Session 5: Koen (Yugo Futurism) on DIY touring the Balkans and the Tomek Tomek Tomek rule

Koen founded Yugo Futurism after years running an NGO doing exchange festivals on ethnic borders in the former Yugoslavia, and now represents the band Tramhaus using eight different local booking agents rather than one big one, because trust and shared values matter more than reach. His core message on DIY touring: start a year in advance, don't expect the same lead time in North Macedonia or Kosovo that you'd use in Germany, and use the 'Tomek Tomek Tomek' story (one contact in Poland led to three separate people with the same nickname solving his booking gap in half an hour) to explain how one trusted regional introduction beats an agency's spreadsheet of contacts. He is direct that fees in Bulgaria, Romania and Greece can now beat Germany, that the region is not underdeveloped the way Dutch bands assume, and that most tour disasters (like a real four-city, four-day Vienna-Warsaw-Berlin-Copenhagen run he watched collapse) come from someone who never drove the distances themselves booking the route. On mental health: have an info sheet with every practical detail of a show ready, because preparedness is what makes touring survivable.

Full transcript

Session 5 - Conversation with Koen

Koen:
I mean, over the years we've been working with over 80 bands and I think in the last decade we kind of figured out that the best way to support the scene that we were part of was to focus on Dutch bands. So what we did about 160 releases and back then, like in those years I was studying in Groningen, I was a volunteer in VERA, the music venue where VERA is also active and I kind of, I mean, I started organizing and hosting my own events and from one thing led to another and I was part of an NGO that we founded called Spartak which was focused very much on Central and Eastern Europe and at one point in all of these things happening simultaneously I decided to structure my activities and everything that I do now in the last 10 years is done under the platform called Yugo Futurism that I founded and so a lot of the live events, the international festivals, the tours and also the management, the managing I'm doing and the educational projects is all under that umbrella. So this is now for me, it's a way that somehow it's a very personal and organic way of working with my international network and I think now also working with this band called Tramhaus that asked me three years ago to represent them. The way that I'm trying to also work with them and represent them internationally is in a way that we work only with very organic partnerships with people that share the same values and this is very much also the way that I choose to work. So it's fiercely independent. Does that make sense?

Eryn:
Yeah, no, sounds really great. I'm trying to think of how to continue. So of course you are here today to discuss with everyone how they might be able to get into touring on their own as an independent artist, reaching out to contacts in other countries that they might not know and so on, right?

Koen:
Sure, yeah.

Eryn:
I'm looking at the number of questions that we have from the forum and there's a lot of them so I was thinking it might be really great to get into those in a moment, but how did you initially get started with with Yugo Futurism and your contacts in Eastern Europe as well and internationally?

