Back in the early 1980s, I found myself working with Michael Ahern on a few stadium projects. I wasn’t an IATSE member —heck, I wasn’t affiliated with anyone really. I worked for cash at shows doing all the physical labor necessary to put on a big rock show. Fresh out of college, equipped with a smart mind and a strong back, I built the steel stage structures that were 100 feet wide by 60 feet high. We flew a giant roof so the touring acts could come in a day later and hang their sound and lights. Basically we did whatever labor was necessary and not part of the unions’ rights back then. The union stagehands and electricians were more than happy to have someone else stand in the rain 50 feet high in the air or walk through mud to lay down a road of plywood. I can’t blame them. But fresh out of college, I needed the work.
Somebody Has to Do It…
Special Weapons and Tactics. That’s what SWAT stands for. But in reality, it’s a bunch of people that you give a dirty job to. Something that you know needs to be done and you just want to hand it off to someone and know it will get handled. Hence we were coined with this term by Ahern, and 30 years later it still sticks at these festivals. Last week I played Bonnaroo. This music festival in Tennessee is humongous in size and depends on thousands of people to put it up. It probably has a personal SWAT team of a hundred guys on ATVs armed with sand, straw, shovels, rakes, whatever it takes to turn this rain driven mud fest into a proper concert ground overnight.
I think the Van’s Warped Tour is one giant traveling SWAT team. Producer Kevin Lyman manages to wrangle up a huge bunch of folks, often called misfits, into one big happy family. They can pull into a large empty parking lot and within minutes develop a game plan. “Put this stage here, mount another one 100 yards over there, make room for the MASH unit over here.” These guys come out and roll miles of fencing around a perimeter in two hours and establish their turf. As soon as it starts to get dark, they roll it all up, put it in trucks and roll to the next site. Many touring people make fun of the guys working the Warped Tour, calling them low paid carneys at best who are happy to travel in over packed buses all summer. But to me, it’s a great minor league system of training techs in the rigors of the road. Quite honestly, if you can make it through a Warped Tour with your sanity, you probably have a great work ethic and would do great on any of my tours.
…And There’s Lots to Do
Kenny Leath is one of those new celebrity roadies featured on the TV show about Warped (Fuse TV’s Warped Roadies). He resembles Thor, the god of thunder. I first met him on a festival tour 12 years ago that Lyman had put together. I was the LD for Jay Z and 311 that summer, and they were both playing this festival-type tour. I was only working the main stage and didn’t realize how much other stuff went on, so one day I walked around following Kenny to see what this loud mouth guy actually did besides talk a lot. First, he was dumping trucks full of motorcycles and barricade for some motocross demo. He pointed out to the local crew how to set up todays’ racetrack. He followed that by setting up the skateboard and bike park a quarter mile down the hill. Twenty minutes later, he has a team of guys and they are building a basketball floor for guys that come do trick shots and ride unicycles. Once done with that, I watch the guy supervise the building of 50-odd tent booths for the festivals’ sponsors to display their wares. When he’s done with that, he heads over to one of the B stages to start his job as stage manager for the six acts starting at 1 p.m. When I met Kenny, I thought he was a misfit, but one hour following him around, I knew he was committed to his craft. He had a job that many may scorn, but he embraces. And though many will follow in his footsteps, few will go the distance. At the end of the first show, I am loading out the lighting when I look over to the side. Kenny is stacking my trusses and loading the lighting trucks. He takes a team of stagehands and strikes the soft goods and runs out all the motors. Nobody has asked him to do any of this, it’s just how he rolls. The SWAT team isn’t done until the last truck door is shut.
Above and Beyond
John Reese produces a lot of these festival tours, ranging from EDM to comedy to heavy metal themes. With several stages, Reese depends on his homegrown group of techs to rally behind him. A lot of the same audio and lighting guys return each year. The production staff is a top-notch bunch of professionals who have risen within the ranks. Ray Picard has been the production manager on many of them. When I met Ray, he was stage-managing a B-stage on the Mayhem tour. He would work his stage all day, then show up on mine for the load out. He watched and asked a lot of questions. The next year when the tour went out, I asked Reese who he hired as production manager that year. He asked for my opinion on whether I thought Ray could step up and work out well in the hot seat. I replied back immediately that he was a great choice. We needed a guy who didn’t complain, was willing to “learn while he earned” and was a former SWAT guy. To this day, Ray is still the man out there running the day-to-day stage production.
The sponsors on these tours often have their own SWAT team of guys who can fix any situation. Some of the funniest guys I ever met call themselves the “Dudebros.” They are a SWAT team that runs hard for 12 hours straight all day, looking after all the sponsors’ needs.
