On the road
A show day, hour by hour
From the moment the van parks to the moment the desk goes dark. Twelve hours that usually go fine, and the three things that bend them.
Anyone who has never been inside a concert assumes the day starts at nine in the evening. It starts at ten in the morning, and by nine in the evening almost everything has already been decided.
Morning
09:30 · Arrival and load-in. The whole day is won or lost here. A venue with a loading dock and two local hands unloads a van and trailer in forty minutes. The same van, double-parked on a pedestrian street with two flights of stairs, takes two and a half hours — and those two hours never come back.
10:30 · Build. Backline first, then sound, then lights. If the venue's own system fits the rider, three hours. If the artist carries a desk, or anything has to be flown, four or five.
13:00 · Lunch. It sounds like a detail and it is one of the three things that bend a show day. Catering arriving at 14:30 does not delay lunch: it delays soundcheck, which delays doors, which are already announced and cannot move.
Afternoon
15:00 · Soundcheck. 45 to 90 minutes. Contrary to the reputation, it is rarely the critical part — it runs late because of what happened earlier, not because of itself.
17:00 · Support check. Where there is one. It happens after, on a system already dialled in, which is why support gets twenty minutes and not more.
18:00 · The dead hour. The only one of the day. It is also when the loose ends close: guest list, merch set up, capacity confirmed with the venue, and who is getting paid what tonight.
19:30 · Doors. From here the stage is not touched.
Night
20:30 · Support. 30 to 40 minutes. 21:30 · Artist. 75 to 110 minutes with encores. 23:20 · End.
And then the part nobody talks about
23:30 · Load-out. Faster than the build, but never half: a long hour and a half with everyone tired and a venue that wants to close.
00:30 · Settlement. Tickets counted, expenses checked, signatures. When the contract was properly closed, fifteen minutes. When it was not, it is an hour of argument at one in the morning between two exhausted people — the worst possible moment to negotiate anything.
01:30 · Load-out and off. And tomorrow, another city.
The three things that bend a show day
- Load-in. It is first and it is the least planned. Asking about access, parking and whether there are local hands changes the day more than any other question.
- Catering. Not the food: the slot it occupies. An hour late drags everything.
- Doors. Announced weeks earlier, when nobody has seen the room yet. It is the one point of the day that cannot move, which is why it deserves real margin.
The advance, where it is won
All of the above is decided in the advance: the round of confirmation between the artist's production and the venue in the days before. Schedule, power, stage dimensions, backline, catering, parking, contacts with names and phone numbers.
A good advance does not prevent surprises. It prevents the ones that were never surprises: the van that does not fit, the venue that cannot supply the rider's power, nobody knowing who to call at ten in the morning.
A show day does not improvise well. What gets improvised is whatever nobody asked about in time.
Do your schedules look different, or do you work in another format? Write to hello@onroad.live — this article gets updated with real data from the industry.
What this article answers
- How long is a show day for the crew?
- Ten to fourteen hours in a mid-size venue. It starts with load-in between nine and eleven in the morning and ends with load-out, which rarely finishes before two. The show itself takes 75 to 110 minutes of that day.
- What is the advance on a concert?
- The round of confirmation between the artist's production and the venue in the days before: schedule, power, stage dimensions, available backline, catering, parking and named contacts. A proper advance is what separates a calm day from one where you discover at eleven in the morning that the van does not fit.
- How long does it take to build a club show?
- Three to five hours from load-in to sound, for a mid-size production carrying its own backline. A venue with a loading dock and a lift takes an hour off; two flights of stairs add two.
- Why do concerts run late?
- Almost never because of the artist. The three usual causes are a load-in slower than planned (hard access, no local hands), catering arriving late and pushing soundcheck back, and a doors time announced to the public before anyone knew how long the build takes in that specific room.
Where these numbers come from
The figures here are ranges used in the Spanish market, not official statistics. They are checked against people working in the industry and corrected when someone tells us they are off.