I do. I love ‘em. Besides providing the opportunity for buying something physical, which can be very sustaining given how much it costs to tour, I love the imagination put in by artists to make really memorable, quality things to take home with you, which serve as a reminder of a great night and what that artist represents in such ephemeral times. But when touring with my own band The Little Unsaid, mostly I love the joy of connecting with people.

I pretty much manage the merch output of our band, and after soundcheck is done, actually love setting up the stand with our bassist Mariya and viola player Alison.

I did have a very good mentor in this - Tom Rose of Reveal Records. Back in 2016, I was lucky enough to hop on the Joan As Police Woman/Benjamin Lazar Davis tour to handle merch stand duties thanks to Tom, and as an ex-record store owner, he taught me well. So many pearls from the great man and label boss:

‘Eye level is buy level, Tim!’ ‘Even if you only have a few things, pile ‘em HIGH’, ‘make value bundles of back catalogue CDs!’ The resulting merch stands were inviting, colourful caverns of vinyl, T-shirts, CDs, posters and all sorts of properly great collectable items which Joan had brought along as she knew fans would adore them.

*Joan As Police Woman / Benjamin Lazar Davis ‘Let It Be You’ Tour, 2016*

Doing this stuff is fun, and a good merch stand is essential to our independent act. After our show’s final encore, I run from my drum set more or less straight to the merch stand while the rest of the band catch their breath backstage. But that’s really not because I’m keen to encourage people to buy our shit, it’s because of the joy of interactions with people who’ve seen our show, are moved by it, and want to share how they feel.

And that’s not an ego thing - it’s because for me the gold is discovering the ways in which an audience found connection with our music in different ways unique to their own experiences. And in those post-show moments, inhibitions are down, emotions are raw, and people are real. I would honestly work for nothing to have these moments, because they confirm to me that our work as musicians is of practical use IRL, which I suppose is a very human instinct, to know what you do is of use. The connection, the unmediated, pure moments when folks say some very, very real things about their lives because some music you’ve performed has made space for that. That’s both very humbling and deeply fulfilling. And not often something you discover via social media.

*Sweaty post-show banter, The Little Unsaid UK Tour, 2018*

So it’s really about community, right? I think now more than ever, community is vital - possibly the only answer in a world that often feels like it’s spinning off its axis; the alchemic experience of live music is a great medium for people to come together around feelings or ideas we all experience - positive or negative. That all sounds incredibly pompous, but I feel if we can be real with eachother in these moments of vulnerability, to understand we’re all dealing with the same shit, that we all struggle with the day-to-day and have fucking big life issues to cope with, we can take comfort in knowing it’s just fine not to be the Instagram-perfect, robotic, ladder-climbing consumer drone that algorithms or advertising insist we should be these days. People who come to our shows are sick of that bullshit. We can just be regular, fucked up humans - together - because that’s who we’re meant to be.

That’s why I love merch stands. We can have great craic, a hug, and then walk away from eachother knowing we’re all together in the same, leaky but glorious boat. (Sorry if I’m a bit sweaty in a hug though, that’s life as a drummer).

*Merch duties for the amazing* *Lucky Lo, Aarhus, Denmark, January 2024. Sorry about the cheesy thumbs-up.*

PS - for a dose of magical connection to something I really can’t explain - go see the wonderful Danish chamber-folk act Homesickness when they tour their gem of a new record ‘Anamnesis’ again later in the autumn of 2025.

Why I Love Merch Stands.