Day in the life of a band manager on a show day & come run merch with me!
Devinney Rexrode | July 2026
Have you ever wondered what it’s really like to be an artist manager? It’s a lot of online time, meetings, troubleshooting, and, honestly, numbers. A lot of my bands and artists are states, or even a whole ocean away, but for the locals that I do have, I can be more hands-on. Come with me on a show day as I work with one of my local bands and run their merch table. But just remember, this is one of the fun days; not every day is like this! Now, let’s set the scene for the festival and the band I work with.
ALT Culture Fest is the second annual growing festival in Arlington, Texas, with a showbill full of up-and-coming alternative bands and artists from the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. It is hosted at a local skatepark, with a full night consisting of the names Benny Smoke, Harvester, Narrows, Crash Through The Floor, 4Factorial, Channel Planet, Matador, and The Shed.
Since this is a show hosted near a skatepark, it also included a skate jam at 5pm and a skate contest at 8pm, with different vendors for food and drinks around. This festival is what the Tony Hawk Pro Skater game vibes were all about! Now, let me introduce you to the band I manage, and will be running the merch table for today!
Crash Through The Floor is a female-fronted co-ed alternative rock band from Arlington, Texas. Their sound is edgy, fun, and high-energy alternative rock with a flair of pop-punk here and there through their releases so far. Earlier this year, they won Best Rock Song at the Dallas Entertainment Awards for their single “Avoidant Paradise”.
Now that you have gotten to meet the band a little, let’s get into the day itself!
It starts early for me. I get up at 6 am to make sure I have things charging for the day (I always bring 2 different cameras to get content and photos if I can, as well as mini mics for videos to help make the audio better). With the 7-8 mini mics I bring, I start making sure they are good to go early on, so I don’t forget to charge them all.
When you're a day-to-day manager or tour manager on location with a band, getting BTS, bloopers, live performance content, and more becomes a part of the job as well, so making sure you're ready for the possibility is a lifesaver!
On top of that, you need to make sure you have a merch sales sheet printed if you are running merch to help track the band’s revenue and inventory. You’re going to want to make shirts and hoodies off by size as they sell, so that you know what may need to be ordered for the next show.
This show, the Crash Through The Floor members’ handmade custom shirts for their last single “Gray Area,” where each design were one of a kind: those sold out in the small, medium, and large sizes by the end of their set, so from this, we know that this was their best-selling item during the show and could be a great thing to do again in the future!
Throughout the morning and early afternoon, we make sure we have everything together. They each had work before the show, so we didn’t meet until the venue's doors opened for the evening. Other times, I might be there with them to help with pre-show inventory and car packing, but this time we met at the venue, and I helped unload their equipment before getting the merch table set up. Sometimes I help with load-in and load-out, but when the venue is smaller like this one, it’s better to stay out of the band's way unless they need your help.
At the beginning of the set, there were some technical issues with the house microphone, so for the first two songs that were played back-to-back as intended, it was hard to hear the vocalist, Kiara, singing, but they realised mid-second song that she could only be heard in the chorus of the song and quickly moved to get the microphone reset. As they combatted the issue, Kiara did a wonderful job controlling the crowd for the moment or two it took to fix the settings on her input and quickly got right back into the show, thanking the crowd for their patience.
As their set went on, they played a cover of “Brick By Boring Brick” by the hit band Paramore that had the crowd captivated and all singing along. Before playing their newest single, which is due to be released on July 14, called “CaKe!”, they announced that they had merch at the table. The table was quickly flocked on announcement, selling out of most of the shirts and selling a good few of the other items. They pulled over $350 that night in merch sales alone, which is honestly a really great sales day.
With multiple designs of shirts, including designs that were hand-bleached and all one of a kind, as well as stickers, buttons, posters, friendship bracelets with 'Crash' on them, a tote option and even CDs of their last album on the on the table, they had options for everyone: from trinket collectors, to the clothing customers, and even the physical distribution lovers, all items in an affordable prices range.
By the end of the set, we’d sold most of the bleached “Gray Area” shirts and all but a few of what was left of their Dog Logo shirts. The band received major kudos and took pictures with some people from the crowd after the set as well. There were even a few photographers in the crowd who also made sure to get pictures of the bands and get their information to send the photos to once they are edited. After some quick photos in front of their setup, it was time to load everything back in their trucks.
After that, they took over the merch booth and engaged with the audience while I had to run early that night. Usually, as the manager, I stay from before or the exact time the doors open, until the time the band leaves or after to close out with the venue staff, but on this particular night, I did have to finish a little earlier.
At this point, I left a count of the sales I have logged and anything that I knew they sold out of, design or size-wise, as well as trying to log how much was in physical cash and not through a payment app or the Square tapping. Making sure they know where the cash bucket, Square, and markers are is also important.
Next show, I am hoping to bring a couple of shirt stands, so the designs are better showcased and the table looks cleaner; but otherwise, we had a pretty clean setup with all the designs and different merch options on display.
After the show itself is over, come the next steps of the show day. Counting inventory of merch for next shows, totaling sales revenue and ticket sales or door deal revenue separately and together, checking numbers on pre-sales versus door ticket sales (if able), and ordering or making more of the merch for the next shows. If the shows are close in dates and times, having merch pre-ordered for those is the best option, as orders take time to fulfil, and DIY designs take time to create more of.
Merch pro tips for artists: have at least one or two solid designs in the black t-shirt option: black t-shirt designs sell best. Additionally, have one cheap item like stickers, buttons, or lighters: people might not always have a lot to spend on merch, but still want to buy something in support. Also, have at least one more expensive item, like a hoodie or a sweater: having a solid option for the people who are able and want to spend more on you is amazing, because they will!