Koen:
A good question, of course. I referenced it a little bit in the introduction but let's say this NGO that I started with friends of mine and we were studying back then and we had a mutual interest in Central Eastern European history and culture and a lot of my friends were also specializing in Central and East European studies as it's called usually because that specialization is a lot bigger in Germany. So a lot of my friends also went on Erasmus projects, but this NGO that was first doing movie nights and academic discussions and whatnot and excursions at one point developed into a youth organization. So we were a sending organization to host and to send out Dutch students and to organize exchange camps and that kind of built on the mutual interest and they had specific topics and from there at one point we started combining the work that I did in music. So I was already doing the record label, hosting shows, setting up festivals and working with a lot of bands organizing tours, but through this NGO work it kind of all came together in the Western Balkans. We started organizing a series of festivals called the Balkan Streets Festival happening back then in regions in the periphery of the various independent countries in the Western Balkans in former Yugoslavia and they were aimed towards setting up festivals on ethnic borders in the region which have a traumatic history, but using music and live concerts to bring young people together. It was really idealistic. We worked together with a lot of local organizations, with local radio, with local social organizations and that period, the five or six years that we were doing those shows in Vukovar, Croatia, in Vranje, Serbia, in Kumanovo, Macedonia and in Gnilane, Jilan, Kosovo really kind of shaped the way that I work and also kind of made me realize that the work I do in music can be much more than just let's say the commercial infrastructure or releasing records or trying to do this in a linear way. So I made the choice to start Yugo Futurism and combine all of these activities and also formalize the network that I had from Poland back then to Balkans. I started living also in Macedonia for a while in Skopje and since then I think I travel a lot during the year and I have a very active network of organizers and events and venues that I'm constantly in conversation with on a very horizontal level. So this is almost like a living organism, the underground infrastructure and ecosystems of that part of Europe and I'm always also trying to create opportunities and also reciprocally to invite also bands to the Netherlands and not just send Dutch bands or bands from the rest of Europe to that direction but also to exchange. I see a question from Liz. I was not doing it alone back then. We had a larger organization and we had people in the organization that were all study friends of mine but it was a coming together of people with different talents. For instance, I'm not that good with budgeting or administration or applying for funds so we had people doing that kind of work and for sure, yes, we applied for funds. Back then, we did a lot of the youth projects were funded. Back then, it was called Youth in Action and now I think it's called Erasmus Plus and that kind of also developed into the cultural program. But right now, the work that I do now is not so much from the NGO perspective but it's more from my own platform and the relationships that I build with various actors in the region. The scale is a lot bigger so I'm working now from Tallinn to Istanbul basically and everything in between. So yeah, that kind of grew in a way that I also did not expect but it's a very interesting and dynamic way of working.

Eryn:
And as someone who's based in the Netherlands, how did you initially reach out to and start making network contacts in the Balkans because there is of course quite a distance. What made you interested in participating in projects in that region of Europe in comparison to Western Europe and how did you get started with meeting people over there?

Koen:
I think the projects that we did and the exchanges that we did kind of kick-started that. I mean, that was even before we started doing the festivals. So you meet other young people and back then I was still a student or just finished studies. It was like around when I was like 24 to 26 when it was really active and you meet people with mutual interest and then it's easier to stay in touch. And of course I was always interested in discovering new music and then you discover that there is a whole scene in Belgrade for instance back then it was really overlooked in the Netherlands. Then you travel also outside of the official projects or conferences and you meet these people from the bands and back then it was it really made sense to me having the network also in the Netherlands and the capacity to set up these tours to start inviting bands over as well. And I think one of the first bands we invited over back then was in 2012 when Repetitor came. It's like a punk rock trio from Belgrade. Back then it was their first bigger tour outside of the region. This is kind of like I said, it's kind of an organic thing for me. It makes sense to do this work. I enjoy doing this work and because you're doing these things you're constantly also meeting new people and in the last couple of years a lot of the network that I work with and the new network that I develop is done at showcase festivals in central and eastern Europe. I'm hosting my own showcase in Tallinn Music Week. I've been to every edition of the showcase festival Sharp Bratislava in Slovakia and a few weeks ago I was in Ljubljana at the MENT festival. These are kind of compact, smaller showcase events where it's really easy if you have your brain receptors and your social skills a little bit trained and ready. It's really easy to set up meetings and do speed meetings with people to start learning more about the region.

Eryn:
Yeah, really cool.

Koen:
I see a band that is going to play Sharp, so I will see you there. This is nice.

Eryn:
I want to kind of piggyback off of the most recent question in the chat as well to you know for the sake of any independent artists in the community who don't have any connections or organizations backing them. How might they be able to reach out to venues or contacts in other countries without necessarily being connected there?

