Minor Setbacks

I am good at what I do. Driving the van around, buying things and driving people to and from hotels is not hard. While my first gig might not have gone so well, the rest have been smooth sailing. When you get lucky enough to book a show with production at Live Nation, you are usually not so lucky in getting called for another one. After I finished the Weezer show I was called the next day, and booked for four days with the New Kids on the Block. I am hardworking, and it shows.

Months after my first day, I was put on the list for Phish at Fenway Park. I will give you a quick look at what happened on those four days...

Day 1: I show up to the hotel to pick up the management and production guys. I drive them to the venue, sit down and eat some breakfast. I am sent to pick up white sage to cleanse the stage. I do more pick ups, more drop offs, yadda yadda yadda, lunch, more tedious crap, and then go home.

Day 2: I am five minutes late. The tour's production manager laughs at me a little, doesn't seem too mad. He tells me "Five minutes early is on time, on time is too late." The day is pretty much the same, except now Phish is in the building to do rehearsals and on my down time I get to watch them play.

Day 3: I am five minutes late. This time the same man looks a little irritated, but is still friendly. He makes a joke about the tardiness, and enters the venue the same as any morning. I am still not in trouble. Day 3 is exactly like day 2. I work, I watch some rehearsals, I go home.

Day 4: I am 10 minutes early. I work my ass off (the same as the other three days, but the emphasis is only on the part about me looking for redemption), I do all of my duties well, on time, with a smile on my face. At about 5pm I am told by someone from the tour that three out of the four runners (which includes me) are being cut for the fifth day. We aren't needed, which is clear based on how much free time all three of us had. I go home and sleep.

Now, this probably seems a little boring to you. You may think, why am I reading this? I will tell you. The people in this business have the biggest egos you will ever see. Everyone wants to be in charge, everyone wants to be the best, and anyone will scar your reputation for their own benefit. I was a victim of the latter.

My boss is the assistant to a huge name in the Boston Live Nation/Production/Promoting business. She works for him, does his dirty work, reaps none of the benefits. He has been touring his whole life and everyone looks up to him and respects him. When she found out about what happened at the Phish show, she stopped calling me for work. She never returned my calls. Never returned my emails. At first I figured hey, I deserve this. I was late. Then a month went by. Then two months. Then three.
She is the kind of person that holds a grudge (obviously.) She knows that I would do anything for this job and that I would do anything to make up for those two days. Still nothing.
One day I called her from my house phone, a number she didn't have in her address book, so she would have to answer. I tricked her, and it worked. I was scheduled for Keith Urban and Taylor Swift. The day came, I got to work a half hour early as not to piss anyone off. Things went well.
At this particular show, there was a promoter that overseas the runners. I have worked under him a lot and know him pretty well. After I told him how my boss completely shut me out, he was pissed. He told me "She is mad that she isn't [her boss] and therefore wants to belittle anyone she can to make herself feel more important. From now on, I will request you work every show I get. I know you are a hard worker and what she did to you was bullshit." This for me was reassurance that I was, in fact, a good employee. Reassurance that she was overreacting. I was happy.
She continued not giving me any work, right up until last week when I got a pretty excellent phone call. It was man with the same job title as my boss, but works for another company called AEG. AEG is the same as Live Nation, and this guy hires runners just like my boss does. He tells me "Be at the Garden tomorrow at 5am. You're gonna work Britney Spears for me." Same thing happens, I get there early, bust my ass, impress the shit out of the production guys. The guy tells me, just as the guy from Keith had said "You're really hard working, from now on I'm calling you when I need runners."
This is not how I intended this blog to end up. I don't want it to be about me in particular. I'm just trying to show you the personalities in this business, how one mistake can set you back months of work, that I am hardworking and that I will be someone huge in this business when I am out of school. I am 19 years old, and I am already one of the hardest working runners in Boston.
The reason I have work at Journey is because the promoter from Keith Urban specifically asked my boss for me. I am getting back into the swing of things, and I plan on kicking this companies ass with a smile on my face.

Sunday morning I will be back with the details from the Journey show. It will then not be about me, it will be about the job. It will be your first look at what a day backstage is really like.

An Introduction

A little over two years ago my father, who has been a stagehand my entire life, got me a job as a catering assistant at a small venue in South Boston called the Bank of America Pavillion.
I had grown up going with him to shows, eating dinner in the backstage area, and never thought a thing of it. All I knew was that everyone was stressed out and busy, and I remained seated like a good child and ate my meal. I didn't know then that I would not only be one of those people, but I would be in it for life.
The catering assistant job was terrible. My duties included setting up dressing rooms, putting up and taking down dinner for the locals and roadies, and washing dishes. A lot of dishes. A show like Paul McCartney or John Mayer, one that could sell out a stadium full of thousands, would mean I had to wash dishes for twelve or more hours a day, with only three breaks for breakfast lunch and dinner. I loved the places I was working and the people I was meeting, but I knew that I couldn't remain there much longer. In October of 2008, I got a phone call that would not only determine where I went to school, but change the course of my entire future. My boss called and told me that the Weezer tour needed one more runner (what a local production assistant is called) and that he thought I would be good for the job. The problem was that it was three overnight shifts in a row, but I could not be more exited. I was ready for a change.
This show was pretty memorable. Most of the time I will work a Saturday show and not remember the events of the day by Monday morning. This one is a show I will never forget. I hopped in the Ford E-350 that night and went to go meet the production manager of the tour. Everytime I drove someone to the hotel, I got lost. I was given lists of things I needed to buy that I never found, and I spent most of my time sitting with the lighting guys watching them design the images that would be played on the LCD screen during the concert. It was not a very impressive first day. The third night I was in the catering room, completely drained and trying to pour myself a cup of the old coffee they had left for us. There was only three of us in the venue that night, so hospitality was not too concerned with keeping the fridges stocked. As I was pouring this particular cup of coffee, one of the two lighting guys whos name I have chosen to forget walked in and right up to the counter with me. I was tired and moody, and what does he do? He comes at me faster than anything I've ever seen and tries to kiss me.
The men on the road are possibly the creepiest, dirtiest old men I have ever met. I overhear them talking about the nastiest things sometimes. I have had men approach my father and tell him they are going to have me calling them daddy soon. To be a girl in this business, you have to know that men are going to creep you out. It's something you learn to get over.
This post isn't much. It's only to tell you how I got my start in this business. Saturday I am working for Journey, and that is when I will start cronicling my days as a production assistant. I am going to show you that the job has a lot of cool aspects to it, but mostly I will show you what it is really like to be a roadie. Or a rockstar. Or even a band-aid like Penny Lane from Almost Famous. It's everything you think it is, and nothing like what you would expect all at the same time.