#222 - Jim Digby and The Event Safety Alliance

0:01 Hello and thank you for joining me today on Geese of Gear Episode #222. And of course, today is a very special day, my favorite day for reading promos. It's Elation Day. And so today's podcast is brought to you by Elation. Elation is excited to offer the new Proteus Hybrid Max, the highly anticipated successor to the company's pioneering Proteus Hybrid, the moving head that arguably started the revolution of IP rated lighting faster, brighter and with a tougher IP66 rating. The Proteus Hybrid Maxx has already been featured on some premier events like the New Year's Eve Light show on Seattle's Space Needle and Enchanted Forest of Lights at Desanso Gardens in Southern California, and I'm sure I said that wrong. Desanso Desanso Gardens in Southern California. Eric, I expect to hear from you very quickly on this one. Please check out the Proteus Hybrid Max and all elation fixtures at elationlighting.com and today's podcast is also brought to you by Main Light.

1:18 Main Light is the partner you trust with the gear you want. It's a dry hire rental company and excels in offering superior lighting and stage equipment without competing with its customers. Offering everything from high intensity lights for large events to precision fixtures for theater and TV film. Main Light also offers for sale used equipment with a 60 day depot warranty. All equipment is meticulously maintained, tested and Main Light owned with no brokerage with four key locations, Main Lights tri-state in Teterboro, NJ, Main Light East in Wilmington, DE South in Nashville, TN and West in Las Vegas, NV. They combine the resources of a national company with the personal touch of a local provider. Main Light consistently updates its inventory with the latest in lighting technology, trust solutions and control consoles, including a wide selection of weather resistant IP65 rated fixtures.

2:19 For outdoor venues, visit mainlight.com to explore their offerings and connect with representatives across all main light locations, ensuring your events, lighting needs are met with expertise and efficiency. The Welcome back to episode #222. And yes, so of course I botched the promos as I always do, and at the end of the day I am probably not a radio advertising guy, but I love our sponsors nonetheless. So again, thanks to today's sponsors, Elation and Main Light, who we appreciate very much. And I think we've mentioned recently that we have a couple of new sponsors coming on.

3:34 We actually have 4 new sponsors. We've filled some spots in our sponsorship openings and the last two were amazing because they came to us. We didn't reach out to them at all and we're getting out there, I guess. So thank you to all of our sponsors and again especially to Main Light and Elation today sponsors. Today's guest is really somebody that I've been wanting to have on the podcast for a long time. Don't know why it took us this long to do, but today's guest is Jim Digby and everyone knows the name. Jim has had nearly four nearly 4 decade journey in production and project management roles within live events and music touring. And he has been working alongside artists including Lincoln Park, Hootie and the Boat, Blowfish, Backstreet Boys, Bolshoi Ballet, Phil Collins and most recently, helping to lead the delivery of entertainment mega projects including Saudi Arabia.

4:40 First ever international music Festival in the Kingdom in 2018. It's pretty exciting now. They're doing all kinds of festivals there. And so he did. The first one, Jim was on the stage in 1992 when James Hetfield was seriously injured by a flame special effect and 55,000 people rioted. He was a stage manager at Woodstock 99 when 200,000 people rioted. He was with Marilyn Manson in the aftermath of the Columbine shooting when riots ensued and has stared down myriad tenuous circumstances. Jim then became the Co founder and president of the Event Safety Alliance, a board member behind in the behind the scenes charity keynote speaker, presenter in matters related to event safety and events, production, career path and mental Wellness in live events.

5:36 Jim tirelessly and passionately advocates for the health and sustainability of our industry at large. Jim is an amazing leader and really is leading the charge towards safety with live events and we appreciate them coming on. Yeah. Hello, Tim. How are you? Hi, Marcel. I'm good, thanks. How are you? Fan flip? Fantastic. We were just having an off air conversation about the incredible Stanley Cup, which which Jim has done massive research on and tore out of the bleeding hands of his young daughter. Because there's lead poisoning in Stanley Cups.

6:16 We're announcing it live here. Oh God, don't put me in that space. I am not saying that. My God, I'm going to get sued. No, I there are some reports that the plug. Well, good. I'm not neither confirming nor denying that information. Yeah, yeah. You said there was reports of a a plug that could possibly, maybe might let lead into the water. Maybe might, yeah. Or into the fingers if the plug comes out or something like. That I mean it's, it's. On the Internet. And you know you have to believe everything you read on the Internet, don't you? It just blows me away how crazy popular that thing has. I mean, it's literally, it's a water cup that people are fighting over and you know, it's insane how something so simple can go so viral.

7:09 It it is a mark of today's society, isn't it? I mean that the explosive consumerism that we live in, you know it it if it worked like that for all the artists we have an opportunity to work with, it'd be fantastic, right? We did plenty of work. Yeah, well maybe they just need to put their picture on a Yeti or on a Stanley Cup like like Taylor Swift. Look, she got famous cause of it, so yeah, I mean. It's drinking out of my Yeti. I've got Yeti coffee and I've got Yeti water. I just. I have a Yeti coffee cup but it doesn't fit. I have a BMW and it doesn't fit in the cup holder in my BMW because I don't know why, but so I don't. I don't use.

7:53 It doing the ones hot ones cold comparison right now with these two things. That's beautiful. We're not. We're not. Connected to each other. We're not into consumerism at all with three Yeti Cups between the two of us right now. So, yeah, well, I appreciate you taking time this morning. You're in Philadelphia, I think. I am in the bucolic countryside of of Pennsylvania, about an hour West of Philly, and just shy of the amazing Rock Lititz campus where, as you know, Tate and Claire and yeah, of course all those wonderful companies reside. That's cool. So you have an office near Rock Lititz in Rock Lititz?

8:35 I have an office in my basement because that's where I've been relegated to. In the house. Yeah, yeah. You go out of our driveway and go West. We're we're in Amish country. If you go E, you're heading back towards the city. Interesting fun. So it's cold there. It's cold in my basement. Yeah, I'd be relegated to the basement too. But in Florida, we don't have basements, so I'm fortunate that I get to stay upstairs. Yeah. They'd be full of water if you had them. Yeah, I think I've only actually ever met you on Zoom calls. And I think when I met you was during the pandemic and it was on sort of an industry figureheads, you know, thinkers kind of thing, where we were talking about, you know, safely doing events when nobody allowed any events. And I I don't even recall who was on it. But that's where I met you.

9:31 And you may not remember because I'm pretty forgettable. But well, it it could have been that it could have been something to do with we make events. It could have been. I don't know what it was, but I remember meeting you on Zoom Calls and had a few of them and thought I got to get that guy on the podcast and here we are finally. I do. I do recall Marcel and you know, it was one of the coolest things about, I mean, look, no denying how awful the pandemic was for so many. But one of the interesting things that we discovered during the pandemic is a lot of people want to help and a lot of people care about the wider industry more so than the gig. And what's funny is, you know, all the gigs taken away and all the other work taken away.

10:19 While catastrophic for many, there was this culture of helpers that came up and created new organizations and and tried to March new ideas forward and tried to make sure that we would go back after the pandemic was over to a better workplace. Sadly that didn't happen. But you know, it was cool to see so many people in our industry want to be transform into helpers. Yeah, no, it's totally true. And I was. I was one of them and I felt like I was called upon to to help because I had a big mouth or something. But you know, we did these weekly zoom calls. I think you might have been on a couple of those too, that like we did a Wednesday happy hour thing and it would it'd be 40 people one week, 100 people the next week, 20 people the next week.

11:07 And a lot of really cool things and relationships came from that. Like there's AI. Don't know if you know Patrick Whalen or Patrick Dearson, but those two met basically on my Zoom and they are working together on tons of shows since that time, constantly working together on shows, they hire each other or whatever and things like that happened on the Zoom call, the we make, we make events things happened on one of our happy hour calls and you know, just working sort of arm in arm with with Strickland on so many things. And you know, I I too thought that there were some great things that came out of it all. And it's funny that you mentioned, you know, making sure that we'd be better coming out of it and you know, you kind of chuckled at that. Where do you think we missed on that? Coming out of coming out of the pandemic, a better industry? Well, I'm not in the least bit questioning people's desire to make change.

12:12 That's not the reference to the comment. I think that in my view when we came back full of the desire to to implement those changes that we spent a lot of time talking about and considering and trying to develop. We also came back after two years of dormancy and no income or you know, different kind of income and and the need to reacquire the things that drive us prior to the pandemic. So you know the the fulfillment that the work gives us prior to the pandemic and the the income that the work gives us.

