Due to various economic issues, many bands including Anthrax and Stryper, have been forced to cancel planned tours. Anthrax was supposed to kick off a European trek back in September but “sadly due to ongoing logistical issues and 2022 costs that are out of our control, we have no other option but to cancel the European leg of our upcoming 2022 tour,” the band announced. “It doesn’t work when tour buses double and triple in cost.”
Stryper had to cancel a tour for essentially the same reason. “Unfortunately there were some economic cards stacked against us,” the band said.
“Anyone in the music business will tell you about the tour bus and labor shortage out there. We’re feeling it first hand. The tour bus business is like the housing market right now with 10 times more bands trying to rent buses than are available. And you’ve seen the cost of gas lately. When you’re putting 10,000+ miles on a bus, as we were planning to do, gas prices absolutely matter for a tour like ours.”
Queensryche guitarist Michael Wilton spoke to the “Signals From Mars” podcast and further elaborated on the difficult situation most touring bands are faced with.
“[The pandemic] kind of decimated the music industry for heavy bands, rock bands and metal bands,” he said. “They made their living touring, and that was shut down. Lots of establishments were closing down. So everything was shutting down and going down to bare-bone operations.”
“I mean, let’s face it: the technology, everything, is changing; the industry is changing,” he continued. “People aren’t buying records. They are streaming. Bands don’t get paid on streams. It’s crap. You do hundreds of thousands of streams and you can buy yourself a coffee at Starbucks.”
Inflation is a global problem, and bands are up against it as well.
“Bands are figuring out how to adapt and survive,” Wilton said. “There’s always challenges. Now there’s inflation, which means tour buses being diesel, it’s ridiculously expensive now — at least twice as much than it was back in 2019. So you have all these challenges. Inflation — prices go up and everything, but, hey, our wages aren’t going up. It makes it a challenge for bands that tour.”
Wilton hoped that coming out of lockdown that there would be more of market for music, but sadly after the initial excitement and largely due to economic hardships for all, that hasn’t happened.
“I was hoping that possibly this would be some kind of major renaissance that happens after this pandemic and that music would be the answer to everything,” he said. “But, you know, it is what it is.”
“Coming out of the pandemic, you’re blasted into this kind of a situation. It’s tough. It’s almost like you’re [stepping] into the Wild West again. Everybody’s gonna have to rethink their game. You’re gonna have to really figure out your bottom line to survive in the industry.”
“But I’m an optimist, and I think the industry is gonna catch up and get back to the way it was; it’s just gonna take longer. Fortunately, bands like Queensryche, we have such a following, and we can tour, and there’s plenty of fans that are starved for entertainment that wanna come out and support live music. And we’re very fortunate that we can do that. And that’s what we’re doing right now.”
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