Toby Mobbs: "It's Ridiculous, The Way I'm Doing It"

Any artist will likely agree that there’s a certain path you need to follow when it comes to being a successful musician. First, there’s the writing, recording, and releasing, and then, there’s the live shows. Some artists will go national, simply touring the big cities on the east coast; while others will go regional, hitting up the smaller towns nearby. Then there’s artists like Toby Mobbs.

A pop-folk musician from Albury-Wodonga, Mobbs is someone who doesn’t do things by half measures. In late July he released his second album, In Between The Words, with its arrival indicating that everything is going to plan.

Currently, Mobbs is in the midst of an in-depth ten-year plan, a detailed layout of how he aims to record, release, tour, and promote a number of records until the end of the decade.

This year, his new album is supported by a national tour (which kicks off this week), with a regional tour set to take place in 2025 before the cycle restarts. This national tour isn’t just a standard Sydney, Melbourne, and Brisbane, however, because when Mobbs says ‘national’, he means national.

In fact, he’ll be one of the only artists actively heading to every single state and territory to promote his music.

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It’s not a new concept for him though. In 2022, his Placid In The Rough tour saw him travel 14,500km over 28 days in his 20-year-old Mazda3 hatch. But where did this crazy idea come from? Was he trying to break distance records? Seeking to push himself to new limits? Put simply, he just wanted to bring his music to the people in the most effective way possible.

“I wanted to get out of my comfort zone and play to new venues and new audiences that I couldn't reach organically,” he explains. “I was physically going there, promoting the hell out of things and pushing original music into areas that I wanted a louder voice in.”

The first time around, his national tour was largely confined to the capital cities, but this time, it’s a little more regional, with shows scheduled for Wagga Wagga, Bunbury, Mount Gambier, Geelong, and more.

“I can't call it a national tour unless I'm going everywhere,” he says. “Otherwise it'd just be an east coast tour, plus Adelaide.”

The desire to head all around the country was inspired by an attempt to make up for lost time with his music. Having spent years studying and working (with Mobbs’ day job seeing him work as a librarian), he figured the best way to catch up was to simply dive in.

Having had those standard plans for rock stardom as a teenager, Mobbs had applied to study a jazz course at Canberra's ANU, with his desire to be involved in music and a level of uncertainty eventually resulting in a double degree in English literature and modern history at Wagga Wagga's Charles Sturt University.

As a result, his musical plans fell by the wayside somewhat until 2016, when two close friends pushed him to take part in an open mic performance. Reinvigorated, he dabbled with music again over the years until 2020 brought with it his large-scale release plan.

Now, Mobbs is making up for his lost time by constantly getting right into the thick of it, aiming to do things as thoroughly as possible, even if his methods don’t gel with standard advice offered by industry professionals.

“There are two ways of thinking about it, and some may say that I'm doing this the wrong way, because the normal way would be to play in areas where you have an active audience and build from there,” he explains. “That's less risky, but it's financially more responsible. I'm probably being a bit reckless by trying to build my audience in the lead up to that.

“I don't want to make it seem like I'm doing it the right way because there is no ‘right way’; it's ridiculous, the way I'm doing it,” he adds. “But I want to get out of my comfort zone, to play to people that have no idea who I am, and hopefully create some fans along the way.”

Indeed, it’s a bold move to take your music to markets where you have no proven fanbase already. Artists spend years marketing themselves and trying to pinpoint where the audience can be found, but for Mobbs, he’s trying to ensure that he just simply gets his music out into the world and before as many new faces as possible.

Even measuring the success of such a move can be difficult. After all, with a switch in focus of where he plays on each tour, it’s hard to determine whether he’ll have any repeat audience members until he returns to those same areas.

“The fourth and final national tour I'll be doing in 2028 will see me going back to the capitals,” he notes. “My plan was to do a capital city tour here, play regional areas here, and then finish it again with the capitals.