Koen:
Yeah, this is of course hard and because in the end of the day I do a lot of workshops and educational projects also trying to help people build up their own network and of course every musician in the world wants to tour and wants to discover new places. I think the biggest returning points in my workshop about DIY touring is the long-run patience preparation. So, to start a year in advance to also start thinking about the organization of your act or the act that you work with in like drops in the lake. So, every time your circle gets a little bit broader if you are also connected with the venue in your own scene you can start inviting people and setting up shows yourself. This DIY ecosystem is really dependent on other people making it. It's really dependent not just on other people making the first step but you also starting the dynamic yourself. So, I feel by visiting events as a music fan or by for instance setting up shows yourself or visiting shows and communicating you build up a network that is very much your own personal one. Because I think one of the things that happens to me the most is that people start asking me to send them an excel sheet of all my network in the Balkans. This seriously happens a lot also from very big booking agencies. What people fail to realize is that most of these people I've known for 20 years they don't have a huge capacity or funding either municipal or state. So, the way we work is in a way that we grow together. So, these are not like commercial organizers or festivals. These are people that set up small shows in an honest way and connect local bands with the touring bands. This for me is it really makes sense for me to work in that way. This is like a value system that I also share with these people.

Eryn:
Was your question in the chat already answered then or would you want to clarify?

Koen:
I mean I can go into the question of green tea bitches. I'm guessing that's the name of the also, right?

Eryn:
Yeah, probably.

Koen:
I think festivals can be a solution to reach a lot of people in one go. But I think on the more sustainable way of looking at the DIY scene is that festivals will almost come automatically if you start organizing your own tours and researching infrastructure, researching small stages in the cities and in the regions that you want to go to. Looking at other people's posters and trying to make your own mental map of the various opportunities and venues in those countries and in those regions. And then start reaching out to these people and that means nowadays I think because this is one of the more challenging things that I run into is that the time of preparation or let's say the if you want to organize a feasible tour in the Netherlands now or in Germany, you really have to start a year in advance. If I start emailing people in North Macedonia or in Kosovo a year in advance, it doesn't really connect. They don't want to then that's way too early. So you really have to learn how to communicate and also understand all these regional differences of the way that people work. That's also why I communicate on a regular basis with them and try to also keep up with what they're doing, what the venues are doing and also trying to help them by opening new doors and getting them invited to some international conferences and stuff. I don't think hiring a PR team will solve that problem because the issue with Central and Eastern Europe is that each country is sort of a market of their own because of the language thing. So there is not so much one PR team that can properly reach the audiences within various countries. You would need to work with an individual and then it would require a huge investment as well. You still have to find out which of these people are actually knowing what they're doing, that they actually have the PR network to reach audiences. I would say if you're going to play at SHARP in Bratislava, this is an ideal way because most of the smaller and bigger organizers and also regional festivals are represented there. So on paper it's an ideal way to meet and I would also really recommend trying to reach out to these people beforehand to invite them to the show but also to try to have a coffee with them, to have this more long-term sustainable way of building relationships with people.

Eryn:
That kind of goes into another question that I was going to ask as well when it comes to booking yourself for concerts in other countries. Would it be best to start by just sending emails to venues or is there a better way to approach booking agents? How might be the best way to go about that?