12:54 You know, there was this conflicting, competing kind of need or desire. There's the desire to do it differently. And then there's the desire to get the heck back into the world we came from and and get working. And those two things are in some ways directly opposite of each other. Yeah, in conflict. I mean, it's so well said because I think like you said, everyone had the very best intentions and then all of a sudden it went batshit nuts. And you know everyone sort of rallied and did what they did best and you know produced the biggest shows the fastest they could and made money and did all of those things. And you start to get further and further and further away from that thought that we're going to be angels coming out of all of this, right? And we're going to do things so much better. And I'm going to be healthier and I'm going to eat better. And you know, I I know so many people who have put on more weight since the pandemic than during the pandemic. And you know, that's just human nature, I guess. A lot of that stuff.

13:58 I think but, but I do think or at least again I'll I'll reference only the things that I'm witnessing. I'm not speaking for the industry by any means, but I do think some of the things have stuck. Certainly the the idea that management's certainly the idea that the high level Commission jobs are going to care about the teams and and go out of their way to make sure the teams are looked after doesn't feel like that stuck so much. But the teams recognizing those of us from the trenches, recognizing that there's a different way to to balance what the work means in your life. Again, speaking only for myself, like I've been married for almost 20 years going into the pandemic and I discovered six months in and so did my wife.

14:46 Oh, you're still here. Like we had never really been married because I was never home for more than two months at the time. I was never really a dad because I was never home for two months at the time. So the prioritization of the things that matter most to me, and that's not to say that my family didn't matter most prior, but the way that I reflect that to my family changed quite a bit. Like now I'm booking work related to or balanced with or gauged by my ability to maintain being a a, a a good dad and hopefully a good husband. Whereas in the past I'm taking to work and I'm just going and then I'll you know I'll keep I'll keep things up as I go.

15:31 So I think that some of that at least for me has stuck as has a different kind of humanness like man we all went through that together and it didn't matter what rank you were in the in the workforce you were suffering period top to bottom. So it was a great kind of, and I'm sure other people have said it was a great equalizer in that way. And I think I had an ability to test being a better human at the beginning of last year on a tour that was a short run that I had been asked to just come in and cover for. And it, you know, the things that I brought to it, these new discoveries that I brought to that tour about, hey, just be on the floor, be present, connect, push a case, get in the truck, let everybody know you value them first thing in the morning and and lasting at night. And it really worked.

16:27 It it it brought the tenor of the project to a place that was that felt good. And I don't think that I would have had that mindset were it not for COVID. Yeah, I mean that's that's all amazing. I mean the the reconnection with the family and I know so many people who have changed their work habits to better fit their, you know, their home situation, their lifestyle. They they learned, hey, I really like being around my family. This is kind of cool. And so they changed a lot of things that hurt our business a bit because you know, a lot of people just said I'm not touring anymore, that's it, I'm done. And so that's that's been challenging.

17:09 But you know, at the same time, I think that they're not everyone came out of COVID. Well, I want to recognize, yeah, I wanted to recognize that, you know, it's like we're speaking about a perspective that's, you know, mine and and perhaps I share that with some. But for others it was the exact opposite of that. It it really caused catastrophic pain and you know, it did not have positives and I and I don't want to make small of that. That's a big deal that people went through kind of pain and yeah maybe some didn't come through the other side and and while I can reflect positively on it, I have not lost sight that friends and colleagues.

17:52 Cannot. Oh, 100%, yeah, 100%. Yeah. Well, and I know you know you've done a lot about it. I people's mental health has become so important to me. And I ask people all the time, are you OK? Can I help you? You know do you need someone to talk to you? Like I'll see someone I don't even know making a post on Facebook. There's there's a particular video guy who has has really bothered me a couple of times since COVID once, where he basically just announced that he was offing himself and on Facebook. And then all of his friends just started saying, does anyone know where he is? Can anyone get to him, you know, find him, blah blah blah blah. And there was dead silence for, I don't know, 12 hours or something.

18:36 And I woke up probably at 4:00 in the morning and turned on my phone to go see, you know, what was going on. Like, did he survive? And he had put up a post saying, you know, thanks to everyone who tried to reach out to me, I I found a way to pull myself out of it. And and I'm still here. And then just recently again, he, he had a series of posts where, you know, he said I'm not worthy. You know, no one loves me. I I'm useless to the world. I'm, I'm a problem to the world. I'm living in my car in Minnesota. There's a snowstorm. I'm freezing to death. I have to keep my car running cuz otherwise I'll literally die. You know, I have nowhere to live. And I was like, man, you know, I want to help this guy and I don't even know him.

19:19 Like I want to send him money. I want to. I'm calling a couple friends in Minnesota saying, hey, I need your couch. You know, I got a guy that needs a place to live until he can get on his feet here, and I literally don't even know him. I couldn't pick him out in a crowd. I have no idea just what I've seen on on Facebook. And then again the next day he posted something saying somebody reached out, got me a place to live. I'm OK for now you know. Thank you so much world. And so like I said, you've done something about this stuff. I haven't. I I talk about it. I bring people on to talk with them about it. I try to help that way I guess. But you know I wish I could do more as well.

20:00 So yeah. Yeah I I'm I'm cautious about receiving. Thank you for your for sharing that story and that's awful and it's a cycle that's hard to break. And you know we all we all wish that our colleagues whether we know them or not find the help that they need and want to want to help propel them towards that help when we can. I I I I do but you know I'm cautious about saying I've done something about that. I think in my experience with the Event Safety Alliance and prior to the Event Safety Alliance where you know people foolishly gave me a mic and pushed me up on stage and said talk about our industry. And now, you know, I think what I bring to the table in these in the helper mindset is a genuine connection that I think I have to the people that work in our business, a desire to have a genuine connection with the people who work in our business and an ability to speak about those things. And I'm a sponge for understanding who's doing what, where's the help, who are the helpers and trying to be kind of a a spokesperson for all that good work that's going on. I'm not a clinician.

21:17 I'm not a safety professional. You know, I'm a production guy and I love that I'm a production guy, but I recognize and love our industry so much that some of our shortcomings need to be matured through. We need to get better at certain things. And there are wonderful organizations out there doing wonderful things that make provide greater access to the kind of help that we we don't get because of our freelance lifestyle. You know, we don't have a a a medical plan that allows us to go visit with mental health professionals and you know, they're the ones to be applauded because they're the ones who are actually doing the hard work. I'm I'm just lucky enough to some people put a mic in front of me and let me talk about it.

22:03 Yeah, but I mean that's you know in our industry it's sort of the little dark secret that's that's kept Outback until people talk about it like we are right now. And and you know, I know you get involved with behind the scenes. And as a side note, my podcast Geezers of Gear, we have our own special coffee blend which is called Geezers Grind, which is made by a small, very boutique coffee company down here in South Florida called Coffee Cult. And so we direct our listeners. And by the way, I started as a customer first, so I drink their coffee and I went to the owner, who's a former live events guy, a touring guy. And I went to him and I said, Jamie, you know what? Like, I love your.

22:48 They've got a really dark roast called Rd. Dog. And then they have a medium. I said I love the road dog. It's a little tough for me and my girlfriend just won't drink it. It's too strong for her. So what I've been doing is buying your Rd. dog and buying your medium and mixing them and it's perfect. And, and, and he said, well, why don't we just create a custom blend for you? And I said you would do that. And he said, yeah. And I said, well, here's what I want to do. I want to call it Geezer's Grind and I want to just give away, you know, whatever profits or or anything that's involved in it. And he goes, I'll do you one better. I'll give away all the proceeds from it to you Tell me the charity. And you know, I poked around a little bit and I ended up choosing Roby backstage as the charity. So that's where all of the proceeds from this coffee blend go to Roby backstage.

23:41 And so I'm always promoting it on on our podcast and stuff. But the reality is it's actually excellent, excellent coffee. I drink it every single day. You should try it someday. I'll send you a bag if you want, but really, really good coffee. And you know, because Jamie Mardis, the the owner of the company is, is a live events guy, he immediately jumped in and said I'll give away all the money to to you tell me the charity as long as it's in the industry, I'll give it all the way. And so we do. So that money goes to Robbie backstage and I'm not sure if you're familiar. With well, I'll particular charity, but I'll tell you as a I'm I'm not and I I'd love to learn more about it. I'll tell you as a board member of the behind the scenes charity and the president of the Event Safety Alliance, both of which are nonprofits, we should give you some funding. So the next blend that you, the next blend that you create, please choose one of us.

24:32 Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. That's that's great that you're doing that and and you know it's funny that you know we were talking about the coffee the yetis right. It's these little niche things that can take hold and every little penny counts to A to a charity of the scale which behind the scenes is and the scale of which the Event Safety Alliance is you know behind the scenes is doing great work and it's empowered by Lori Rubenstein and they and they you know they've put tools out for you can you can get mental health first aid training which is a program that's been around for a lot longer than people realize. But, but what Lori and the team did over behind the scenes was craft a version of it that fits our lexicon that you know that's directed towards our people. And we talked about mental health sorry mental health in ways that apply to this, the the settings that we see typically in life and they've had great success and trained several hundreds of hundreds of people in it. And and at the very least, the training helps to break down the stigma of mental health and gives you the tools to spot the potential for someone in crisis and then get steer that person towards help.

