Dodgy tour promoting has claimed another victim this week as the Murder By Death Australian tour is cancelled after the investor simply ‘disappeared’, although it later came out that no flights had been booked, and visas had not been arranged for travel.
To make matters worse, the promoter Jung Hearts has been less than forthcoming about the cancellation, and at the time of publication there has still been no official word on the cancellation.
The news comes after numerous tours and festivals have fallen over in the last 12 months, mainly due to the inexperience of those hoping to run the show.
The announcement that the pin had been pulled was first broken by the band themselves, who launched into a tirade against Jung Hearts labelling them ‘unreliable’ and ‘untrustworthy’.
“We have just been told and are forced to announce with great sadness and bitter anger that our Australian tour has been cancelled by the promoter, Jung Hearts,” the band wrote on their official Facebook page.
“According to them, their investor has “disappeared” so all funding has been withdrawn. Apparently, he has bamboozled other promoters in the past. Who knows.”
“They did not book our flights, arrange Visas etc. so we are unable to throw something together to make these dates happen. Our booking agent and MBD have tried everything we can think of to try to salvage this tour but we are out of options.”
“We realize that the actions of the promoter (first, pushing the tour back and then cancelling it) reflect badly on us too, but there is nothing we have been able to do about it.”
“We are completely at the whim of the people putting on the shows, arranging transport and gear, paying for flights, setting up publicity etc. It has been a dream of ours for a long time to visit Australia and we could not be more frustrated and upset that this happened to us.”
“We sincerely apologize to people who bought tickets, have made travel arrangements, taken the day off work or whatever. Please know we are in agony thinking about the annoyance we have inadvertently caused you.”
“We will be spending the month of May wishing we were in Australia, with nothing to do, as we counted on this tour happening.”
“Someday, hopefully, we will have an opportunity to visit Australia, with more reliable and trustworthy tour arrangements. Our sincerest apologies everyone. This fucking blows.”
Publicity company Major Label, who were handling the PR for the tour, confirmed that the tour had been cancelled following an investor “going walkabout”, and claimed that a press release was circulating around somewhere.
The only problem was, nobody bothered to inform the venues or the ticket merchants, who continued to sell tickets and promote the show until fans began contacting them.
“It would be good if venue’s can get an official email rather than hearing about it on facebook so we can issue refunds and what not,” wrote Al O’Neill, band booker at The National Hotel in Geelong.
Having a look around the Murder By Death tour appears to be the first tour attempted by Jung Hearts, and even before the tour fell over promoters were having difficulty with the scheduling for the tour.
They dates were moved to later in the year “due to time constraints”, and main supports Eleventh He Reaches London pulled out shortly after the dates were move.
Oztix has now removed the event listings from its website, and although Moshtix is no longer selling tickets, the event has not been officially cancelled according to their website. Which raises questions about whether refunds are currently being processed.
It also raises questions about the responsibilities of the promoter Jung Hearts, who appear to have simply just disappeared.
In an increasingly digital age where it becomes cheaper and easier to inform fans and promote tours, has it made it easier for two-bit operators to set up shop with little to no knowledge of how to run a tour?
And at what point does it become the responsibility of the infrastructure around a tour, such as ticket merchants, to vet potential promoters so that the public can be assured they aren’t being duped?
Sound off in the comments and let us know what you think.