Koen:
From my perspective as a still a DIY organizer, if you want to do this the way in that you are owning your own network and you have the agency over your own tours and have your own relations with regional or local organizers, booking agents can solve that problem for you but I believe much more in in the individual networks. So this thing and I'm moving into Liz's question now, I think that one of the almost as a very persistent stereotype and I'm not saying that you have that but that exists in the Netherlands is that Central and Eastern Europe are somewhat underdeveloped. What I can say now is the tour that I've booked for the band that I work with called Tram House. Right now I would say the fees and the venues that they're playing in Bulgaria and Romania and in Greece are much bigger and much more professional than they are playing in Germany for instance. So there is a huge rise in audience because of ongoing economic growth for instance in Bulgaria that when I visited Sofia for the first time 15 years ago with today is really unrecognizable. There is a quite a big audience, there is a lot of concerts happening, there is emerging festivals, there is their own scene that gets more and more professional and is reaching out and is touring themselves also more. But of course to get to Bulgaria you need, I mean on paper yes you could fly there but the world in between depending on where you're based of course you also need to cross. So for me I started developing these networks per country very slowly and that also took me a long time to find the right people in each city and one of the things that is really helpful with Central Europe so basically let's look at like if Central Europe, I mean all of these terms even Balkans and Eastern Europe and Central Europe are all highly political terms but when I think of Central Europe it's like Poland, the East part of Germany, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Slovenia and Austria. The good thing about these countries is and the cities there is that you could quite easily do a week of touring and not drive more than three hours a day because the infrastructure between cities is quite good. There's a lot of student towns, there is a lot of smaller venues, there is a lot of smaller events happening so if you research that and also do a to actually set up quite a proper tour playing in the different countries and I think the people that clicked on my website this is yougofuturism.eu I mean I wasn't really looking for a website with more information about myself or ways to contact me or the stuff that I did so I just posted hundreds of the posters that I made. This is a thing that I really enjoy doing. I am very much not a designer but I enjoy taking pictures of architecture, social modernism and brutalism and because yougofuturism is so important for me and it's such a personal thing that I really enjoy this kind of 360 way of doing events. Okay I will not do the sound at the event that's probably for the best for everyone but I also really enjoy making these flyers in paint which is very unprofessional but it's something that kind of finalizes the narrative for me in setting up an event or a tour.

Eryn:
Yeah great. To follow up on that I'm going to piggyback off the Green Tea Bitches comment in the chat as well where they mentioned that touring costs a lot of money and energy. Do you think it would be best to first develop a bit of an online presence with online fan base so that when you go to start touring you kind of have that presence already for live shows or would it be best to start kind of putting yourself out there by doing live shows first and growing your audience that way?

Koen:
In the DIY ecosystem in the circuit you would expect and I think you can expect also the people that set up the shows, the local organizers, the local promoters to actually have their own community of music lovers and of concert goers that they want to introduce you to. So one of the bigger and that is actually a problem I think worldwide and not just in central eastern Europe is that there is kind of a big lack of regional media. You have music media in Poland, radio and you have magazines but for a long time they have been focusing on mostly on their own market and on their own acts. So it's not so easy to to get like a narrative going in media or to reach audience that way. For instance let's say in Czech Republic and Slovakia the people that run this magazine are good friends of mine. You have full moon magazine but that's written in Czech so people in Poland and in Slovenia and in Hungary cannot read that. They will still reach like a bigger audience in Czech Republic and Slovakia but that's a relatively low amount of people for the larger region. So I think this is also one thing with the PR agencies. I do not know any PR agency that would be able to reach all the countries and the various languages in one go. You would always have to work with various. Now I don't read Czech sadly. The only Slavic language that I've attempted is speaking very bad Macedonian.

Eryn:
That's more impressive than I can say bad Macedonian. So at what point in an artist's career, say they start DIY touring and starting to book some gigs outside of their home countries. At what point do you think in this process would be a good idea to maybe look into finding a booking agent?

Koen:
It depends on whether you want a booking agent or you think you need one. I would not get a booking agent because you yourself don't want to do that work. Booking agents in general are commercial operators that will organize the tour for you and take a permission from that or invoice you. If you want to be in control of your own tours and of your own career, a booking agent is not solving that issue for you by setting up these tours because when you're doing smaller tours there are not such big guarantees or higher fees to take that commission from. So doing that in a more DIY way. I will give you an example of the band that I represent called Trem House. We have eight different booking agents in Europe and maybe one or two of them are what you could call more traditional booking agents that are representing many bands. But what we chose to do is work with very dedicated local booking agencies. So in the Netherlands we have one, in Belgium, in France, in Spain, in Portugal, in Italy, Germany, Austria and Switzerland's German-speaking part. And then for Central and Eastern Europe I'm doing that because there are few people who have a similar network like I do for setting up these shows. So the reason we work with them is because I've worked with a lot of them for a long time. I've slept on some of their couches. I've seen them organize also smaller events and I think this is also a matter of trust and in a way of working that really matters to us. And that has also in a way really been successful in the way that we wanted to operate in Europe and in the world because we also have a booker in Asia and we have a specific group of people that's helping us out in Japan. We've also been to Japan and Korea twice. We will go back again in September. But it's, I mean, even of course the situation and infrastructure there is different. I mean everything is different than in Europe but the way that these people work and the way that we work with them is not so different. It's again about values and helping each other and working in a horizontal way and being part of a larger framework of independent organizers.