25:50 Yeah, I think I actually spoke with, I spoke with Lori during the pandemic about that. And I said, you know, for a guy like me who just talks to people all day through my business through, you know, the Zoom calls that I do through my podcast, whatever, I feel like I need to know more. Like do you have a simple course that I can take so that I can recognize when somebody's, you know, in a in a spiral or something. And I, I don't remember why nothing clicked at the time, but it didn't end up happening. But anyways, no, I mean. But there is right. That's the mental health first aid training. Yeah. And there's, you know, if you go to behindthescenescharity.org, there's a number of resources that they've got there to help, to help people help themselves, and to help organizations learn more about the things that are plaguing the industry. Yeah, no.

26:43 She and and everyone at at that organization have always done such an excellent job and you know, really was as far as I can recall the 1st to to really get involved in a very industry specific charity for our our space. So yeah, I mean again thank you for everything you're doing there. I want to get into sort of your transition in life into you know almost like a public servant, you know from from you know a rock'n'roll foundation like so many people in our industry. But so let's get into that a little bit. Like, I I've, I've read your bio, I've listened to some podcasts. I've done a bit of research on you.

27:23 I'm kind of a, you know, a creepy follower here trying to figure out who you are and stuff and you're. You're an informed podcast. Producer. I'm an informed podcast guy. I can't call myself a producer because my producer is in the green room right now listening and and she'll get very angry with me. She'll say you're no producer, you're just some guy with a microphone. So from what I understand, you came straight out of college and went into trade school learning electronics. Almost. So I the journey started in fifth grade that was the master of ceremonies and the technician for the Mayday Parade.

28:08 And then I was fortunate enough to be in a school district that had a a broad television and theater program. So I got out of, you know, regular school through that. But I I tried college on for my dad and college and I didn't fit and then went to electronic school. Interesting. But I mean, that might have been your first sign that we needed some regulations towards safety when they're letting 1/5 grader be a technician, you? Know technician as a fifth grader means you're carrying the equipment out and you're plugging it in, right? OK, Yeah. I always wanted those kids who took stuff apart at home and never put it back together. Me too. Me too.

28:48 Yeah. I have some great stories about that. Like it never worked again once I got into it. Yeah. So that evolved into me making my own Pyro. That's a different story altogether. I did that as well. Yeah. I did that as well and my my first band we we took these these like J boxes and we used A at the time these this is in the 70s or whatever the the click high beam thing out of a car that was our switch So that was mounted to a little wooden block on the stage or like a a little sheet of plywood on the stage and that just was wired into this J box and and that was what ignited the pyro. I mean, what could possibly go wrong right and? We have similar stories.

29:33 Yeah. And so, you know, the biggest thing was I was the singer. And we just had to make sure that I wasn't standing, like, straddled over top of one of these boxes when somebody accidentally stepped on the the high beam switch. You know, So yeah, but so in the 5th grade, you're a tech. And then you went to electronics trade school because you hated college to appease your father, right? And what happened from there? How'd you how'd you end up deciding instead you were gonna be a live events person? I'm sure there's a long transition. Well, it's it. It was quick, but there was one job coming out of electronic school that I took that was not industry related and it was the very beginning. This is 82 is the very beginning of ATM machines, the money money dispensary machines.

30:31 And there was a bank near my home that was putting its first ATM machines in and they needed an ATM technician. And I was fresh out of electronics school. So I got the strap on a gun and go in the vault side of the ATM machines and unjam them and get them back to work again and then move on to the next bank where the next machine was broken down. In those days they broke down all the time, multiple times a day. So that was my one foray outside of the entertainment business intentionally. But at the same time, near where I lived, a brand new nightclub was being built to do competition with Studio 54 and the limelight and the like up in New York and I, they had an ad in the paper.

31:18 My mom spotted the ad in the paper and she said you should go try for this. And it was a dinner theater that converted after dinner into a nightclub. And in those days it was in the early days before the nightclub fully opened, it was doing Vegas style review shows. So I got in there as a technician and I worked the Vegas style review shows as a technician. But then in the overnight hours, I would work wiring the special effects for the nightclub component and and building the electronics and things like that for the nightclub component. I mean, I was Technician #4 on a team or 10 on a team of quite a few. But I was there, I was in it.

32:00 I was now I transitioned the only thing that made me passionate, which I discovered in in grade school into a professional career, a job at 19, right. So that's that was the bridge. That was the timing of the bridge into professional event entertainment. Backstage Ness and. I never had this desire to be on the stage. Right. But so that nightclub thing, did that like, make you want to be in the nightclub business forever, 'cause, you know, I mean, that kind of bug. Like we seem to follow some similar paths, but that kind of bug hit me when I think I I I was working at a music store and I sold a lighting package because that's where you bought it at the time because in Western Canada there were no lighting retailers or anything.

32:49 So you bought it from a music store typically, and, you know, our technicians installed it. And then seeing it all come together the way that we had sort of drawn it on a piece of paper, I was hooked. I was like, wow, this is the coolest thing ever. I just want to be in the nightclub business now. And you know, I was a rock'n'roll guy, but you know, it, it was a whole different world and you could sell this permanent installation and see it come together and they'd use it over and over again. And so, did that grab you at all or? Yeah, I mean, I think it at 19 you, you know the thing that's in front of you, right? And at that time I knew nightclubs as a young person and and it was a safe space.

33:34 It was a secure job. I fit in, I understood the work, I understood the assignments and I did the assignments right. And as my personality came out in that, I ended up getting hired by the design team that that helped to design that nightclub while working at the nightclub and they were building things like Babias in New York and you know a bunch of other clubs in New York. And the audio side of that was Richard Long Audio and and he was building the biggest, most powerful JBL speaker systems known at the time. So I had this crossover understanding and working alongside of Richard Long and his team and OJ Productions was the was the other company that was building the nightclubs and interestingly a company called International Robotics that built this dancing robot that came out of the spaceship in this nightclub and danced with the danced with the patrons in the club for a while. So I was kind of immersed in.

34:35 Right. I was kind of immersed in the nightclub scene in New York City and and in in outside of Philadelphia where this club was that I worked at. And I was going to the first, you know, the the first, the nightclub and bar trade shows that were happening in Vegas at that time. So I was, I was a young geezer of all this. Jon Taffer. Oh no. Oh, to put those on. Oh jeez, I'm not going to remember it. I'm not going to. Remember, I remember him so well. Really slick guy with a permanent tan all the time. Like he looked like Trump or something. You know, like he just always had a tan, always had a cigar hanging out of his mouth.

35:16 Oh God, what was his? Name, Yeah. I I knew him. Well. Yeah, well, anyways, those were fun. Shows when that first started, yeah. Yeah, yeah, everyone handing. Out free drinks. And and pizza and whatever. Like you'd just walk around to the different booths. Free everything. Wanted be given away cigars. Wanted be given away food. Wanted be given away margaritas. Yeah, it was. It was just a party. So the nightclub was the thing that I understood and it was the thing that was in front of me at that time and that evolved to an opportunity at Disney, which evolved to my first. Actually, I went while I was at Disney, I went to film school, which was I wasn't a four year degree in film school. It was a an accelerated program being put on by Universal Disney in a partnership with Valencia University. At that time, mid 80s Florida was going to be the Hollywood East and they were trying to rapidly build technicians to work in the film business and and bring up the population of those in Florida.

36:23 And I was lucky enough to get accepted into that one year program and and went through it. And then before I could land my first work behind the scenes in a film role or television role, I ended up on tour with a a corporate show. Oh, interesting. I want to go back to that nightclub for a minute because I don't. I don't remember if I read it or if I heard it on another podcast. But something happened that I think probably started to kind of put the bug in your head about about event safety or equipment safety or just safety in general when it comes to producing shows and and the the equipment we use, you had a there was an accident that you were involved in. That's right.

37:05 That's right. It was the grand opening night, Suppress opening. We were not ready to open. You know, we should not have opened that night, but the wheels were in motion and we were going to open come hell or high water. Typical of most large nightclubs today, still, by the way. Yeah, which nothing changes in. Some rock'n'roll bands too sometimes, right? So we get to the moment of the night, the big reveal of the this giant spaceship that tracks out over the house and and it's it's preceded by shuttlecraft. You know remember Star Wars, right at that at that time was massive and the shuttlecraft came out on tracks of their own independent of the spaceship and the spaceship then came down to the center of the club and delivered the robot. Well, I was in the booth at the the control booth look, DJ booth looking out over the dance bird at this big crescendo moment. A scream very proximate to where I was, and one of these shuttlecraft had run off the end of the track came and came down from 30 feet.

