Japanese Breakfast Tells An Upset Fan About The Challenges Of Touring Europe And Rescheduling Shows

A couple weeks ago, Japanese Breakfast (aka Michelle Zauner) announced she had to change her international touring plans for this year “due to lingering uncertainty surrounding COVID-19 travel protocols.” UK and European dates were rescheduled from March to October, although shows in some cities (Cologne, Hamburg, Antwerp, Paris, Madrid, Barcelona, and Copenhagen) were unable to be rescheduled and were therefore canceled. Zauner also noted, “I am truly devastated we can not make it work at this time but I promise we will be back as soon as possible.”

Now, instead of going overseas this month, Zauner has a full schedule of South By Southwest (SXSW) appearances lined up between March 16 and 19, a rundown of which she shared on social media today. This upset at least one fan on Twitter, as they accused Zauner of canceling/rescheduling the UK/Europe shows so she could go to SXSW. Zauner then took the time to address their tweets, which shed light on what it’s like for her to tour overseas and reschedule or cancel concerts.

The fan wrote, “so this is why you didn’t come to europe,” so Zauner replied over the course of multiple tweets:

“there are so many reasons that we weren’t able to come to Europe and this was not one of them. It’s mostly we are a band/crew of 10 people and if one of us got sick over there we would just not be able to afford the financial risk of properly taking care of our team.

It’s been really upsetting to see comments like this because I want nothing more than to travel to Europe and get to play over there but the reality is we lose thousands of dollars when we tour there because the overhead of backline/flights/visas is so high. Even pre covid building our fan base there has always been a labor of love. But now the the risk is even higher and so we are just hoping for the best that the path is clearer for all of us in October.”

That same fan replied, “we understand all these things, what bothers us is how you hid this information from us until only a week and a half before the start of the tour, after you had announced dates in the US, I love the band, I have been listening for years and i really hope i can see you someday but hope you can understand our point as well.”

Zauner responded, “I do and I’m sorry! But please know we do try our best and touring is just so hard rn. We’ve been given no protocol or guidance this whole time and just have to use our best judgment. I really hope we can make it to Madrid soon I’ve never been and want to go so bad [crying emoji].”

She also noted in other replies, “My agents and managers had to completely rebook the tour. We waited so long because we were working with so many different venues and promoters with constantly shifting schedules to get ticket links up so we would be able to ticket sales to transfer. I checked in on them every day wanting to go up with the news so as not to disrupt people’s travel plans as much as possible but it just takes time. The reason we leave it vague is because so many people argue with us without knowing everything that goes into it.”

Find Zauner’s tweets below.