Long story short, I was unemployed, and had no saving at all, as I stupidly accepted working for a ridiculously low fee for that tour.
I definitely had a love-hate relationship with Jenny. After all our conflicts on the tour, she referred me to the manager of a big venue, who was looking for a backstage and artist coordinator for their summer season. The pay was very poor, but it would be an invaluable experience for me.
The first time I went to meet the manager, I thought I was going to a job interview, but instead, he just said welcome to our team, and handed me the all access badge which already had my name on it.
It was a great open air venue with a capacity of 20K and the most beautiful backstage area I had ever seen with many dressing rooms, spacious catering areas, a small garden, adequate shower and restroom facilities. And it was run by the biggest promotion company here.
Basically my job was to fulfill backstage riders, and host artist crew in the venue.
I reviewed riders, negotiated with the catering company, forwarded catering quotes to manager, got rejected every time, negotiated again, contacted tour managers and worked with them through advancing (I sent them all the necessary info about the venue, backstage drawing, even the menus to be served, for their confirmation). When artist crew arrived, I met them in the venue, arranged merchandising, meet&greet, helped them in all kinds of situations, in all their last minute requests, and translated for them whenever needed.
Of course I didn't do everything by myself, we had a large production team and runners. Everyday I was amazed how things were running so smoothly when everything is handled professionally.
I met and worked with great people such as Martin Walker (Judas Priest), Tracy Fraser (Björk), Steve Ricalis (Mike Knopfler), Amanda Cunningham and Dana Pennington (Lenny Kravitz) to name a few.
Of course it was not always a bed of roses, but paying attention to details always helped. Even providing the requested brand of soap for the artist would make a huge difference.
Although I've always dreamt of working within an international crew, and touring all over the world, I didn't even tell anything about this to those people I worked with that summer. I was so happy working with my local artists that hunting for other opportunities didn't even cross my mind. Very stupid of me.
I also worked with almost all the artists in the local music industry. In those shows, along with the usual backstage management, I was in charge of production, and coordination of local production crews. I started to get familiar with technical production riders. It was the summer of 2008, and we held events starting with concerts of local bands, and then we broadcast FIFA World Cup matches on the giant screen set up on the stage.
And of course, this experience was a great opportunity for networking, which is always said to be one of the most important things about a music industry career. Indeed, one of the artist managers I met there hired me in a few months, but I'm going to tell about this in the next post.
That summer, I learnt what it meant to work on the promoter side of an event, depending on a limited budget, being the party that does not request things, but fulfills requests.
I also learnt how to use walkie talkies effectively, working at such a huge venue with a very crowded local crew consisting of venue management, promotion company representatives, PR team, production crew, site managers, ticketing and box office staff, security, and paramedics. Before every show, I watched the venue manager giving great speeches to these teams in the pre-event meetings, explaining the importance of the event, and his expectations from every individual team. I was fascinated by those speeches everytime, imagined myself giving such a speech one day.
Yes, everything was great, I was learning so much, but I decided to quit.
I worked there 2 months that summer, everyday, under the sun at 35 C, for at least 12 hours. We had an event every other day, but usually I had to be there on those days in-between for preperations as well. I was exhausted, lost 15 pounds, and I was struggling to even pay the rent.
But that's not why I quit.
The metal band was playing at a festival, and leaving for another city at night, for a second festival. But I had to be at the venue to work at a local event of a pop singer. I had told the manager that I had to go to that other city with the metal band as their tour manager, and although he'd said I could go before, he changed his mind on the show day, and told me to stay.
But I didn't. I couldn't. I made sure everything was arranged, let artist manager and all relevant crew know that I had to go, appointed someone to take care of backstage aftershow, and when the concert started, I left after saying goodbye to the manager, and thanking him for everything.
I went to the festival site while my band was playing their last song. They were all very happy to see me backstage after the show, We immediately set off for the next city, didn't sleep at all, spent the trip drinking and chatting all night.
It felt like I was back home, with my family, after a great vacation.