38:13 It probably weighed something on the order of 800 lbs with all the components with it. And it went through the skull of a woman right at the outside the DJ booth and killed her. And at the time, you know, I was, as I said, I was a volunteer firefighter as well. So my first reaction was to try to go help. Well, God, that's awful. And the other part of that story is I was operating that fixture when it came off the end of. The trial Oh my goodness. And and you know the, the, the what occurred was the the safety mechanisms to have prevented that thing from coming off. You know the track had not yet been installed right.

38:54 There was meant to be micro switches which turned off the trolley motor that pushed it up and down the I-beam and there was meant to be a welded steel stop at the end of the track. None of that had been installed yet and instead there was AC clamp just clamped on the other track. Well this is a factory trolley motor and when it hit the C clamp it just pushed the C clamp off and down came the special effect. It was awful, you know, I was 19 at the time and it really resonated. Obviously for me it's awful what happened to that girl and her family and. Certainly not your. Fault. You know, No, I, I. And when it went through court and you know what we all got deposed and and it was you know it was determined that it wasn't my fault. But it doesn't.

39:40 You know it's like if somebody rents you a car and and they don't tell you that the brakes are bad and you plow down a a person still let you behind the wheel. Right. Yeah. So it kind of laid in this foundational DNA about, holy crap, I don't ever want to live through something like that again or or be responsible for something like that again. Did you have to connect? Are you operating the lights going forward? Like did you have to? Well, that's just it. Well, that's part. Yeah, I absolutely. And that's part of the story. Right after the accident, of course, we began testing all the equipment every night to its limits. And we ran everything up against the stops.

40:21 And, you know, we went through a very thoughtful, comprehensive safety check every night, which didn't happen on the opening night. And then so transition from this, you know, this really awful moment which doesn't leave your brain to going to work at Disney and and and participating in the Epcot show in lasers and fireworks, where safety is part of the culture every day. Yeah, it felt like, oh, OK, this is what it should have been there. And that, you know, was a continuation of the story at the nightclub and the story that you know ultimately becomes some of the the energy that brought us the Event Safety Alliance.

41:08 Yeah, I was going to ask that. I mean if you, if you were to Fast forward to when the safety alliance, like was that part of the foundation that kind of always in the back of your mind or the front of your mind, you were always thinking about safety from that point forward or you know, was it just a coincidence that you ended up in that business, the safety business? No, I myself to say that I've always behaved safely would be a lie, right? But I mean right. But I would, I will tell you that the that night in 1983 never leaves my subconscious. It it really doesn't. But there were other what's the word I want? There were other, you know, impactful moments throughout life.

41:56 You know, I was standing on stage as a technician that when Guns N' Roses and Metallica did their first show in 1992 in Montreal and James Hatfield set himself on fire accidentally over the flame order and out that his hand to the neck of the guitar. And then 55,000 people rioted. And there I was like standing on the stage looking at all these people riding, trying to figure out how am I going to protect myself, how am I going to stay alive here And then and you were on stage also, that's. Wild, I mean. Yeah, I was a pity. Attending full mayhem on. Stage with absolute mayhem. Absolute mayhem. I, at one point I'm like, oh, I know I'll go hide in the bus and then I go out to the bus and I'm in the bus and I'm thinking to myself, no, they're going to come back here and they're going to overturn the bus and set the bus on fire, get out, you know, And then found the stairwell somewhere in the arena, if I remember correctly, in the stadium.

42:52 But again, so there's. And here's this other moment, there's this other gosh, what's the word? I want inflection point where fear of life and life are in the balance and something well out of my control is happening. And then in 90 cut to 1999 where I was fortunate enough to be a one of many stage managers, I think there were four of us at Woodstock, 99 on the mainstage and you know and 200,000 people are rioting and because of their frustration with the event and again completely out of my control. I wasn't going to go do anything to prevent it, of course, but but I find myself like deeply impacted by witnessing that first hand and being there. So throughout my professional journey there are these inflection points that kind of tear open what happened in 1983 and and bring that back to the surface and lay in new DNA about safety.

43:51 Yeah I'm I'm I'm a bit curious about the these these riot situations like you know and you don't even have to answer this if you don't want but it is your first thought how do I protect myself or is your first thought how do I stop these people from riding or is your first thought how can I help to protect the band? I I mean, where do you go in that situation? I I I think my head runs to all of those things all at once. Yeah. And I'll. I'll tell you. In reflection on 92 in Montreal, I went when I saw that people were going to charge the stage. Without thinking, I grabbed a fire extinguisher, like I was gonna squirt the fire extinguisher of people and keep them off the stage.

44:37 So I did initially have this. I have to protect my land, right? And then I thought, oh, this is bigger than you know. And all these thoughts are happening at one fire extinguisher. Yeah, right. In this in this crazy kind of dichotomy and and you know you just you you process what you're processing in the you you do dumb shit when you're feeling threatened. Right. And and so I think I was doing dumb shit and then I and then I ultimately went and and and it switched to protect myself. And at that time I didn't have a you know, I didn't have a family. I didn't you know. So I was I was thinking with bravado, probably more than I was thinking with brain. But ultimately it did turn to protect yourself. And then they were, you know, when that tour came back couple weeks later after James had been, you know, stabilized and there was a path forward, we all had this. We know, OK, we know what this movie looks like. And then the very first show back or with one of the very first shows back, Axel did it again. And he showed up late to the show and then he got in a limo and he left.

45:48 And the promoters like, you know, called the limo and said you turn around, bring him back here, don't you stop at any stop signs, tap them. So, you know, this kind of it's it. Our job has enough adrenaline in it, in it already, without having to contend with riots and so. And what about the Woodstock one? What did the the Woodstock one? Was it a similar situation where it went, you know from 42 different thoughts to I better find a safe place to survive this? Yeah, I I'm not impressed with myself at Woodstock, but what was happening I I think if I recall correctly, it is the the, you know, this tension had been building over the entire course of the four days or whatever it was. And whatever the trigger that got it that went from high tension to riot was, it began happening away from the mainstage, you know in in the far recesses of the March trailers and things like that.

46:48 So and the and the delay towers, I think I recall those being tipped over and seeing that first hand and setting on fire. And I recall at one point going out to the delay towers, a delay tower while it was burning and then feeling the tension in the audience and like I'm going backstage again and protect myself. But I guess, I guess for us on the Mainstage, what was less challenging was felt like the energy of negativity was moving away from the Mainstage and towards the towards the entryways and towards the the back of house, if you will. So that it didn't, I don't recall at any point in time audience members coming towards the Mainstage and coming up on the mainstage, though I've had that happen when I was with Marilyn Manson.

47:35 So we didn't feel overly, I don't believe we felt overly threatened at that time because it was clearly moving away from us. But it was just awful. I mean the next morning I can remember being on a scooter or a a golf cart or something. And I remember running into LUG and some of the team that were out there and we were looking at these burned up trailers that were still smoldering and like how do you make sense of that that's it's not what we're built for and it's not what we're built to see every day. And you kind of in this smog of a space in the aftermath of that. Yeah, it it's amazing what a crowd can convince itself to do. You know what I mean?

48:17 Like one person gets this ingenious, idiotic idea and then convinces a few people around them and next thing you know, there's 200,000 people riding in in mud and stuff, right? Like, I mean it, It's that was such a disaster. I remember I had a bunch of lighting out on that and it it came back in pretty bad shape. Oh yeah. But yeah, I can remember the next morning the sun coming up because I don't think any of us left. The sun came up and there was this fog over the field and out of the fog marching in a single line across the field where all the state police or first responders kind of poking through the refuse on the field looking for bodies.

49:04 And we were just aghast, just like God, please don't let them find a body out there, please. Please, please please please what a gig that is I. Remember them coming all the way to the stage, doing an about face and going out again? That was the most surreal thing, to see them come out of the fog and then disappear again into the fog. It was just like, God, yeah. And that late stays with you. I mean, you know, I haven't thought about that moment for a while, but I have chills right now. Just. Remember it? No, that's that's incredible stuff. I mean there's a few others that we can talk about as well even, you know, including one very, very recent one, you know who whoever saw, you know paratroopers, you know, climbing into a a crowd and and killing people.

49:46 I, you know, I didn't have that on my list of things that were probably going to happen at an EDM festival, you know? It's really. I mean, it's so hard to even think about right it. Really is. It really is. It's disgusting. So you you following Disney at some point you you made your way into touring, right? Yeah, so I went. My roommate got a call somehow got on this the Bill of Rights tour, which is a 200th anniversary of the Bill of Rights, and it was going to travel to all 50 States and two cities in California and two cities in Texas and be out for more than a year. And it was an arena sized thing.