Eryn:
Good to know, yeah. I'm just taking a look at some of the questions from the form that we put in the general chat earlier. And someone is asking what might be some of the biggest mistakes that artists can make when trying to book a DIY tour?

Koen:
There are a few things. I think starting too late. For instance now, what is it? It's half March. It's going to be extremely challenging to now still organize a tour that's going to happen before summer. And that's not just for Central and Eastern Europe but anywhere. But I think when bands are starting to do this they often underestimate the amount of preparation that you need to set up a connecting tour. So not just to have like three shows randomly in a month. Actually connect the dates and maybe have one or two free dates in between which is always also good for mental health and your physical abilities because touring is also usually quite unhealthy. I think another thing that people often do is to forget that a tour is as much a part of a larger preparational strategy with a new release. It's an integral thing. So the moment that you have new recordings, you went to the studio, you have a plan to release an EP or an album or a single in September. Immediately from that moment on, not wait until the album is there or the new release is there. Now from that moment on you immediately start looking at dates and connections to make that tour. The good thing about this is the moment that you announce. So the single is coming out in early September. The album is following in October. The good thing about having already started on that is that everything that happens from the moment that you announce the single can already be connected to the tour. So it's one big thing because it's already challenging enough for an independent or new emerging artist to reach the audience and to be noticed. But the momentum is usually very short to do this. With the moment that you have the tour already announced, you also use the network and the audience that the local organizers are talking to, that they're communicating with in Krakow, in Warsaw, in Bratislava, in Vienna or in Ljubljana or in Skopje, by feeding them the information that comes out. So the live session that you've done with your act, maybe the new pictures, the tour poster, everything from that moment on is connected to also the tour and is helping you reach a bigger audience with the new music. And that is, I think, the way that you should look at it. So I use the metaphor of the Christmas tree. The moment that you announce your new single, it's still relatively an empty, undecorated tree. But the more you work on it and the more information, it's also helpful for the local promoters to help you share and reach the audience and make them part of that whole process with you.

Eryn:
Yeah, and I really want to emphasize what you said about mental health on the road too, because I feel like with a lot of independent artists or DIY tours, some artists can tend to bite off a bit more than they can chew because they want to get their names out there, they want to play the shows. But it is really important to look after yourself when you're doing these kinds of things on the road and make sure that you take enough break time between shows and traveling and all of those things. Because otherwise, you can't continue unless you're looking after your health and your mental health. So I want everyone to keep that in mind.

