Music tour on horseback and need your help please

[Joanna]

Hi, I'm planning a music tour on horseback through Tennessee, Alabama and Mississippi for spring of 2010. The band and I will have 4 saddle horses as well as a covered wagon and team. I am currently looking for 4 long distance trail saddles, hackamores, saddle blankets, water and feed bags, etc. We especially need help with the saddles. The ones that I found recommended by Long Riders Guild were very nice, but we can't afford to buy 4 new trail saddles (not even close). So I'm looking for used ones.
The band is called BrownChicken BrownCow StringBand. If you are interested here is their website: BrownChicken BrownCow StringBand - BrownChicken BrownCow StringBand
If you live in or near the states we will be passing through come check out the show (~mid March through mid-May), and support this all horse powered tour. Once we get all the logistics nailed down we'll post them on the web page. If you live on the route and have pasture space for a night that would be great too.
Until then though we need help from the horse community finding the right tack (we obviously don't want sore backs and unhappy horses). We will be fund raising for the tour (mostly on Maui), but for now we have meager funds. So we need to find those deals.
We also need to find 2 more traffic safe horses in the Tennessee area (by ~February) if anyone knows of any for sale or lease.
This is a big undertaking, but we want to do it safely for the horses as well as for the people and have fun at the same time! We are hoping for support from the horse world. Getting back to the roots; horses and music!
Thanks in advance for advice, help and comments.
joanna-

[Joanna]

Also...If anyone out there has ideas for sponsors, or would like to be a sponsor, we would sure appreciate it. I have been racking my brain trying to think of good sponsors, so I thought maybe with a few more brains thinking on it maybe we would come up with something.
Is there any interest out there about this trip? I'd love to hear some feed back. Talk details with some other horse people. Get advise on good long distance tack for our horse crew, talk feed, hoof care, hackamores and safety. Whatever comes to mind. I think a forum like this can be very valuable to the planning process. I have a lot of horse experience (though I'm sure not as much as many of you), but it would be great to hear from you all because I'm sure there will be things brought up that I hadn't thought about.
These forums are for sharing advice and experience right?

[Candice_17]

I won't be much help with your other questions, but maybe Purina would help sponser. Maybe some saddle or tack companies would also help. I would think your first step now would be to type up some letters detailing what and why and where and when and send them to companies to see if you get a response. Maybe they won't be able to sponser you monitarily, but maybe they will donate feed, or tack or towels or something. That would be my first step. Good luck, sounds like fun!!!

[mart]

Western stores anywhere in the traveled area would also be good as well as vets, horse facilities, trainers ect !! Sounds like a great concept !! And check out Ebay for the saddles/tack you want !! Sometimes you can get really good deals on name brands !!

[Joanna]

Hum, good advise guys.
I think before I can do too much I need to really nail down the route. This is pretty hard because we need to go into populated areas to play our gigs, but I don't want the horses on busy roads. Too dangerous.
Maybe we can find farms just outside of the towns to pasture the horses on show nights, than we can skirt the towns on the way out...
We are also considering pack animals rather than a wagon, this way we can take trails and go cross country where possible. This means all acoustic shows if they don't have PA system. Seems safer though. I don't like the idea of not being able to get off the road. Anyway, I've driven horses but never packed. Can a guitar (the largest instrument), be safely strapped to a horse pack you think?
Once we get the route nailed down I'll write to horse magizines/ publications, local papers and news casters on the route, and maybe some national stuff too. See what kind of coverage we can get. Local tack stores is a good idea too, maybe horse clubs?
Well, this is hard, but fun to plan.

[mart]

Good luck,, and put it on utube !!!

[Joanna]

Thanks! We'll have lots of media. Check the BCBCSB.com website for video's and pictures starting at the end of March!