50:38 And I remember. No, it was a it was traveling. It was a traveling museum. Yeah, it was a traveling museum. It's really interesting in my view. But so I remember asking my roommate that sounds super cool to be careful. I try to get on it too. And I applied. I don't recall how I applied. I'm sure he helped me as well. And the I got hired, I got hired as a technician because it had a robotic component to it and I had robotics in my background through the nightclub and I had all this mechanical stuff. I was kind of AI was an early automation guy, if you will. And so we embarked on this thing that was out for God. It was out forever and we were in each city for a week. And the premise of the of the tour was it was 11 tractor trailers, a geared going into arenas or convention centers in some instances, and we carried with us one of the original handwritten copies of the Bill of Rights. Oh my goodness, 200 year.

51:45 Old. Yeah, in a in a hermetically sealed viewing pod that then traveled, it traveled on top of a robotic sled. The robotic sled and the document can traveled in the back of an armored vehicle and the armored vehicle then traveled in the back of a tractor trailer. So you know, the construct of the show was as an audience member and this went out to Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts and you know, school age kids, you come in the arena, you go on the arena floor and you go through this like Disney pulsed line and you see videos about how the how the Bill of Rights impacted the development of our country.

52:26 And then the final thing you do is you go into a viewing chamber and you see the actual handwritten copy and then of course you dump out into a merch booth, right. So it was in, it took a few days to build and it was in each city for a week. So you know, it took a while to get it done. That's cool. That's interesting. I I don't even recall ever hearing about that. I ended up being the technical director for that thing and there was a, you know, there was a lot of breaking, cutting edge technology happening on it at that time. And so the production manager, you were asking about the transition, the production manager of that became Morris Lida, who at the time handled Genesis and Phil Collins and I think also Pink Floyd and and some others. He was also John Belushi's right hand guy. Yeah.

53:16 Little Axe. He's, yeah. And he was also a rodeo *. And he, he asked myself and a couple other folks to go from that tour into a Genesis Stadium tour. And that was the beginning. So your first rock'n'roll tour was Genesis in stadiums, which I actually saw. I saw it in. I mean that would have been what, the early 90s or something? Yeah, we can't dance. I think it was 92. Yeah, I saw that in, I believe it was in Miami. We actually had Miami and Tampa and I think Tampa, we may have had to cancel because of Phil's voice anyway, yeah. Yeah, yeah, that was a that was a cool show. I remember it.

54:04 That was the one where all the video screens. Yeah, it was the first ever touring video screen, and it was at that time it was a Jumbotron, so it was massively heavy. And it was also, to make matters even worse, not only was it the first touring video screen, it was the first touring moving video screen. So we were tracking these incredibly heavy screens back and forth across the. State. Yeah, I remember it so now. Great show all on technology had never been done before. Right, Yeah. Which is so typical in our industry. That is so crazy that your very first rock'n'roll tour was genesis in stadiums.

54:47 And probably the only band I ever really was passionate about as a kid. Wow. So you were pretty damn excited. I was pretty damn lucky. Yeah, that's really cool. So I mean, that became what, a 20 year touring career ish? No, I I'm on 35 years of touring or close to 35 years of touring. Yeah, well, yeah, 'cause you still do selective tours, right? Like you'll still go out and. Tour. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Wow, that's that's awesome. That's what the math is. Yeah, that is really, really cool. So. Yeah, I've, I've been blessed. Then from again, this is just me following notes that I went out and found.

55:34 So something I think happened that really started to kind of focus another passion for you and to sort of reshape your your future a bit was the the accident that happened in Indiana at the Indiana State Fair. Is that correct? Or yeah, so that it is correct, if you know, I think. Like usual. No, no, you've done, you've done your homework more so. Oh. Good. Good. It it, it is correct. I I think the the setup to that is prior to Indiana happening I had already been using my voice on conference stages to just talk about our industry and to try to you know remind people of things that as an industry we might want to be considering.

56:23 And folks like Larry Smith were dumb enough to hand me a microphone and I was dumb enough to take it, right. So I was talking there. I was talking to Pole Star in early days and maybe LDI anyway. So I was already kind of a voice that that was expected to be heard from at some point. Whether that was good or bad it remains to be seen. But. And then, and yeah, greatest volunteer job ever. Doesn't Bay well, but. Also at that. Damn, am I famous. Also at that time, all seven of my followers, right, Right.

57:04 Also at that time building up to the Indiana story was my wife and I had a very long journey trying to get pregnant and have have a child and and by very long I mean over six years and so two years prior to Indiana my we we got my wife got pregnant and my son was born prematurely significantly prematurely and two two months early and it was touch and go. It was near you know it was an emergency C-section. There were a lot of things building up to that, but the fact that we had tried for six years and failed and finally got to this place where we were going to succeed and then there was a near failure again just kind of kept tearing at this, you know, life is fragile mindset.

57:56 Kidding. Wow. And then that kind of stuff makes you start questioning whatever your belief system is, right? Like, what the hell? It took us six years to finally get pregnant. And now you're doing this to us? Yeah, that's incredible. Yeah, that, that, that's a great encapsulation of the mindset at that time. And then Indiana happened in September or August or September of 2011. And again, you know, you, you, you asked what was my first reaction. You didn't ask this but I think to myself what was my first reaction Indiana. I was like holy F how do we do this how do we make wow could that happen to me Holy crap where do I go learn to not let that happen to me to you know how can I be better prepared to avoid what awful thing just happened there. And at that time, let's not forget our industry was still making it up.

58:54 As we go to to this day, we still do that to some part and we we don't have much regulatory oversight and we don't have. So when I looked around trying to figure out where I could learn something, there was nothing. The closest thing I could find was the the International Association of Venue Managers ran a class called the Academy for Venue Safety and Security at that time. And I enrolled. I'm like, screw this, I'm going there because it sounds close. And at that Academy, you know, here I am in a room full of venue manager type people, some of whom I knew, but no production people in there.

59:34 And they were talking about things like, you know, weather disruptions and safety of audiences and and things that impact me as a production person. But downstream of the duty of care that a venue has. And I thought, God, this is fantastic. You know, it's a week of classes and oh, this is amazing. Where are all our people and why don't we have something like this at the same time? There were a number of folks who were in communication together on the, you know, the 800 conference line talking about what had occurred in Indiana and that we can't let that happen again. So just like COVID, a number of people were motivated by the accident, the tragedy to try to do something.

1:00:22 And I happened to be in that conversation. Unfortunately the first call that I have, the first call that I tried to set up for this group, I missed for reasons, you know, for family reasons and and that was unfortunate. But anyhow, this, you know, this small group of people started talking about it, and the group kept getting larger and larger and larger over time in the wake of Indiana. And this group was. And at the same time. Like you production managers. People, whatever. Yeah, It was it was Dave Lester. It was Keith Gosh, Bowen from at the time. He was with the trusting company. It was Tomcat at the time, that's right. Or Thomas.

1:01:09 Gosh, there was a ton of people on these calls, John Brown and we got him listed in the event safety guide. This, this original posse of folks, that cadre of folks that got on Charlie Hernandez and all of us were, you know, just talking about God, what do we do? What do we do? What do we do? At the same time, I was putting myself through this training and and as the conversation progressed it became clearer and clearer that we we have very few guidelines that are directed at us, at us as an industry. You know, Keith Bowen was was aware of and there were others on the call as well who knew about our EU s s version of the temporary demountable structure standard to try to speak to you know, the outdoor stages we erected. But what was happening is these things were happening in such small pockets and they weren't getting wide attention. And then one day my my son who took forever to come to us, and I are home alone and he, I can't hear him anymore from the office.

1:02:22 I can't. I I don't hear him wrestling. So I'm like, ah, I'd better go check on him and see where I can't find. I can't find him in that. Quiet boys are a problem. Quiet girls? No problem. They're reading a book or baking something, doing something smart. Quiet boys are doing something really bad. Yeah. Yeah, well, you're right. So I find him in the pantry. He had climbed the shelves of the pantry to get to some candy at the top shelf. And of course, I did what every dad would do. I no, I didn't get him down. I took a picture of it and and I said, I said, what are you doing, son? He said I'm OK. Dad, what are you? Yeah, but what are you doing? He said I'm OK, Dad.

1:03:03 OK. So I sat there and waited for it. And then eventually he said, Dad, can you get me down? So he got himself up, but he couldn't get himself down. That night, laying in bed, I had this juxtaposition moment, like my son had this expectation of safety. He didn't know he was in harm's way. He just had to. You know he's going to be fine, right? He put himself in this place, just like those people in Indiana, the seven who died, they went into that venue not believing they were in harm's way. We had the duty to take care of them and we failed. So it's like the the our audiences have an expectation of safety. And then it all just started to like in my I couldn't sleep anymore.

