With tour and production management company, Travelled Music, celebrating its 24th year in 2026, TPi caught up with Tour Manager, Alan Thompson, to discover how touring has changed for him, and what we can expect from the sibling-run company in the future.
Can you tell us about your role as Tour Manager with Barry Can’t Swim?
“I came onboard with Barry Can’t Swim in early 2024. I recommended and was fortunate enough to have some good people join me and the team at the same time. We brought in a new MD and FOH, and as the year developed and the interest in the project grew so did the team around us, with more familiar faces joining to help as the audiences became bigger. Barry also began working with Zeal at the same time. They developed an incredible live show with visuals and lighting, which really established the show as a spectacle.”
You say you built the team from scratch at the start of the campaign, did you face any challenges doing this?
“Rome wasn’t built in a day! Finding square pegs for square holes is one thing, but establishing a cohesive team that has fun every day and night is another. Sometimes it’s not necessarily all about ability. We worked hard alongside Barry’s management to ensure we had a great mixture of cognitively diverse people on the team so that we were thinking about all aspects of the show from all angles. Thankfully, I believe we created an amazing team with great spirit that saw us through some really heavy touring across the world. “
Can you tell us more about Travelled Music? How have you found working with your brother?
“I started Travelled Music in 2002. Promoting shows and managing small bands in Scotland. I was lucky enough to end up on the road on tours with support acts for Amy Winehouse, Mika, Razorlight, Primal Scream which then led onto touring with acts such as Overmono, Floating Points and Caribou. It has been so much fun to learn from some amazing people. I’m still learning today, sometimes from my brother! He joined the company a few years ago and now tour manages Antony Szmierek, Dylan John Thomas, The Pigeon Detectives and has worked on some big shows. It is nice being able to share an office with him. It’s a log cabin surrounded by fields with only a log burner for warmth so quite the opposite of a sweaty, sold out show.”
Has the landscape changed for tour management over the past couple of years for you, and if so, how?
“When i first started I needed to print out directions and had piles of paper for each show. Tour books were artworks compiled by hand like school projects. Now AI can recommend the best hotels near the venues and the vans can basically drive themselves to the show! Seriously, a driverless taxi in San Francisco took us to soundcheck last year. It has changed and for the better. Promoters and venues are so much more accommodating, welcoming and understanding. Improvements in communication like emails and whatsapp have really improved relationships. Catering is more eco-friendly and health-conscious. Touring is a pleasure as it should be.”
What have some of your highlights been working with Barry Can’t Swim?
“I really enjoyed Glastonbury 2024 with Barry Can’t Swim. The band were joined on stage by a choir for one song. Unbeknownst to anyone but me the choir were stuck at Reading train station with a cancelled train only a couple of hours before they were due onstage. When we finally rushed them through the festival security and to the side of the stage moments before the show, everything calmed. The Park Stage had to be closed due to overcrowding, BBC were filming live, and the response from the audience was incredible. Just over a year later, Barry headlined All Points East Festival (APE) in London. We’d started touring only 15 months earlier with a team of just seven people. For that show, there were 129 names on the crew list cunningly managed by our amazing Production manager Shaun Kendrick, alongside APE’s Mark Ward. Again, Zeal produced a wonderful show, our FOH Greg Smart tamed the notorious Victoria Park with an incredible sounding show and 50000 people went home happy.”
What can we expect from you and Travelled Music in 2026?
“We have started the year strongly with a sold out European tour for Swedish act Anna von Hausswolff. Her latest album has recently won the Swedish Radio P3 Gold Album of the Year award, and the live show is amazing with such incredible musicians and touring crew. It has been an honour. More tours are planned with major Canadian artists heading to Europe and we’ll be heading to North America for tours with UK acts later in the year. We’re always expanding and looking for good people to work with, so hopefully we can find more good people and keep learning and developing as a company in 2026.”
How do you think the industry can change to support touring teams further?
“It is well publicised that touring for artists not at the highest level is expensive. Paying crew and musicians well and looking after people is very important, so we need to find ways of ensuring that tours can be more than loss leaders and become profitable events in their own right. Organisations like the Music Venue Trust do great things to support grassroots venues, which in turn helps touring teams, but we need to find more ways of making sure the exorbitant ticket prices paid at stadium level trickle down to all levels. So that the corporations in charge make a fair profit instead of obscene profits, and that all musicians and crew are paid fairly at all levels.”
