Brexit stage left: how touring in the EU became a nightmare for British bands
Night after night, the Beatles honed their harmonies in the clubs of Hamburg.
But now, British bands trying to fine-tune their sound are struggling to make ends meet – or giving up entirely – because of the barriers created by Brexit, a charity for musicians has said.
Walt Disco, an up-and-coming goth-glam band from Glasgow, have told of the near farcical barriers they faced on a recent tour taking in gigs in Ireland and the Netherlands.
The first challenge was to complete the customs forms to get an ATA carnet, or instruments passport, to get a waiver for their van at border control.
For Walt Disco’s lead singer, Jocelyn Potts, 24, this meant buying their first bathroom scales and weighing themselves with and without each instrument to notify customs of the weight of their temporary exports.
The next challenge, on arrival in Belfast, was to work out how to get clearance to travel across the border into the EU and on to Dublin.
“You think you get off the ferry and all you have to do is hand over the paperwork. But no … you have to find the customs area, which isn’t in the ferry port. You have to drive around Belfast to find it,” said their manager Hamish Fingland, a reference to the lack of implementation of the Northern Ireland protocol.
After their gig in Dublin they took a ferry back via the UK to go to the continent, but had to take a more expensive “freight” route as their equipment was now a declarable item.
In Schiphol airport in Amsterdam there was similar confusion as they left for a further gig in Texas.
“We allowed ourselves three hours so we could go to customs on each side of the airport, well in advance of a show, but if was so hard to find anybody in the airport who knew where we were to go. We’d go to one customs
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