Whether you’re staring at the same walls deciding if you are going to leave that full time job to go on tour, or sitting in the back lounge of a bus trying to figure out how to “come off the road” and still support your family, making the decision to take that huge leap of faith can leave even the most confident person full of conflict.
In the late 1990s, I was an industry fledgling, working in a lighting shop. Some of the best “road-crew” of that time would prep their tours there. With their ability to load 12 trucks into a venue in a single day and their stories of adventure in exotic lands, I thought they had the coolest job in the world. Going on tour became my first clear career goal. When the higher-ups finally gave in to my nagging and sent me on my first tour, I was barely old enough to drink, had recently finished college, and was ready to see the world.
The Touring Life
Although I had successfully worked plenty of one-offs, none of these prepared me for the pace of that first tour. Tour workdays were the longest I had known. We started at 8 a.m., had all of the trusses trimmed by lunch, then spent the rest of the day either hanging in harnesses 40 feet over the stage, roping down broken lights or sitting in tech world repairing lights. After the show we loaded-out, and were back on the bus around one in the morning. Every show day overflowed with activity; it was challenging for such a green tech to keep up. I would not have survived the first week without generous support from the rest of the crew who taught me not only how to drop a light in with a rope, but also to wear flip-flops in the dressing room showers, to never brush my teeth with bus water, and how to live relatively harmoniously with eleven other people in a space about the size of a small regional jet.
Within a few tours, I was fortunate enough to make the transition from tech to programmer. That’s when I fell in love with touring. I spent the next decade seeing the world from behind a console. I have had the privilege of running lights for some amazing acts, worked with some incredible people, and experienced the joy and frustration that goes along with that life. From climbing the pyramids in Mexico on a day off to walking into a festival in Japan, loading some punt cues, and owning that rig, I absolutely loved the vast majority of my touring experience and never looked back.
It may be difficult for someone dreaming of “the road” to imagine, but at some point in an average touring person’s career, they will decide its time to “come off the road.” Be it for the sake of family, career advancement, or just feeling too burnt-out to wake up to another day of festival port-a-toilets and unwashed teenagers, the end result is that they determine living on a bus for months on end no longer fits their current life. The why, how, and when a person comes to this decision is completely individual. The only right answer is whatever works with your life at that time.
A long tour can be an oasis of stability if you are freelance. You are booked for an extensive period of time and work with the same characters throughout it. Each person knows exactly what he/she must accomplish during any segment of the day. You intimately know any quirks of the equipment you are working with. Most of your meals are set up for you. Your laundry magically comes back clean when you drop it off in production with a twenty in the bag. You know precisely what your client expects to see, because you’ve already done this show 37 times. All of this makes every day something of a known quantity and that leads to a sense of comfort.
Going Corporate
In an effort to stay consistently employed since I left my last tour, I have been doing more work in the corporate/trade show end of the industry. Because these shows are usually one-offs, every show is a new product. While I miss the energy of playing along with a band every night, I love getting to be creative with new projects. Certainly, I meet new people on every one-off, but it isn’t surprising I also see many of the same faces I know from touring. While the vibe of a corporate show verses a rock tour can be compared to a set of identical twins who’s personalities are polar opposites of each other, the same skills are needed to create a polished product for either. The organization that lets a master electrician run three miles of cable in a quick systematic manner (on an arena tour) lets him do the same thing in a convention center. And that skill-set that allows an LD to walk into a house rig and set the mood for a song by filling the stage with dramatic scenes painted out of light also allows her to add depth, color, and texture, to a corporate meeting or broadcast event.
Though we’ve established that the skills do indeed translate between the two markets, and some of the same people work in both markets, the most distressing questions one faces while trying to make an industry transition is “How will I fill my calendar?” and “What if my phone doesn’t ring?” The disturbing news is that sometimes the phone doesn’t ring. But, to quote Douglas Adams from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “Don’t
Panic.” Apparently some unwritten law of physics states that freelance work only occurs in feast or famine quantities. (It has something to do with photons and improbability drives). The outcome is that you will stare at your non-ringing phone one month with zero projects, then your phone will ring incessantly for three days and suddenly you’re juggling several back-to-back projects.
If you’re trying to fill your calendar with one-off’s or staring at six months of empty schedule while your band goes into the studio, your contacts will prove to be one of your most treasured resources. The contacts you have made, and will continue to make, within the industry will be the people who you reach out to when work is slow. They are the people who believe in you enough to hire you for a project, or sometimes the people who graciously refer you for a project they are unavailable to do. Occasionally they will be the people you call when you are tying to learn a new product or tech through a problem. Whichever direction you’re attempting to navigate, these contacts will be your lifeline on this freelance ocean.
Each branch of the industry does have its idiosyncrasies one must learn, but transitioning between two of them is not starting from zero. The reality is that you don’t have to choose just touring, just one-offs, or any category. Several of the most talented people I know have hopped from one branch to another at multiple points during their careers, often on a project-by-project basis. If you’re good at what you do, any part of the industry is a great place to do it. Isn’t getting to choose which projects you decide to work on a big part of why you went freelance in the first place?
Jess Baker, an independent LD from Nashville, has lit auto shows and corporate events along with touring bands including Earth, Wind and Fire.
