\n<\/p>\n
Funny place, the music business \u2014 it devours the young and ignores the old. Or at least that\u2019s how it may appear. Aside from a handful of entrenched executives and a circuit of legacy acts, employment opportunities in the industry for those of AARP age might seem slim. But there\u2019s a fascinating exception: Many of the industry\u2019s most respected and consistently employed roadies, instrument techs and live sound people are well into their 60s and even 70s.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re the sound checkers who puff and count into microphones; the runners in black who bring guitars out between songs; the daredevils who climb into the rafters to adjust lights; the spelunkers who burrow under stages to tweak cables. Their job is to create a seamless experience for the music fan and a painless experience for the musician. They keep the live music industry humming, and their ranks might contain more Medicare-eligible employees than any other segment of the music business.<\/p>\n
Kevin Dugan, 70, has been working with the onetime Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony since Jimmy Carter was president. Dallas Schoo, 71, has been in the business for 52 years and has served as the Edge\u2019s guitar tech since U2 was playing clubs and ballrooms (he\u2019s been moonlighting with Bruce Springsteen). Betty Cantor-Jackson, 76, first worked a soundboard for the Grateful Dead in 1968, and she\u2019s still doing plenty of local gigs in the Bay Area. \u201cWe don\u2019t always have to fade away, you know,\u201d Cantor-Jackson said. \u201cI\u2019ll do this until I can\u2019t crawl in there.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
To the musicians who hire them, these seniors are often preferable to younger and less road-tested techs and sound people. \u201cI haven\u2019t filled out a job application in 50 years,\u201d said Frank Gallagher, 77, who is still working on a Las Vegas residency for the B-52\u2019s, which continues in April. (When he started live mixing the Talking Heads in 1977, he had already been in the business for 11 years.) \u201cSomebody asked me for a r\u00e9sum\u00e9 the other day,\u201d he said. \u201cI said, just ask anybody I\u2019ve worked with, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Danny Goldberg, the veteran music manager and label executive, said these roles entail a remarkably personal relationship with the artist. \u201cIt\u2019s like having a doctor \u2014 you want somebody who knows you intimately. It\u2019s a huge advantage to the artist to have continuity, and you don\u2019t want to start with somebody new if you don\u2019t have to,\u201d he said. \u201cIf it ain\u2019t broke, don\u2019t fix it. Right?\u201d<\/p>\n
Anthony, the bassist, agreed: \u201cKevin Dugan has been working with me for 43 years,\u201d he said. \u201cWith that kind of experience, I can go up onstage every night and feel totally relaxed and confident that he has everything handled.\u201d<\/p>\n
AFTER 10:30 A.M.<\/strong> on a Saturday morning in mid-October, Bob Czaykowski, known as Nitebob, exited a Quality Inn in Seekonk, Mass., and climbed into the shotgun seat of the 12-passenger Sprinter van that took him and the band Lez Zeppelin to their next gig. He had a full day of stair climbing, road-case lifting, line checking, microphone placing, outlet testing, drum-carpet laying and sound checking ahead of him.<\/p>\n Czaykowski, 74, was delighted at finally feeling nearly 100 percent after two knee joint replacements. He would be doing the same things he has been doing for the last half-century that day: making strange, wondrous, louche and loud bands sound as brilliantly strange, wondrous, louche and loud as they possibly can.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Czaykowski is perhaps one of the most famous people on his side of the business. Virtually every working tech reacts to his name with awe, as do many musicians, young and old. Czaykowski did \u201cfront of house\u201d \u2014 that\u2019s the formal name for the person behind the knobs at the soundboard \u2014 in the early and mid-1970s for the New York Dolls, the Stooges, Aerosmith and others; more recently he was the close associate and guitar tech for Steely Dan\u2019s co-leader Walter Becker. For the last 13 years, Czaykowski has primarily manned the board for Lez Zeppelin, the all-women Led Zeppelin cover band.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cHe just wants to be on the road and mixing a band and hanging out with the band,\u201d said Lez Zeppelin\u2019s guitarist, Steph Payne. \u201cThat\u2019s what a road warrior is, when you\u2019re excited to get on the road, no matter what. You either dig it or you don\u2019t,\u201d she added. \u201cBob can get into a van, a Sprinter, a bus, whatever it is, sit there with the rest of us for six hours. There\u2019s never any kind of cranky, \u2018Oh my God, I didn\u2019t sleep.\u2019 He never complains about that. He\u2019s just built for the road.\u201d<\/p>\n A good tech\u2019s work is mostly invisible to the audience. \u201cPeople go, \u2018Wow, what an awesome show, man. They played 90 minutes!