“By that stage, I really want to see growth there,” he adds. “I want to see much bigger numbers going back to the capitals after eight years of touring and releasing. That's going to be my metric.”

Of course, such a daring approach to touring can also bring with it a lot of apprehension about what each show will hold. After all, it’s hard to say whether the drive from Cairns to Katherine will be capped off with a wild welcome, or if it’ll simply be playing to empty rooms.

In 2022, one of his shows resulted in a low amount of tickets being sold, and while it was disheartening to see a small crowd, the passion of those who had come out for the gig more than made up for it. However, this also plays into one of the biggest challenges faced by any artist, which is fans not buying tickets until the last minute.

“It puts pressure on the venue because they’ll say, ‘Uh, Toby, why are your numbers so low? We're starting to worry a bit,’ and that puts pressure on the artist,” he explains. “To make these tools viable, we need to know who's coming – especially when they're in areas with a smaller population – so that we know it's workable.

“Petrol, time, funding, all that stuff, that money comes from ticket sales, and this is going to sound like a terrible term, but we need to know if it's a bankable show or a bankable tour,” he adds. “It all comes at a cost. Not only a financial cost, but emotional costs with the stress and worrying and everything.”

It’s not something that only affects musicians of Mobbs’ size, of course. In 2014, the iconic Elvis Costello cancelled a show in Adelaide, citing low ticket sales as he told the South Australian crowd they are “too few in number” for the show to proceed.

It can raise a question of how an independent, entirely self-funded artist such as Mobbs manages to actually promote themselves, however. Should they focus on TikTok, where audience numbers can be sky-high, or should they focus on gig posters and local radio interviews in the region where the impact could be greater? Even then, in areas where you are not physically located, how do you measure the success of your efforts?

“We are surrounded by so much content, as bad as that word is, but it’s how you reach those people. “I know I've got so many friends coming to shows, but they're coming because they know me and they really enjoy my music. So, how do I reach those people that don't know me that would enjoy my music?

“Stressing over that and the results can also make you question if it’s a reflection on my musicianship, my music, and that kind of thing, and you don't want to go down that route with it,” he adds. “But I feel comfortable where I am as a musician and the value I have, and that takes a lot of time to build up.”

This enduring question of how to reach potential audiences you don’t yet know Mobbs is also part of the reason behind his desire to take his music around the country. Mobbs’ latest tour launches on October 2nd in Wagga Wagga and wraps up with a full-band hometown show in Albury-Wodonga on November 3rd. In between, he'll be playing Canberra, Newcastle, Cairns, Katherine, Bunbury, Mount Gambier, Geelong, and Launceston.

Logistically, it sounds daunting, and the isolation would be taxing for anyone. Mobbs, however, enjoys the time to himself, spending the time by listening to episodes of the Stuff You Should Know podcast via an iPod Classic connected to an FM transmitter. With a few ten-hour drives scheduled over the next month, they’ll certainly come in handy.

But what can be done to ensure the continual success of artists like Mobbs? Those who put their all into touring excessively, not in pursuit of fame and glory, but rather to share their passion and creativity with those who might find some joy in it?

On one hand, it’s worth urging music fans to ensure they buy tickets early to help assuage any anxieties felt by performers and venues, and on the other, it’s important to remember how dedicated some of these same artists are when it comes to their creative outlet.

However, regardless of whether he sells out shows or plays to the empty room and the bar staff, he’s simply eager to get out there and see the fruits of his labour on the live trail. In the meantime, the average anxieties that any self-funded artist faces are rising to the top, though he admits that when the metaphorical curtain raises, that’s when he’ll be feeling fine.

“I will enjoy it on the night of each show, because it would be like, ‘Okay, I'm here now, we can get this done, I can focus,’ and then I move my focus onto what’s next,“ he explains.

“Right now, all my focus is on trying to move tickets and trying to drum up interest, I'm not quite at the enjoyment stage yet, but it’s coming really soon.”

Tickets to Toby Mobbs’ In Between The Words national album tour are on sale now.