How is money split amongst band members especially with a touring singer-songwriter?

I believe, generally speaking, the performers don’t really see money from actual ticket sales. Rather they’re paid upfront by the promoter (or whoever organizes the show) who then makes their money from ticket sales. As for how it’s divided between the performers – that varies wildly and depends on what kind of contracts are in effect between the musicians. For someone like a big name solo artist their backing musicians are generally paid a salary by the big name artist and their management.

As I understand it, it’s different for each band. Some do equal shares of whatever the income is, especially if it’s a group that travels as a unit.

If it’s a core group of people that picks up new backups in ever city (or maybe every season, but the core group has been together forever), the split is different.

I don’t think there is a hard and fast rule.

Generally, the band has a ‘demand’ – a pre-arranged amount of money that will be put into the band’s coffers as an incentive to show up and do the show. That way the band doesn’t eat the cost if the venue doesn’t draw enough people to make it worth their while. So it’s not a percentage of ticket sales.

The songwriter does generally get a bigger cut of album sales, however.

all of this is dependent on the individual situation of each band and what their contracts stipulate, of course

This depends on the arrangement between the venue, songwriter, promoters and various forms of management the group may employ. If they have some fancy record deal then that can change also. I know one local group that gained some fame split their earnings like 80–20 between the main songwriter and the other members after all of the others took their cut.