The Road Crew: Live Music and Touring is an in-depth study of the road crew – the group of workers who handle the logistical and technical requirements of popular music concert tours – that provides an extensive look at the activities and personnel involved in the daily operation of these events.
Using interviews with road crew members, participant observation at concert venues and archival research, this book covers a range of topics, including how they learn their roles and maintain work through networks and informal practices, the experience of being on tour and the workplace culture of road crews, the daily tasks and necessary documents that contribute to the realisation of concert events, and the integral role that tour managers play in the working lives of musicians. The book also provides important insights into the experience of women working in a male-dominated field, the ways in which hierarchy shapes the working lives of “support” workers and the effects of touring on road crew members.
The Road Crew will be of interest to scholars and students of popular music, live music and the creative industries, as well as music fans, journalists, and professionals and practitioners in the music industries.
1. What is a Road Crew? 2. Getting In, Getting Hired, Working, Leaving 3. Show Days 4. Being on Tour 5. Looking After Musicians
Biography
Gabrielle Kielich is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Huddersfield. She has a PhD in Communication Studies from McGill University. In addition to touring and live music, her research interests include women and the electric guitar, rock music history and culture, the music industries and qualitative research methods. She has been a visiting researcher in the School of Culture & Creative Arts at the University of Glasgow and a course lecturer at McGill University.
'This short, highly engaging book lets us into the backstage world of the workers essential to the live music industries. Through ethnography, interviews, and archival research, Kielich provides an intimate account of the labor which sustains the tours of major rock artists. With an eye towards the details of crew members’ working days, their camaraderie and culture, gender norms, and the “care work” of tour managers, The Road Crew places rock stars as bosses, crew members as part of the vast numbers of freelance gig workers animating popular culture. Kielich documents road crew work’s informality and rules, its social costs and joys, its brutal schedules and surprising power relations. An essential book for anyone seeking to grasp the full scope of the labor of live music.'
Shannon Garland, University of California, Merced, USA
