How to Advance a Show Efficiently: TM and PM Collaboration
A bad advance doesn't announce itself. It waits until load-in day, and then it shows up everywhere at once — wrong stage placement, missing labor counts, outdated hospitality riders, catering that wasn't confirmed. By then, the options range from expensive to catastrophic.
The advance is the information exchange between a tour and a venue, and it is, as tour manager Michael Gonzales puts it, "the backbone of the show day." Get it right, and the day runs. Miss it, and "it will haunt you throughout the day."
Gonzales spent nearly a decade tour managing Dan + Shay, growing with the camp from a two-bus, two-trailer operation all the way through arenas and stadiums. Production manager Morgan Burton was his counterpart for most of that run, covering venues and festivals ranging from amphitheaters to private events to Broadway stages during CMA Fest.
In their Giggs Mentor Masterclass, they broke down how the advance process works, how the TM and PM divide the work, and what happens when documentation fails.
What Advancing Actually Is
Advancing is the structured exchange of information between the touring party and the venue before show day. Every person involved in making the show happen — tour manager, production manager, merch rep, catering, security, local promoter, venue production team — needs specific information, and the advance is how that information gets distributed and confirmed.
The goal is simple: no surprises on site. "If you don't have a good advance, if you don't do it in advance, it will expose you the minute you get on site. Things will surprise you."
At arena level with support acts included, there can easily be 100 or more people whose day depends on that information being correct. At smaller levels, the stakes are lower but the principle is the same — the fewer things left unconfirmed before arriving, the better the show day goes.
The Timeline: When to Start and What to Send
Four to six weeks out: Send the intro email. This is where you introduce yourself, share your contacts, and attach a current rider. That last part matters more than it sounds.
"What you'll find a lot of times is that booking agents and teams, when they confirm a show, will have a rider from two years, probably five years old. It shouldn't be, but it typically ends up that way."
Sending a current rider at this stage ensures the venue is working from accurate information when they start preparing for your advance call — not from a document that predates your current lighting rig, dressing room count, or catering needs.
Two to three weeks out: The advance call. This is where everything gets walked through in real time — contacts at both ends, arrival logistics, dressing room setup, catering and hospitality, local labor needs, schedule, curfews, doors, soundcheck times, settlement requirements. The venue will typically come back with a tech pack of their own, which covers building specs, rigging information, back-of-house layout, and production contacts.
The call is both a confirmation and an accountability checkpoint. What gets said on that call needs to be documented, because the advance call is where agreements are made that will be referenced if something goes wrong on show day.
What Goes Into the Advance
A comprehensive advance covers a lot of ground. Michael shared a document built from years of Dan + Shay shows that illustrates how many categories are in play:
Venue and production details — contacts at the building, power requirements, vehicle count, soft goods, ramps, rigging drawings, stage specs.
Scheduling — run of show from load-in through curfew: labor call times, catering meal times, soundcheck, doors, show time, post-show strike.
Labor call — the headcount needed at each call time. "This is a very expensive piece of your show day. Because you're hiring crew and filling call times — it can get out of hand if you don't manage it correctly." Getting labor counts wrong in either direction costs money: over-calling crew wastes budget, under-calling creates scrambles mid-day.
Hospitality and dressing rooms — everything the artist and touring party needs, confirmed so solutions to any gaps are worked out in advance rather than on site.
Settlement — pre-settlement in particular allows the touring party to arrive in the evening with fixed expenses already confirmed, making financial settlement at end of night clean and fast. Skip this, and settlement can turn into a long, complicated process.
The TM and PM Split
On a Dan + Shay-scale tour, Michael and Morgan divided the advance responsibilities in a way that let each focus on their domain.
Morgan, as production manager, handled the technical side: production rider, power requirements, rigging, gear, stage specs, labor calls, the structural details of making the show physically happen. Michael, as tour manager, focused on artist needs, hospitality, scheduling, and settlement — the people side of the day.
"As you evolve, you're able to offload some of those production elements and focus more on the settlement and hospitality and artist needs throughout the day. You find a good team, you're able to really create those processes that work in tandem."
At smaller tour levels where a TM is doing both jobs, the same categories still apply — it just falls on one person to cover all of them. Knowing which pieces belong to the production side versus the artist management side helps prioritize what to delegate first as a team grows.
Why Documentation Is Everything
The consequences of a poorly documented advance aren't hypothetical. Michael shared a specific example from an arena tour stop in Chicago where stage placement — using local decks — ended up in the wrong position. The decks had to be rebuilt, which ate nearly an hour out of the load-in day and generated a labor overtime bill that was close to $10,000.
"It's all good until it goes wrong."
The question of who pays for that overtime hinges entirely on whether the correct information was communicated and confirmed. In that case, Michael and Morgan had documentation showing what had been discussed in the advance. The receipts existed. That changed the outcome.
"These things are super important to keep transparency and accountability across the board because ultimately this is to protect you, your tour, the venue, everyone involved with this advance throughout the process."
The fragmentation of the traditional advance process — multiple email chains, separate calls for production, back-of-house, and security, different people corresponding on both sides — is exactly where accountability gets lost. The information gets shared, but it's scattered across inboxes, and when something goes wrong, tracing back to who said what and when is genuinely difficult.
A Note on Tools
Michael and Morgan's experience with the Chicago incident, among others, led them to build Advance with Me — a platform that centralizes advance information for both touring and venue teams in one shared, real-time space rather than across fragmented email chains. It came out of a direct need: advance calls that were running 45 minutes dropped to 15 once both sides were working from the same organized document.
Whether you use dedicated software, a well-structured Google Sheet, or a thoroughly maintained email thread, the underlying principle is the same: the information needs to live somewhere both parties can reference, and the trail of what was agreed needs to be intact if you need it later.
Key Takeaways
The advance is the single most important thing you can do before a show — surprises on site are almost always the result of something that wasn't confirmed in advance.
Send your intro email with a current rider four to six weeks out; booking agents often supply venues with outdated riders, and you need to correct that before the advance call.
The advance call happens two to three weeks out and covers every operational detail — scheduling, labor, hospitality, dressing rooms, technical requirements, and settlement.
Labor calls are expensive when mismanaged — get counts accurate and confirm them specifically.
Pre-settlement before show day makes end-of-night financial settlement fast and clean; skip it at your own risk.
The TM/PM split naturally divides into production and technical details (PM) versus artist needs, hospitality, and settlement (TM) — knowing this helps delegate efficiently as a tour grows.
Documentation of what was agreed in the advance isn't bureaucracy — it's protection for everyone on both sides when something goes wrong.
Keep all advance communication in one place; fragmented email chains lose accountability fast.
About the Guests
Michael Gonzales is a Nashville-based tour manager and artist management professional. He spent nearly a decade as tour manager for Dan + Shay, growing with the camp from club and theater touring through arenas and stadium shows. He is the founder of Advance with Me, an advancing platform built for tour managers, production teams, and venues.
Morgan Burton is a Nashville-based production manager with over 25 years in the live events industry, with the last 15-plus years touring out of Nashville across country, pop, and Christian acts as well as festival work. He served as stage manager at Nissan Stadium for CMA Fest for nearly a decade and worked alongside Michael Gonzales as the production management counterpart on the Dan + Shay touring operation for close to five years.
