Rachel Chinouriri has announced that she has dropped out of the upcoming Remi Wolf tour and several festival slots due to the financial strain becoming “too much”.
The dates were set to take place as part of Wolf’s ‘Big Ideas’ US tour, which is scheduled to kick off next month (September 10), with an opening night at the Santa Barbara Bowl in California.
Chinouriri was set to join as a special guest for a number of the planned shows, starting with the three Kings Theatre shows in Brooklyn (September 30, October 1 and October 2), as well as for dates in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia.
Now, the NME Cover star has taken to social media to confirm that she will be backing out of the dates due to it being unfeasible financially.
“I’m deeply saddened to announce that I have to withdraw from the Remi Wolf tour and several festivals. This year I’ve invested all my savings and earnings into my shows, styling, and band to be able to tour. While my debut album has opened many amazing opportunities, the financial strain on touring has become too much,” she wrote on X/Twitter today (August 20).
“Despite my best efforts to secure funding for this incredible opportunity, it hasn’t been possible. This is the tough reality of the music industry, whether you’re signed or independent.
“I’ve explored every possible option to make this work because I adore Remi and her fanbase, and I was so excited to come to the States. However, I cannot justify the financial risk it would entail.”
I’ll try my best to come and see you all soon , I promise
pic.twitter.com/s0fWgpqsks
— rachel (@rachelchinourir) August 20, 2024
She concluded: “Thank you for your understanding and the support, it means everything to me. I will continue to work hard, and I can’t wait to see you all on the November tour! To my US darlings, I will be back as soon as I can!”
It still remains vague which festival slots the singer will be pulling out of, although she has confirmed to a fan online that the planned appearances at Rock En Seine and Reading & Leeds will be going ahead as usual.
With the announcement, Chinouriri is far from the first artist to highlight the immense financial strain that comes from pursuing a career in music and touring. For example, just a couple of months ago Mercury-nominated singer-songwriter Nadine Shah told fans that she would not be playing Glastonbury due to it being “too expensive”.
“I would have liked to but I wasn’t offered a televised stage so I declined. It’s too expensive a hit for me to take otherwise,” she tweeted, referring to how Glasto is known for not often paying artists as much as other major festivals might, but the exposure it provides and knock-on effects are usually much larger.
“It’s just a reality that playing live is super expensive and if you can justify the costs (like being on telly and having a wider reach) then sometimes you take the hit. Otherwise no, we’ve all bills to pay.”
Similarly, at the beginning of the year, various artists opened up to NME about the biggest challenges they faced in 2023 and the things they would like to see changed within the new year.
Echoing the FAC’s advocacy for venues not taking a cut of musicians’ merchandise sales at gigs, frontman of the band formerly known as Easy Life, Murray Matravers, called for more action to be taken on money landing in the pockets of artists otherwise “live music just isn’t going to be a feasible thing”.
Last year, the band went through a similar ordeal to Chinouriri – announcing that they had cancelled their upcoming North American tour due to “some insane costs”.
“We’ve tried hard to make it work, slashing budgets and trying to justify some insane costs, but we’re just not able to get the funds to bring the Easy crew over this spring,” they wrote at the time. “Touring and seeing all of you is why we do what we do so this is hitting hard, but the world seems to cost 10x as much as it used to right now.”
Later that year, The Chemical Brothers shared their concerns about the rising costs of touring too, revealing that they hadn’t planned any US shows in support of their new album because it was “not really viable” due to high costs.
Part of the reason why artists are finding it so hard to tour in America at the moment stems from the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announcing in February that it was planning to raise touring visa fees for foreign acts by 260 per cent.
Under the DHS proposal, applications for a P visa – which allows acts arriving in the States to perform temporarily – would increase from the current rate of $460 (£375.23) to $1,615 (£1,317). The longer-term O work visa would also jump from $460 (£375.23) to $1,655 (£1,349).
In response, the Music Managers Forum (MMF) and Featured Artists Coalition (FAC) boosted their #LetTheMusicMove campaign to oppose the potential changes and emphasise how it could result in “crippling costs for UK artists looking to tour North America”. Soon after, a number of touring artists, including IDLES, Rina Sawayama and Hot Chip, bolstered the campaign with their support.
For Chinouriri, the now-scrapped support slots with Remi Wolf marked some of her first shows since she performed at Glastonbury’s Other Stage on June 30. They would also have come following the Croydon singer releasing her debut album ‘What A Devastating Turn Of Events’ earlier this year.
In a four-star review of the LP, NME shared: “As a portrait of a life (and career) transformed, however, ‘What A Devastating Turn Of Events’ – despite its slightly macabre title – is consistently charming, while offering enough range in sound and scope to hint at Chinouriri’s future ambitions. She has worked hard to make it sound this easy.”
- READ MORE: Rachel Chinouriri has finally come home
Speaking to NME about her album as part of The Cover, the singer revealed that she took inspiration from the noughties while working on the LP as a way to reclaim her position in British society and the indie scene, where Black womanhood is routinely ignored and misrepresented.
“It’s me trying to relive the place I grew up in, but also understand that those things caused me so much trauma,” she said. “Even though I was having some of the worst times of my life, when I heard songs like [Phoenix’s] ‘1901’ or [Kings Of Leon’s] ‘Sex on Fire’, they used to make me so happy. I wanted an album that felt as nostalgic as those songs.”
Elsewhere, ‘What A Devastating Turn Of Events’ has landed spots on NME’s Best Albums of 2024 So Far and Best Debut Albums of 2024 So Far lists, and Coldplay shared their love for her moving cover of ‘The Scientist’ for Spotify Singles.
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