1:03:45 And all this expectation of safety and and and and and so that became part of the energy that convinced this group we need an organization. We need to. We need to. Speak on behalf of our industry We yeah we need to find ways to create learning material and. But let. Me back up here a second. Isn't it incredible though, an industry the size of ours at that point? It wasn't quite as big as it is today, but it it was big in 2011. And so an industry the size of ours, how hard number one, you had to work to find training, safety training for a rather large and and rather dangerous industry.

1:04:29 If you look at the things that we're doing, hanging 10s of thousands of pounds over people's heads and flying things out into the audience, blowing shit up on stage, you know, we're we're a fairly dangerous industry with no real safety protocol. And so, you know, you wanted to be trained, you wanted to learn, you had a passion and a desire to become better and had no way to do it except this venue management thing. And and then secondly, it's such a good point, this expectation of safety. Like when you get on a boat, you expect that someone tested the hull of that boat. It's not going to leak. It's not going to sink. It's not, you know, the engine's going to propel it forward, hopefully, and things are going to work properly. And it's not just going to catch fire or something. When you go to a concert, you expect that all these experts with these backstage past things hanging around their neck are going to take really good care of you. And everything's been thought of, everything's been tested. There's all kinds of safety protocol and rules and things that they're following.

1:05:33 You know, God forbid, like, I'm not allowed to speed over, you know, 40 miles an hour on my way to the venue. But I get to the venue and there's no rules for people flying spaceships over my head or whatever, right? So I don't know if I'm making a statement or asking a question, but to me that has always been a shocking thing about our industry. It is both a blessing and a curse, I think. You know, I often say if you benchmark the modern day live music touring industry back to The Beatles at Shea Stadium in 65, I think we have done a lot of cool shit and a lot of dangerous shit between then and now without a whole lot of oversight.

1:06:18 Just simply the desire to not F it up and not get some of our colleagues hurt or our artists or our audience members hurt has kept us as safe as we are. And so you, one could argue, what's the point? We don't need it. We're doing OK. And, you know, if you think about the whole planet, you think about the way the sun moves around the planet, the number of shows that are happening on any given day, and the fact that only once in a while do we hear something catastrophic. It's not like we're we're overtly screwing it up. We're doing a good point. It's a good. Point like you would think there would be a lot more problems. And by the way, those once in a while events are usually either weather related or some asshole with a gun related or you know, things like that. It's not typically probably down to incompetence or or just a complete failure by a crew to put a safety on a light fixture or something like that.

1:07:16 Like it's, you know, it's usually down to some some outside. Unforeseen. Yeah, So, yeah. I think that's probably true. I mean, I don't have the metric, but I would let's, let's hypothesize for a minute. Like of all 10 things that we hear about that are disasters in 2023, whatever the number is, maybe only two or three are related to incompetence in producing the event. I think it's what you're saying. Right, Yeah. So I don't have a scientific background on those numbers, but I think you're right. I think, you know, obviously, you know, Christina Grimmie, Pulse nightclub, Bataclan, Vegas, Manchester, those examples are the kinds of things you're referring to that you know, these weren't production related failures, these were bad people doing bad things that are hard.

1:08:08 That's hard to predict. And as an industry, we, you know who foresaw our industry needing to think about active shooter training and all these other things, that's just ridiculous. You know, even the Event Safety Alliance, it was born out of the tragedy in Indiana, focused only at that time on weather structure and command and control. And since then we've had to expand the nature of our subject matter expertise and and you know find a new find additional ways to talk about new problems and empower our industry to figure out how to plan for the potential for this. Project There's a guy I had on my podcast a few years ago and you might even know him. I think a British guy.

1:08:56 Eric. Eric Stewart. Yeah, of course I know him. Yeah, so we had him on and I was blown away because he was all that other stuff, like he wasn't talking about people hanging lights wrong or, you know, incompetence of the production itself. He was talking about crowd management, people, you know, using drones to come into concert events and drop things on the crowd. You know, stuff like what happened in in Israel, You know, he was talking about those types of things, the Las Vegas. And I found it incredibly interesting and incredibly scary as hell. Like the stuff that this guy was telling me could happen, you know, whether you're at your kids graduation or you're at a football game or you're at a concert event, you know and and it makes you want to lock yourself up in your house and never go out. You know when you listen to him, right? The the things.

1:09:51 That, yeah, I'm super grateful for. Sorry to interrupt. You no, you didn't. I I I'm super grateful for Eric Stewart and and his wife Don and the work that they do. And you know as you said he comes from the public safety side at some very high rolls on the public safety side in England and has made him his passion project to propel crowd safety and crowd management ideas to the forefront. And you know England thankfully has well thankfully for the for the rapid success of the ESA. England had their transformational moment a decade or more before and we were able to borrow a lot of our work from what they had already done. You know we used to joke I can remember going to England and and they had embraced the safety culture while the rest of the industry had not.

1:10:44 And I can remember going into places like the other two going screw you I'm not wearing a hard hat. I'm not wearing my heart. You know what I'm not doing that. I'm. I own the building. I'm the production manager today right. And and and I that is representative I think still to this day have a lot of the mindset of people who are supposed to be the adults in charge of the concerts and and events that go from city to city. And we, we have a propensity to come in the building saying I'm in charge and my rules are at play today. And we do that for a number of things not related to safety, but we also do it related to safety. And and that's unfortunate that that's our culture. I think one of the, you know, the hopeful outcomes of the Event Safety Alliance is that we demonstrate that. We know we can change the culture. It's not so much about making codes, although that's important for us to, to demonstrate our value. It's really about how do we advance the cultural belief of safety.

1:11:49 Like, you get in your car, you put your seat belt on. You don't even think about it. But you're behaving safely. And you're doing that out of habit. Because as a child, maybe not for you and I, but as a child, you know that was what you were taught from the beginning. You never even thought twice about it. You don't think about I'm just driving without my seat belt. You know Jim that is such a great point and and it's sort of old school new school kind of thing And and it's it's a very positive thing because I remember, you know it's not that long ago and I remember a particular accident and I'm not gonna talk about any of the companies involved. You may or may not know. But I remember a particular accident I think it might have been in Washington DC where gentleman stoned out of his brains climbing trust no fall arrest system whatsoever and fell and and was killed and everyone just kind of went maybe we should use fall arrest and make people wear it every time they're climbing.

1:12:49 You know maybe we have a drug problem in in this space and in very dangerous jobs. People shouldn't be drunk or stoned doing those jobs. You know. And Fast forward to today. I was talking to a friend of mine, a young guy who's a video tech, and he quit a production because they wanted him to do things that he deemed unsafe. And when he explained it to me, I remember judging him like I didn't say it out loud, but my internal mouth was going, don't be such a pussy, you know, but because he was complaining about things that would have been like 10 times worse 20-30 years ago.

1:13:35 But today they've got such better standards with regard to safety, at least safety protocols for these people who are climbing. And am I wrong? I would say, well, it's not standards that cause rigor to wear a harness. I mean, we still fight the old school mindset of bravado and I've always done it like this and I don't need a harness and I've got it on, but I haven't clipped in. These things are still really prevalent in our industry and and you know, for the 1st 10 years of the Event Safety Alliance, we tried to push the Bible top down. Like let's get all the old dogs in the conversation. Surely they'll they'll respect what we're attempting to do and they'll help make sure that it's the behavior, the normal behavior and that didn't that you know that's kind of like top down economics.

1:14:35 It didn't really work out so well and it's not that it's not that the big established names don't respect safety. They absolutely do. They don't want anybody hurt. It's not the priority for them. They're they're the projects are massive and and it's not to say that they under prioritize it. It's just not top of mind. So we're transitioning in this year and last, the Event Safety Alliance to try to really go bottom and middle out. Like let's get into colleges, let's get into high schools, let's make sure that students at all levels, if they're learning about safety, they've got the Event Safety guide, which is going through a revision. But it's a good starting place. We had nothing prior to.

1:15:16 About safety guide industry. Right. I didn't. Realize it was still a problem today though. Like I thought. I thought all riggers had to wear, you know, harnesses and. And it's the had to wear thing that's not right, Marcel. I don't think. I think it's the it's obvious for us that riggers should wear harnesses, but there isn't a there isn't an OSHA inspector standing there, say, or any other kind of inspector for that matter saying you can't go up until you have your harness on. Thankfully much of the industry has made that true, but I think where I'm hung up on the thought is that it is a must do. It's still not a must do.

1:16:01 So does it need to be like or is this sort of a carrot stick situation like, you know, do we need hardcore rules and regulations and fines and things like that or no, no. Well, I I I think we need mechanisms to help speed along the transition which is still moving at a snail's pace. But I would I would be cautious about over regulation and over finding because then that may stifle creativity to some extent we and that's probably going to get some blowback from you saying that. But I think it's important for us to design for safety, period. It's important for us to behave safely in everything we attempt to produce, not just for ourselves, but for our our band, our crew and our audiences, period. They must be first priority.

