# How to make a custom tour shirt of your year

URL: https://madeupmerch.jackmccarthy020.workers.dev/how-to/make-a-custom-tour-shirt/
Updated: 2026-10-23

A band tour shirt lists the cities on the back. Yours lists the dentist, the move and the week the car died.

**Short answer:** Give yourself a band name, call the year a tour, and write six to eight things that happened as tour dates with venues, like APR 15 · POST OFFICE · LAST PICKUP. Put one piece of heavy metal style art on the front and print it on a dark shirt.

## The back is the joke

The jokes on a tour shirt are mostly on the back, so spend your time there. On [The Tour of Your Life](https://madeupmerch.jackmccarthy020.workers.dev/tour/) you write four things, and the back prints all of them under the year:

- **The band**: your name or your family's, in blackletter, up to 40 characters.
- **The tour name**: all caps, up to 48 characters. The AI tends to end them in TOUR, like THE TAX SEASON TOUR, but it's your call.
- **The dates**: up to eight, each a short date (APR 15, NYE) and a venue of up to 32 characters.
- **A footnote**: one deadpan line in typewriter type, like No refunds. Literally.

## Write venues from real moments

The good ones are specific and a little sad. KITCHEN TABLE · 2:00 AM. THE COUCH (SOLD OUT). BACKYARD (CANCELLED: NAP). Use the dot to split a place from what happened there, the way real tour shirts list a city and a venue.

If you'd rather not write it yourself, describe your year in a few sentences and the site's tour manager (an AI) drafts the tour name, the dates and a footnote. It's told to build every venue from something you actually wrote and to add jokes around it, never new disasters. Then edit anything.

Keep them in order. A tour runs January to December, and the shirt reads like one.

## The front art

The front is the band name in blackletter across the top, one illustration that sums up the year in the middle, and the tour name along the bottom. The illustration is something like a flaming skull in reading glasses hunched over a pile of receipts. There are three styles: **metal**, **psych** (a 1970s concert poster, all melting shapes and sun rays) and **flash** (tattoo flash: daggers, swallows and roses). Each prints in three ink colours chosen for a dark shirt, which keeps it looking like a screen-printed band tee.

The illustration itself never has words in it. The names are set as type over it, so they stay sharp and you can change them without redrawing the art.

## Shirt and sizes

A heavyweight garment-dyed tee in black or pepper (a faded black), sizes S to 3XL. Only dark shirts, because the three-ink artwork is built for one.

## Questions people ask

### Can I put a real band's name on my tour shirt?

No. Real band names are blocked, along with brands and famous people. Make up a band; it's funnier anyway.

### Does it have to be this year?

No. Pick any year from 1950 on, which makes it a decent retirement or anniversary gift too.

### How many tour dates fit on the back?

One to eight. Six to eight reads most like a real tour.

### Can I get it on a white shirt?

Not on this one. The front art is printed in three inks designed for black or pepper.

## Or just make one

- [The Tour of Your Life](https://madeupmerch.jackmccarthy020.workers.dev/tour/): Your year on the back of a metal band tour tee.