Koen:
It's absolutely vital. And this is also one reason that I would not start looking at booking agencies to book your tour in Central and Eastern Europe. I have a special app group with organizers from the Balkans, from three countries in which we share posters of tours announced by bands from Western Europe that announce a tour in the region with distances that I don't blame them personally, because I know they probably have no idea about the real distances. But when you're touring in former Yugoslavia, there are borders there, you're outside of the Schengen zone. So you cannot just drive from one place to another, like we can within the European Union or within the Schengen area. And then, moreover, there are not just borders, there's also mountains. And the infrastructure is limited. So driving from one city to the other is not just as easy as looking at Google Maps. Sometimes you have to cross three or four borders to get there. And borders might take time, there might be lines, they might check you or check your equipment. So very often, these tours are booked by a booking agent that has never been in the car or in the van themselves to do these distances. And I have seen bands that I even enjoy, that I like, and usually I also, when I know them, I send a message or I call them, like this is not going to be fun, guys. I know it looks cool and I know you're enthusiastic about going on the tour. I will give you one example, I will not mention the name, but there was a Dutch band planning a central European tour and I think in four days it was Vienna, Warsaw, Berlin, Copenhagen. And even on a lucky day with traffic getting out of the cities, that's going to be eight hours plus per day. And that makes you also have limited time to do the sound check, limited time to build up, limited time to talk to the local organizers, then very importantly, limited time to eat healthy and to take care of yourself or to take a break or to take a nap or whatever. And in the end, the shows were cancelled, not because I called them, but the shows were cancelled because I think they kind of had a problem with the car and then also realized like, OK, but this one of the members was already tired when they were in Vienna. And then the four days that you have to go, it's going to be really intense. And those days can be super bad. I mean, when I book a tour, there is always going to be one day or two days where the drive is maybe six, seven hours. With the band I book with TramHouse, there is six people in the band, that's including the technician, that drive. They can really divide the amount of hours of driving. They share their responsibilities. So there's always one of them. And as usually, that's the vegan in the band that does the groceries in the morning, that buys fruits and buys some drinks and water for everyone so that you're not just stuck to the greasy, expensive food at gas stations. These things are always underestimated, but it makes everything a little bit easier if you do it that way, if there is enough hummus in the van for everyone.

Eryn:
And I also wanted to mention briefly, Koen, we've come up on our original ending time for this session, but because we started late, I was wondering if you are okay with taking another 10 minutes overtime?

Koen:
No, it's fine. Even if it wasn't late, I'm totally open for that. So that's okay.

Eryn:
Okay, perfect.

Koen:
Were there any more questions in your form beforehand? Because I don't know if I've seen that form.

Eryn:
Yeah, I'll take a look. And in the meantime, I want to give anyone who hasn't asked a question in the chat to ask any questions that they might have before we end today too. Let me see what additional questions we have. Let me see. Yeah, we've essentially covered more or less the answers to these questions. I guess to go into the mental health aspect a little bit more too, Rasmus has just texted me a question. If you have any more important advice or anything in relation to protecting your mental health or becoming more mentally resilient as an artist who wants to have a very sustainable career.

Koen:
The music industry is not known to take not just the mental health, but health in general of artists too much into account. I mean, I would consider also the work that I do and the project that I do to be part of a counter narrative towards like the mythology of the music industry, which the music industry, in my opinion, is still an exploitative system, which is constantly looking for new ingredients to take through the machine. For me, the way I work is almost automatically more sustainable because the bands are much more in control of what happens in their career as DIY organizers. But to look specifically at the mental health aspect, I feel to really make sure that in the shows that you do and the show that you confirm with smaller venues, to be prepared and to have like, for instance, to have this info sheet which collects all the information about the show so that you always know where you are, where you're going to sleep, whether there's going to be food, to have all that information ready. Because preparedness also helps dealing with unexpected situations. You always have the phone numbers of the organizers, the addresses and all that stuff ready. Because I think that part on touring is very often underestimated. But to have access to the information and to communicate with each other within the band as well about these things is super vital, I think. I'm thinking about more examples. There's been a lot of attention to this subject in music conferences, bigger and smaller, over the last couple of years. So I'm not the specialist on it, but there's been a lot of writings about it. There's been a lot of discussion. So I'm sure looking at the subject of the conferences a little bit to find some names of people who are speaking about these subjects, so you can get access to more written material or articles about it.

Eryn:
Yeah, for sure. Going back to the touring aspect of the mental health, this is kind of a related question. I found another question in our forum that was answered a bit but wasn't really answered overtly about how many shows would be realistic for a starting band to play on a two-week tour based on the questions that you answered previously. I would maybe say around like six or seven, but I wanted to know maybe your response.

