us for a long time that rely on us touring,” says Eli Young Band’s lead singer, Mike Eli. “And so there’s a lot of things to think about when it comes to either playing those shows or not. We tour pretty comfortably now, but it’s probably a lot more than, say, most artists that tour.”
While some artists get to a certain point where they decide to only do a short run of tours each year, Jon offers some more truth when he says, “We couldn’t be like, ‘We’re gonna play for three months this year and then that’s just gonna be … we’re good.’ We could do that for a year and then, yeah, we’ll be in bankruptcy court pretty quick.”
While Eli Young Band would love to be out on the road continuing their headlining tour and promoting their latest single, “Break It In,” they’ve currently postponed their tour dates through the end of March, and hope to be back to work soon.
Eli Young Band – cutting back on touring :37
Jon Jones – “You know, not to delve too deep into the financial side of being a band, but when you split everything four ways, you’ve gotta play four times as many shows. There’s the simple math of it, so …”
Mike Eli – “And we have a lot of guys that have been on the road with us for a long time that rely on us touring, and so there’s a lot of things to think about when it comes to either playing those shows or not. We tour pretty comfortably now, but it’s probably a lot more than, say, most artists that tour.”
Jon – “We couldn’t be like, ‘We’re gonna play for three months this year and then that’s just gonna be … we’re good.’ We could do that for a year and then, yeah, we’ll be in bankruptcy court pretty quick.”