\u2019 But you have no idea what it takes to make these 90 minutes,\u201d said Ingo Marte, who has worked with hard rock bands like Danzig, Saxon and Armored Saint for 41 years. (He\u2019s a relatively young 65.) \u201cI had actually a really bad heart attack like eight years ago,\u201d he added, \u201cand that\u2019s when I thought, OK, I am done. No more touring. But I picked myself up and I\u2019m still at it.\u201d<\/p>\n Schoo\u2019s work with the Edge involves maintaining and tuning as many as 27 guitars a night, as well as precisely finessing the mind-boggling array of effects the musician uses, in real time, to build his sound. Schoo said that U2\u2019s residency at the Sphere in Las Vegas<\/a> in 2023 was particularly arduous.<\/p>\n \u201cThere are 17 steps from the floor \u2014 where my guitar world is \u2014 up to that stage. So, I was 70 years old at the time, and I am running up and down and up and down those steps with an eight-pound guitar, for 40 shows. I get paid handsomely for that, but I\u2019m always thinking, when will I trip? Is tonight the night I fall down those stairs?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He added: \u201c<\/em>I say a prayer every night, I really do. I ask, please help all these machines. Please let my command of them work, not for me and not even for the Edge, but for these 30,000 fans. Let it work for them. They deserve that, they want to hear this great act and these great songs.\u201d<\/p>\n Like Schoo, Lorne Wheaton, known as Gump, has been closely associated with one musician: Neil Peart of Rush, who died in 2020<\/a>. After 50 years in the industry, Schoo recently retired, at 69; his last big drum tech gig was the long Kiss farewell tour<\/a>. But it\u2019s a \u201cloose\u201d retirement; he retains his membership in IATSE (the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees), and still does local theater and corporate gigs in his native Toronto.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Could he have ever imagined he\u2019d work as a tech for half a century? \u201cNo, never,\u201d Wheaton said. \u201cI didn\u2019t think I\u2019d live to 69. Let\u2019s be honest here. You\u2019d never really think that you\u2019re going to hit 70 and actually retire out of this business, because it does take quite a bit of savings to do that.\u201d He said that working freelance is a constant hustle, and the wear and tear of aging sometimes leads to unexpected consequences: \u201cYou do not want to pass away in your bus bunk or in a hotel room.\u201d<\/p>\n Knee and hip issues seem especially endemic in the tech industry, because of the constant need to lift heavy equipment and climb up and down endless stairs. And road workers also have to deal with a schedule that occupies them from midmorning until after midnight. Recently, Dugan, who has been working with Anthony since the early days of Van Halen, informed his boss (who now tours regularly with Sammy Hagar and Joe Satriani) that he was thinking of slowing down.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I first told Michael that I wanted to get off the road, he said, \u2018I\u2019m not going to do that, why should you? I\u2019m still going to be out there,\u2019\u201d Dugan said. \u201cAnd I said, \u2018Michael, are you trying to compare your day to my day?\u2019\u201d He explained how his work begins at 8:30 a.m. and wraps at 2 a.m. \u201c\u2018You come out and do the show,\u2019\u201d he recalled saying. \u201c\u2018You leave in a limo, go back to the five-star hotel, or go back to a private jet way and fly home. Your day and my day are worlds apart.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A road warrior of a certain age working 14-hour days has to make certain adjustments. \u201cI\u2019ve pulled way back on drinking on the road,\u201d Dugan said. \u201cI cannot fathom working with a hangover. I did that for a lot of years. And when you\u2019re middle-aged, you can bounce back from a hangover, but now it takes too long.\u201d<\/p>\n There are relatively fewer senior women working on the road because it was extremely rare for women to get work as techs before the late 1980s. (There were, however, many female studio engineers and producers, and many venues are managed by women.)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n One notable exception is Betty Cantor-Jackson, who began working with the Grateful Dead in 1968, and the Family Dog two years earlier. She is a legend in the Dead community, and recorded the band multiple times in since-released performances that have come to be known as \u201cThe Betty Boards.\u201d She continues to work gigs in the San Francisco area, and went on the road with Chris Robinson in the last decade.<\/p>\n \u201cThe road is kind of a normal. I spent so much of my life on the road, you already know how to deal with it,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m the old woman on the bus with all the boys. I got my bunk, I\u2019m good.\u201d<\/p>\n With the exception of Wheaton, not one of these road techs has any plans to retire. \u201cI may be 74, but the funny thing is, there\u2019s always someone older,\u201d Czaykowski said. \u201cThat\u2019s because the more experience you have, the better shows you can get. When people have confidence and they trust you, that\u2019s like one less thing that they have to cloud their brain. I know this guy will do the job, \u2019cause he\u2019s done that same job for me 700 times before.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n