Koen:
I don't think there is an easy answer. It really depends on the preparation that you did and the connections that you've built or the people that you're talking to, how many shows you can do. What I've said is that in Central Europe distances between the cities are relatively small. So if you look at, for instance, I'm just doing this from my head now, but Berlin, Dresden, Prague, Brno, Bratislava, Katowice, Wrocław, Warsaw, Krakow, they are all within three to five hours live, which is doable. If you leave at 11 in the morning, you would still be in time for soundcheck, proper dinner. But building up the network and getting in touch with these venues, of course, it takes time and you will not get it in your first tour. If you have a long-term strategy about these things, you build up these relationships on the go. I will have one piece of advice that I always use in the workshop that I do about DIY touring is what I call the Tomek, Tomek, Tomek rule. I remember once in 2012 setting up a tour for two Dutch noise rock bands, one from Groningen, one from Rotterdam. And I was really struggling to find Berlin. And normally that's not the hardest city to find a show because they have a lot of smaller and bigger venues, but it just wasn't coming together. And you know, you're at one point, you're a month before the tour, you still have Berlin in your head. And then came a moment when I was talking about this and about the struggles that I had finding the show or getting in touch with the right promoter that I started chatting with one of the Polish organizers of the following dates called Tomek. And within half an hour, I was chatting to two other dudes named Tomek, which is the short Polish version of Tomash, that were doing shows in neighboring cities that really set it up super fast. And then one of them even on Facebook Messenger has the alter ego Tomek, Tomek, Tomek to make it even more complicated. But if you're talking to these organizers by email or by chat, I mean, I'm not a huge fan of using all these different chat apps, but I have to. I even like, I have also Telegram and all this stuff. Why? Because each country is, the people in each country kind of use their own, their own specific medium. If it were not for Japan, for instance, I would also not use X anymore, but in Japan is so popular that still a lot of people communicate with me over that. But to be in a dialogue with one organizer from Prague, that is in the DIY scene, they would almost automatically know who is doing the shows in the cities around it. And they don't even have to book the shows for you, but they can give you advice on who to reach out to. And if they do that, I would always ask for them to somehow introduce you, whether to introduce you by email or to start some kind of group chat or whatever, because it makes it a lot easier. If, for instance, if I'm introduced by someone that I really trust that I've worked with, I will read the email, I will answer the message or I will get advice. It's a good way of doing these things. Then about finding more shows, I feel, and this goes for Green Tea Bitches again, because they're playing in the festival in Bratislava. Like I mentioned, every bigger and smaller organizer from the larger region, specifically Slovakia, Czech Republic and South Poland, will be at that festival. So looking at the delegates list of this festival on the website, it's probably not on yet, because I know they're still very much doing that, setting up the festival and their booking. And Sharp, as an example specifically, that showcase festival is done by a really cool group of mostly women in Slovakia. Slovakia now politically is in a very challenging situation, so there's not much funding for the arts and left field culture, but this festival, in every sense of the word, is a protest in the way that they make it happen still. They don't have a lot of resources, but the fact that they make it happen, and also everyone that's believing in this music and believing in culture this way, will be present at that event. So it's a perfect social pressure cooker to reach out to people beforehand and to start making that puzzle of updating your mental map of regional organizers and venues.

Eryn:
I feel like that's a really good summation of everything that we've discussed, so I think that might be a good note to end on. Thank you so much, Koen, for coming to talk with everyone and share your experience and your advice about DIYing in the industry and doing things on your own. It's really helpful, I think, to a lot of independent artists who are just getting started. Just a reminder to everyone too, as well, we have another session in two weeks with Bina, so we hope to see you there as well in two weeks, and thank you all so much for participating. I don't know if anyone else has anything to say, Rasmus, James, Ina, if not...

Koen:
We're good, thank you guys, I appreciate it.

Eryn:
Yeah, okay, take care then, everyone. Take care, guys, and keep in touch.