UK Punk, U.S. Price Tag: SUBHUMANS Talk Touring Costs
In the pouring rain, Dick Lucas and the rest of the Subhumans are standing in line outside the U.S. Embassy in London, waiting to attend an interview after shelling out just over three thousand pounds—about $4,500 per member—just to apply for work visas to tour the United States. And that’s just part of the expense and paperwork for bands coming from abroad.
The last time I spoke with Dick, we talked about the ins and outs of touring in the post-Brexit, Big Brother-is-watching-you world we live in now. As he put it:
“On the subject of UK bands touring in the USA, it has become exponentially more expensive since the internet came in. Hypothetically speaking, before the internet, a band could just show up with their guitars and say they were playing at a mate's wedding or a birthday party and then carry on touring without being noticed so much.
When the IRS raised the number of people scanning to see where these overseas bands are coming from—from eight to eighty—I think it was back in 2011 when we got spotted with Citizen Fish. And at that point they got the right to demand one-third of your income to be paid in tax.
Usually the promoters just hold that back from your payment and pay that straight to the IRS. Well, they’re supposed to. Some of them didn’t; they just kept it for themselves, which is quite interesting. Then you’ve got to get an accountant in order to get that money back, and the accountant costs money.”
Bruce Treasure of SUBHUMANS - ©dickslaughter.com
“Then suddenly you are inserted into this world where music and business, that don’t need—or even want—to work together too much because they’re on opposite ends of the scale. One is free, and the other is fucking financial slavery. They have to untie, and you have to put your head around a way of dealing with things in a very straight way you never thought you’d get to the point of doing. But if you don’t, you’ll just get stopped at the border and never be able to come back into the country again.”
Phil Bryant of SUBHUMANS - ©dickslaughter.com
“Plus the cost of the accountant to get that third of your money back from touring, there’s the cost of the work permit—because you can’t say you’re playing a friend’s party. You’re not going to get away with that anymore, because there’s a list of your shows on the net somewhere, and they will find it and say, “We’re not going to let you in because you don’t have a work permit.”
So you have to get yourself a work permit, which involves an agency in New York or San Francisco dealing with the US immigration people. That process takes, in the region of, five to six thousand dollars to get sorted for four people. It takes between one and ten weeks to sort out. If you haven’t got the luxury of waiting ten weeks for your passport—which a lot of the time, you don’t, because you need the permit to book the shows so you can get the “super duper rate” (they call it “expedite”)—then they get it done in like 48 hours. But it costs double, which then comes out to a stupid amount of money.”
“And in the meantime, you’ve got to find another agency in the UK that’ll deal with the permission to apply for the work permit, which gets sent from US immigration to the US agency, then to the UK agency, who sends it—along with your passport—to the US embassy, where you have to turn up for an interview. And they’ll send your passport back in about a week—for an additional fee—for a total of about three thousand pounds per person. So all that, plus flights, so basically it costs about thirteen thousand pounds (just over seventeen thousand dollars) just to do the tour.”
“But luckily enough, we’re in a position where enough people turn up at shows, and we get decent guarantees at a door price that doesn’t make people feel ripped off—that’s really important to us. With that, we can keep doing this.
But if you’re a band just starting out, or one that doesn’t have as many fans here, there’s no doubt it makes things extremely difficult. The cost alone can make the idea of touring the States completely out of the question”.
Click the official SUBHUMANS tour poster featuring a photo by yours truly to see a video
The Subhumans can definitely draw, and Dick is an incredible, mesmerizing performer. The shows are loud, powerful, and should be on everyone’s must-see-while-you-have-the-chance list. At last year’s Punk Rock Bowling, they were one of the highlights of the weekend—but their club show? That was one for the ages.
All the photographers were basically trapped in the pit because so many people had smashed up against the barricades. We all happily stayed and got the show of a lifetime—up close and personal. Let’s just say we all got Dick in our face for over an hour, and it was great.
You can watch the video (which I still can’t figure out how to get off Facebook and onto YouTube like I’m supposed to). Click the flyer—there are still a few shows left in the U.S.—and you can also catch Dick and the Subhumans on tour across the UK, EU, and at this year’s Rebellion Festivals.
Trotsky of SUBHUMANS - ©dickslaughter.com
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