I talked to a music industry professional recently, and he introduced me to the concept of a fly-out band.

Basically, there are two ways bands make money doing concerts. One way is to do all the legwork that comes with doing a tour. This involves costs, effort, and risk. Your money is tied to the revenue you generate doing the show (ticket sales, alcohol sales, merch, etc). While there might not be a lot of money in any one particular show, the hope is that over 60 dates you've made enough profit that the tour was worth it.

The other way to make money is to do fly-outs. Festivals and casino shows fall into this category. With a fly-out, the promoter/venue pays you a flat fee and covers all your costs in doing the show. There's no risk, you make guaranteed money, and it's comfortable.

It seems that with Live's reunion, they decided that they wanted to be comfortable and make guaranteed money. This explains almost every show they've done since coming back. The festivals and casinos are definite fly-outs. The Counting Crows tour might be somewhere in the middle, but I'm sure there was a lot less legwork and more guaranteed money doing that tour than headlining their own. The overseas show were big enough venues that there was probably little risk as well.

I think there are two ways to look at this. One is to say Live only cares about the money. The other is to say Live is made up of middle aged men who have other priorities. They can do shows here and there, make money, have fun, be comfortable, and get back to their lives.

I don't blame them for not wanting to do a traditional tour. I get that doing fly-outs is a nice lifestyle. It must be much better for Ed than doing his I Alone acoustic tour where he was driving himself to 200 person venues. It must be better for CCP who couldn't fill venues with Chris, and probably made very little on Summerland. It's their life, and this seems like a nice life.

I do wish though that they'd mix the setlists up and throw in some small venue shows here and there. They can do more to give the diehards what they want. It doesn't need to be a headlining tour, just enough that we can see them play 20 songs to their loyal fanbase.