1:16:54 One of the things the ESA did in its very early days after we had a draft copy of the guide was we went to Indiana to meet with Governor Mitch Daniels and his team in the wake of the Indiana State Fair because they were getting ready to enact some state regulation around live shows in Indiana and they would have been crippling one. The example that I use is the the closest audience member would not have been allowed closer than the following radius of the stage. So that meant that the closest audience member would have been roughly in front. Of 20th row or something, Yeah. Yeah. So you know, we were, we were lucky enough to get an invitation.

1:17:36 We were lucky enough to have some smart people with us who could actually speak at that level because that's certainly not this old roadie. And and state the case that look maybe it's best that the industry try to solve these safety concerns on behalf of the government because we know best how to produce the event and that may not be your specialty. So we left this hour plus long meeting with his with the governor and his people and we got a handshake agreement that we would be able to go forward with our work and return some results to him. And and you know, try to speak on behalf of the industry about how we become safer and and we did that and we produced this first version of the safety guide. And as you know, now we're also producing American National Standards, which elevates guidance to standard and makes it more of a should do.

1:18:29 Yeah. So I mean I guess the the challenge there for sure is if you, if you put it in the hands of governors or of any kind of legislator or whatever, we're going to end up with really shows that have have lost a lot of excitement or they've become worse by these regulations. Cuz these people don't understand how to put on shows and they don't understand necessarily what the problem is. They just wanna throw, they wanna put a fire extinguisher on every problem, right? Including crowd management. Yeah, yeah. I think there's some truth to that. I think, you know, our business is to, for instance, in crowds to study crowd behavior and figure out mechanisms to improve crowd behavior and manage crowd behavior. Our business is to put up shows and figure out mechanisms to make sure that they don't fall down. Our business is to manage people and to make sure that they can do their job safely and helpful.

1:19:24 And with health, that's our business. It's not the government's business. So and I think that we're not the only example of of places where it's better if the industry try to come to consensus and create its own safety mechanisms versus trying to shoehorn something else into our industry and and follow those rules. The example there is, you know, while OSHA 10 and OSHA 30 are important trainings to have, they don't really speak to our Lexicon. They don't speak to the kind of work that I that we do in general. The but the hazards are the same. You know, working at height, working around electricity. These these hazards we share with OSHA. But you try to take someone whose only journey has been in the back backstage space, they may have difficulty understanding the language of OSHA that makes it unrelatable. So you know one of the things the Event Safety Alliance is working on is as has the IOTC isn't isn't entertainment specific OSHA training where we use references that reply to our workspace.

1:20:31 Yeah. Well, I mean another example would be the FDA controlling entertainment lasers, you know, regulating. I mean, there are dozens of those, right? Yeah, I mean that to me has always just been a head scratcher because we can put 10,000 Watt moving lights, which I don't know of one, but we could put a 10,000 moving moving light with a beam this tight and blast it right into somebody's eyes and burn holes in their retinas. That's OK you know, but a but a 10 Watt laser on a Pink Floyd tribute band or whatever, you got to carry along, you know, specialists for that. It's just stupid, you know? So yeah. I've had an LD or two burn set set backdrops on fire with those those beams you described. Yeah, yeah.

1:21:17 Well, when the Clay Packy Sharpie first came out, I remember somebody showing me at one of the trade shows an Italian guy going, look, I can light them my cigarette with the beam and I'm going damn, you know, that could be problematic. So yeah, it's pretty wild. Let me ask you this question. Well, first I got two big ones I want to ask you because I know I can't keep you all day and these are going to take a minute. First, what do you need to besides money, let's say, Because obviously any not-for-profit is is always raising money. And certainly if I or or any of the things that I do, if I can help with that in some way, just, you know pull me in and and I'll try and help.

1:22:02 But aside from money, like, what are the things that you need to continue moving this ahead, moving it forward, and making not only crews safer, but audiences safer? I'm grateful for the question and I'm going to go. I'm going to diverge for one second, but then land the plane. We knew in the onset of the Event Safety Alliance that our tone and tenor in the way we addressed our industry's errors needed to be carrot, not stick. Like if we came out of the gate as an organization and said you can't do it like.

1:22:43 That. We would never have had any audience and we have always recognized and still to this day recognized that, you know, Indiana could happen to me, it could have happened to anybody else out there. The state of the industry at the time, the state of information flow, the state of being able to talk, you know, as banned to authority, having jurisdiction and and you know, have similar ideas about safety. It just didn't exist at in a way that it does today. And you know, so I think part of it is because we're not shaking a stick for fear of losing audience, maybe we're not getting as much traction as we could. So what do we need as an organization? Well, at the, at the operational level, we need marketing help. We need to be able to get the word into places where it's not currently we still go sit in rooms for our our safety round table and things of that nature where people have never heard of us before.

1:23:42 And that's because we don't have a marketing budget and we don't have the ability to be, as we're the least sexy subject in all of the entertainment, who gives a shit about us. But we're doing all the hard work, right? So a lot of our support comes from the insurance sector obviously because we're doing the hard work for them and we're keeping their claims down, but we're also trying to prove a negative. So you know how do how does someone quantify the work of the ESA has had great impact on reducing harm at live events. How do you quantify that? Because you know if you're doing the job well nothing's happened. Well go measure nothing. And it's a real challenge for us. You know what are some of what we see as recognition of our work is we go to events, we see our weather decision matrix which we created in 2012 on the stage. We see it in the production office. We see, there's no question that that's the matrix that we designed and and helped propel out in the industry. We see language referencing the event safety Alliance and riders, which is part of how we know that we're making an impact.

1:24:55 You know, we would love to have an event safety kind of like UL listing so that you knew you were with a competent vendor and that we could set a bar of what competency. Looks like ESA approved. Or whatever. Yeah, exactly. We we, we've had that in the back of our head since, you know, the beginning. But it's, it's a big lift. And who wants the responsibility of being the accrediting body right we're we're there's it's an all volunteer organization and people contribute when and what they can. But what what what's the other question about everybody who's contributing is everybody's passionate about the industry. We also need people who can write we you know we're rewriting the safety guide to to improve it for the next generation.

1:25:42 We're writing American National standards that need people on those committees to help make sure that the work we're doing is actually representative of the broad definition of live events, which, no, let's not forget, it's not just music touring, and it's hard to get people to participate, especially as volunteers in the organization. It's a very shallow pool that we have to pull from. Yeah. One one thing I would like to do is, and I've got Sarah here so she can get it all put together, is we'd like to become, we'd like you to be a sponsor for no money of our podcast. So in other words, we'll read promos on the event. Safety allowance.

1:26:24 Alliance allowance. Yeah, give me money. We'll, we'll read promos for various podcasts. We'll talk about the alliance, We'll talk about some of your, you know, basically your team can just refresh content for us every month or two. And we'll we'll read different things and stuff and you know, if there's anything to say, we'll have anyone from your team on at any time and talk about it and promote it. Cuz like you said, you know, if you have no marketing budget, it is, you know, it's not a topic that people want to hear about or talk about so much until like your best advertising unfortunately is a disaster, you know, And one thing I did want to mention, so we keep talking about Indiana when Indiana happened.

1:27:11 Can you just explain for a second what we're talking about in Indiana? Yeah, yeah, that's, I'm glad you did that. You know, as I said, this could have happened to any one of us. But the premise is at the Indiana State Fair there was a a, a, a very popular country act about to take the stage and interestingly, simultaneously about 30 miles up the road or 30 minutes. I get the, I get the details confused. There was a Symphony taking place and they saw this incoming weather front and evacuated the Symphony and everybody got into the shelter safe shelter and nobody got hurt. And you know, maybe some components of the Symphony might have been damaged. Well, at the Indiana State Fair, a DJ took the stage and pointed to the clouds that were coming towards the stage and said, well, we're hoping for the best.

1:28:06 And as you can see there's a weather front back there, but we think we're going to be OK. So stand by and in just a few minutes band's going to take the stage and he walked off the stage and just a few minutes went by and the gust front, something that we, you know, unless you've been to our weather training by the way we do weather training as well. You might not know what a gust front is or the fact that they typically don't show up on radar, but they're very deadly and they're a huge super high winds. So the gust front blew through while State Fair artist, promoter, venue were all trying to make a decision and who do they communicate the decision to.

