Who are you, when you can’t do the thing that you’ve defined yourself by? This is a very real situation for many of us who have spent our entire adult lives working in industries where our job is so much more than what we do for 40 hours a week to make money – it’s …
Dear baby-roadie, Tomorrow you are going to start work in the music business, in a PA company, for real money. (Not much money; but in fairness, you don’t actually know anything yet.) A good and forward-thinking man has persuaded his colleagues to take a chance on you, even though you look like nobody else in the industry, …
I’ve never had a ‘proper’ job. For the first five years of my life as a sound engineer I was on the payroll with a live audio company, but the only desk I’ve ever been behind is the mixing kind, and the music business doesn’t run on a 9 – 5. Weekends and bank holidays …
Professional Gypsy – confessions of a routine-phobe Read More »
I’ve been touring internationally in my role as a professional sound engineer for around 20 years. I’m also an English ex-pat living in Australia, and I’ve to’d and fro’d since getting together with my Aussie husband in 2006. It’s fair to say that I’ve picked up a fair few travel tricks along the way, so …
Essential long-haul travel hacks from a life on the road Read More »
Full disclosure: up until about 12 years ago my body was most definitely a moshpit and I did not stay either healthy nor out of trouble on tour. I wasn’t the worst you’ve ever seen, but I’ve certainly woken up fully clothed with a cigarette stuck to my face and a carnage-laden room full of …
Your Body Is Not A Moshpit – how to stay healthy and out of trouble on tour. Read More »
‘Human beings are social animals. Biological evolution equipped men and women for a communal existence, hunting and foraging in tribes of between twenty and forty people. We could never have survived this ecological niche by ourselves. We don’t have the strength, speed or agility of other animals…. But we do have language. We can communicate …
It’s an inescapable fact that the music business is a male-dominated industry. Lately I’ve noticed a springing-up of more discussion groups and surveys focusing on the roles of women in touring, and why there aren’t more of us. As you’d expect, I get asked about it a lot. There are some brilliant organisations, like Soundgirls, …
Exactly 20 years ago today I began my life as a professional sound engineer! At 9 am I walked into RG Jones Sound Engineering in London full of a heady mix of ambition and terror, having driven my wordly possessions down from my northern roots and moved into a tiny bedsit the day before. …
‘Darkness cannot drive out darkness- only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate – only love can do that.’ Dr Martin Luther King The horrific events in Paris on Friday shocked the world, and hit the industry which I and many of my friends call home, the touring music business. These murderers …
Touring – a tribute to our strengths in times of darkness Read More »
Freelance (adjective): Self-employed and hired to work for different companies on particular assignments. Fear (noun): An unpleasant emotion caused by the threat of danger, pain, or harm. Freelance Fear: Post-tour dread that the phone will never ring again (despite the fact this has not come to pass in your long career…. and you have it …
