Venue Technical Rider Requirements
Sound equipment & sound staff required for an Afton event is straightforward, and usually less than you’d need for a National tour package.
The following is what you agree to if we bring events into your room, as well as what we need your Sound Tech to do.
Afton Provides:
We provide an onsite Show Manager to work with artists and run the show. We handle all artist booking, artist and venue payouts, promotion, and everything booking related.
Afton provides artists with cash physical tickets and an online booking account with built-in online sales tracked by artist through AftonShows.com.
Venue Must Provide:
Any staff you normally provide for a concert (bar staff, sound tech, door cashier, any security you normally have).
For our bookkeeping, we’ll need a W9 filled out on behalf of the business. We will send over an electronic version of this once the show is confirmed. This is required.
Venue will not collect any taxes or surcharges off of door sales.
Production Requirements:
We need venue to provide a sound tech and appropriate PA system.
12+ Channel mixer, mains, and monitors.
Vocal mics, drum/amp mics (if needed for size of room), stands, mic cables.
For acts that use pre-recorded backtracks during their performances (either with their live instruments or as full music to perform live vocals over), we need venue to have a mini-jack/aux input for the artists’ backtracks to play off of a phone/tablet/laptop.
Sound Tech Duties:
Afton is paying the Sound Tech fee as part of venue rent. It’s crucial that your Sound Tech performs the duties we are paying them for, and that they do a good job. Otherwise our acts won’t want to play your room again. We want our acts to LOVE playing your room!
1. Artists will arrive at artist check-in / load-in time. At this time the Afton Show Manager will finalize and verify all time slots, start times, set lengths, and then give your Sound Tech the final times schedule. Usually this is given to your Sound Tech 30-60 minutes prior to show start time, once they’ve checked in and talked to all the artists.
2. Your Sound Tech will fully SOUND CHECK the 1st act of the night, and backline any gear for the next several acts.
3. After that, each act will get a *QUICK LINE CHECK* during their changeover. If it’s not a National tour, We do NOT give full, lengthy sound checks because we need to keep the show moving. Changeovers must be as quick and efficient as possible.
- Full Bands w/Drums – 15 Minute Changeover & Line Check (or less)
- Solo Acts without Drums – 10 Minute Changeover & Line Check (or less)
- Urban/Hip Hop/R&B/Electronic Acts – 5 Minute Changeover & Line Check (or less)
3. If your Venue does NOT supply a person to run the Admissions Door, then our Show Manager will have to run the door and, as a result, will be stuck at the door once the show starts. In this case, your Sound Tech needs to:
- Line Check each act right before their set.
- Keep changeovers quick and make sure bands setup ASAP.
- Stick to the specified Start & End times.
- IMPORTANT: Give a 1-song warning to each act so they don’t play over their set time.
- Communicate with our Show Manager if there is a problem or issue they need help with.
*OR*
IF we’ve set it up so your Venue staff runs the door, then our Show Manager can help the Sound Tech by stage managing the acts and sticking to the schedule. In this case, the Sound Tech just needs to utilize and work with our Show Manager so that set lengths are followed, changeovers are quick, and the show runs on time.
>Each act’s set length must be honored per the final schedule sheet
The given set length for each act MUST be followed because that is the contractual set length we agreed to with that artist. If ever in a time crunch, your Sound Tech must talk to our on-site Afton Show Manager before shortening an act’s set. Otherwise refunds will be demanded by artist’s and fans which can cause problems for everyone.
Full PA system & equipment required:
- The PA system must be sufficient for the size and prestige of the room, and must include the following:
- 12-channel (or greater) audio mixer.
- Audio snake from stage to mixer, if room calls for it.
- Mains (necessary power amps and speakers).
- Monitors (necessary power ams and speakers).
- 3+ vocal mics (microphones, cables, mic stands).
- 2+ DIs (direct boxes and XLR cables).
- Mics for amps and/or drums, if the room calls for it.
- IMPORTANT: Special Cable Required for Artists Backtracks!
*** PLEASE NOTIFY US IN WRITING IF YOUR ROOM LACKS ANY OF THE ABOVE EQUIPMENT *OR* IF YOUR ROOM CANNOT ACCOMMODATE FULL BANDS (4-5 Piece Band with Drum set) ***
For HipHop/Urban/Electronic shows your sound tech is DJ for the night!
There is NO resident DJ for this event. Instead we are paying for your more qualified Sound Tech to simply play backtracks and keep the show on time. To be clear, your Sound Tech does not need to be a full-on DJ, per se. But we do need your Sound Tech to do the following for this genre of show:
- We need your Sound Tech to play each act’s backtracks
- Do a mic level check check for each act.
- Play some sort of music IN BETWEEN sets, otherwise “dead air” downtime is going to hurt attendance and bar sales.
- Changeovers between acts on this genre of show is very quick, literally 5 minutes or less.
- Each artist/group will introduce themselves once they go onstage.
- We do allow acts to bring their own DJ if they want to for their set.
We’re already paying your Sound Tech as part of venue rent, so if we have shows of this genre with 0 full bands – your Sound Tech is going to have about 5x less work to do than a normal Rock show. Because of this, we feel it is fair for us to ask your Sound Tech to do the above.
Equipment requirements for Urban/Hip Hop/Electronic Artists & acts requiring backtracks:
You must provide a 1/8 inch TRS cable for artists to play their backtracks into, using a standard 1/8″ or 3.5mm stereo headphone jack. Please be sure you are prepared for artists to bring any of the following devices to use for their play out of performance backtracks:
- Portable audio player (e.g. iPod, etc.)
- Smartphone
- Tablet
- Laptop
- A Backtrack CD (If you have a CD PLAYER)
For this 1/8 inch connection, we recommend using a breakout cable, a dual direct box, and standard XLR/mic cables (view these items in the Amazon widget below) – which converts the unbalanced signal to balanced (to allow for a long cable run) and allows the separate Left & Right channels from the portable audio player’s stereo headphone-out jack to each enter into a separate channel of your snake/mixer as male XLR, just like two microphones would, you can:
- Buy a breakout cable from Amazon
- Buy a dual direct box from Amazon
- Buy two (2) XLR/mic cables from Amazon
If you make this connection available for artists on-stage, then they can plug their audio source directly into it and manage the playback themselves. If the connection is only possible at the sound board/booth, your sound tech will need to take responsibility for cuing playback, skipping tracks (in some but not all cases), etc.
Details of what our artists are told to expect the venue to provide are included in our WHAT TO BRING page. This is also what we tell each artist to prepare for in our artist contracts: myafton.com/whattobring/
Sufficient & appropriate stage lighting:
The stage must be lit to a level that is appropriate for the space, and safe, but a “light show” is not required. If extensive lighting is available, it should be utilized as much as is possible by the single sound tech described below, but a separate tech (e.g. Lighting Director) is NOT REQUIRED for our events.
Venue staff required for production & artist load-in:
Unlock the doors to let in our Show Manager and arriving artists/performers at the agreed upon load in/check in time. Please be on time!
Direct artists where/when/how to load-in their equipment.
Your venue must provide one (1) live sound technician (aka “sound tech”, “sound engineer”, “mix engineer”) who is trained on the equipment you are providing for the event. The sound tech must arrive in time to have the stage ready (including any “backlining” of gear for each artist) and the first artist sound checked, before scheduled doors time (normally 15 minutes prior to scheduled start of music). Sound Tech must be there the entirety of the show, and not leave the booth while acts perform.