1:28:49 So they they they didn't get the decision in time. The gust front blew through, blew the stage over the stage fell and killed 7 people. One of them was a follow spot operator up in the truck, up in the storm. And you know when we teach that moment or when I'm talking about that moment and trying to teach it, I'm often asked you know, what caused people to die Or I asked the question to the audience, you know what caused people to die at the Indiana State Fair. And very often the response is, well, the stage structure wasn't safe or weather right. And and while those things are true in my view, my personal view, what caused people to die in Indiana was the lack of an actionable plan. And there's a positive to that.

1:29:38 The fact that it was the plan that could have saved lives means we can do something about it, because if it was solely the weather or solely the structure, it's harder to do something about. That So what would you do? In in what way? How do we solve it? In retrospect, what would you have done in that situation? So what we what we teach, what the Event Safety Alliance teacher, what the output of our work has yielded for folks to teach or learn on their own, is as as the person with the duty of care for an artist. I need to have a weather plan or a adverse event plan. You know an adverse crisis plan.

1:30:19 And I need to have communicated that through my team, and my team needs to know what to do when we shoot the gun and say it's time to go. So there's there's my duty to there's the the adult in charges duty to have a plan for the things that that person's responsible for. It's the duty of the venue and therefore in some instances the promoter to have a plan for the audience and the things that the venue's responsible for their duty of care. And it's the duty of the authorities, police, fire and medical, to also have a plan for what to do with all those souls on site. Those plans need to be communicated to each other. So that and and there needs to be an overriding who, whose plan do we follow?

1:31:03 Right. So I I'm going to follow my right exactly. And and and in the event of you know me being at a host state, a host position, host a venue and they don't have a plan. I would argue that mine's going to take the place of nothing. It's going to be better than nothing. And we're going to follow mine where the venue has a plan, we're going to follow Venue's plan. Or when the staging company, for instance, has a threshold for weather that they're worried about, we're going to follow the staging companies. But what happens now more often than not as a result of Indiana and the result of our work and and and in the continuing propellants of our work is conveyance of our work is more people now understand that they should be considering an action plan in the event of bad things happening and know what to do when those bad things happen. Does that, does that exist at every production manager or tour manager?

1:32:03 No. Does every production manager or tour manager where it exists, communicate those things down through the team and practicing down through the team? No. Our workforce isn't set up like that. But we have the foundational building blocks to be better. And we just need to continue to remind everybody that, gosh, making shows is fun, but going home after you're done is, yeah. Of course. So very specifically, very specifically though to that event, would you have gotten on a microphone and said everyone needs to back away from the stage or what types of things might have been done? Well, OK, so.

1:32:46 If it were to happen today, what would you do? Yeah, well so if it happens today the in all circumstances being what they should be in our regard the event safety alliances regard there is a weather action plan that has specific non ambiguous trigger points in it that says when lightning is occurring within 68 depends on the speed of the storm, miles of the venue, you will evacuate the audience to safe shelter. When there is a threat of a significant storm of these characteristics that is within 12 miles of the venue you will evacuate people to safe shelter. So in today's world that circumstance occurring again, there is a plan that every all of the stakeholders have agreed to. The trigger gets met, storm is 12 miles away or lightning is 6, you know whatever whatever the triggers are and then the subsequent action to that trigger takes place and someone stands on stage and says, ladies and gentlemen, unfortunately we have a storm in proximate in our proximity here at the moment that is threatening to come over the site. We need you to leave the site right now and go to safe shelter.

1:33:55 Those steps occur and it's said without ambiguity and it's said without, well, maybe the store maybe, you know, that's how we would react to it today. And would seven people be alive? I'd like to think yes. Yeah. So were there also changes to the outdoor staging manufacturers? Were there additional rules or or whatever you want to call it? Was the bar set a bit higher as far as wind loads and those types of things? The temporary demountable structure standard that exists prior to that that existed prior to that day has been rewritten.

1:34:44 Not that it was bad work to begin with, but it was rewritten to include additional and I'm not going to be able to quote them, additional considerations for building an outdoor structure The the attention to making sure you're outdoor sorry for competent providers. The attention to the detail for making sure your outdoor structure is as per the specifications, built correctly and monitored correctly is greater now by those high end providers than it's ever been. I'd like to think and and it's probably always been high. But now we're really meticulous I think in those providers to make sure to double check the the the standard that exists to ensure that the stage structure is able to withstand X amount of wind, what the protocol is if that wind is coming and when to evacuate, when to leave the stage that is more prevalent and more prevalently communicated than it's ever been.

1:35:52 We all know that a falling stage has zero value. It's an insurance claim if nobody gets hurt, so who cares? Don't stand around with a fire extinguger like I did, trying to protect the stage. If the winds are going to exceed X miles an hour, go to safe shelter. Let the freaking thing fall, right. Same thing with the PA, Same thing with the LED. That's hard to do. It's a hard decision to make. It's hard to see your equipment get damaged. But at the same time, you made the right defensible decision to get yourself and the other humans around that thing into a safe place, and the rest of it is an insurance claim. Yeah. That I think we're doing better than ever before. Do you think, and this is just an observation, I know nothing, but are LED screens sort of the culprit? Because I know like at least early on they weren't taking wind loads into consideration or or you know the fact that they were, they were more of a a like we went from mesh sides and backs on on these stages to, you know, solid LED screens and that creates sort of a wind sail, right? I'm not an engineer, but I I know one or two and I know that that nowadays we are referring to engineering calculations by any.

1:37:23 Again, any competent provider is referring to engineering calculations on everything that they're doing. Yeah, I don't know that going from a 70% scram on the back of the stage to a blow through LED while some of which now have 50% transparency in them from a wind standpoint is the thing that makes the difference. Same with PA when A when a when a suspended load starts swinging, it's transferring dynamic load into the Truss. You know is is the trust now swinging because it's got slack and it's guy wires? Who knows? And in every instance it's different. Those things, I will say, are calculable. They're monitorable, and there's an ability to write a plan around what to do with them and to be more informed about what our safety policy should be.

1:38:18 Because those things are in the air. There's no, you know, everybody looks for what's the answer? Do I lower the PA or do I raise the PA? Do I lower the screen? Do I raise? There is no one answer. It depends. It depends on the structure. It depends on what your goal is. I can tell you one thing for sure. Get out of the way in case it falls. Yeah, Don't be there. Probably the best. It's just a piece of equipment. Yeah. Yeah. My, my very last question I'm going to ask you is another big one. What keeps you awake at night? You know, like there's so many components to what you're talking about with this safety stuff. You know, there's equipment safety, terrorism attacks, you know, which have again become much more sort of frontal lobe at this point with what just happened in Israel. And then the other thing that I think plays a role in all of this is the size of the shows now. Like, it's very common that there are stadium shows with, you know, instead of 15,000 people, it's 70,000 people. The the rigs are massive.

1:39:27 There's just more and more and more stuff being hung and flown and zipping across above the audience's heads and drone shows at concerts. And like, there's just so many more components than there used to be, where it was just, you know, an arena floor with a stage at one end with some PA and and some lights hanging, and that was about it. Now we've got so many other components to it, but what is it that that probably like from a safety standpoint, if you're responsible for audiences and performers and, you know, cruise safety, what keeps you awake at night?

1:40:15 I told you it was a big one. The the the short answer to what keeps me awake at night is the possibility that my children will go to a show of any kind and be in harm's way and not come home. I don't believe that scale is an issue in this instance. I think those who big, who build large scale shows are more inclined to use the right mechanisms and use the right engineering and to double, triple, quadruple check the work that they're doing to ensure that nothing goes wrong. Bigger the boom, the greater the checking. I don't think scale represents an industry wide issue. I think under informed leadership is the gap. And that's not to say that leadership is intentionally being risky.

1:41:18 It's to say that the, the, the juxtaposition of trying to get the gig, getting the gig, make happen regardless of scale. And add to that the element of I've got to make sure everybody's safe, I've got to make sure that the show's safe, I've got to make sure all these other things are safe. Those two things, while not directly in conflict with each other, they're in conflict with each other. Young production people specifically are coming in trying to cut their teeth, trying to keep the job, trying to succeed, trying to keep the team going. And the priority of of all of those things to safety is significantly higher in some instances, I would guess.

1:42:06 So I don't think the problem is scale. I don't think the problem is necessarily manufacture unless you're taking things out of territories. We know that don't have a good safety record to build your stage. I think the problem is we we are not yet asking our leaders to be informed about safety, to be educated about safety. We're not requiring these things. You know, you could have, you could be an adult in charge of a tour or an event and set off $1,000,000 worth of pyro and not even know what a fuse is and or not even know what the safety requirements are around the pyro. And I think that's the leader's job. I think it's the adult in charge's job to understand what's at risk by the way you carry the legal duty of care to ensure that everything is safe.

1:43:03 I didn't learn that until after Indiana. I didn't know. I was just breezing along as a production manager, not a care in the world, until Indiana, when it turns out I have the legal duty of care to ensure that nothing goes wrong. Which means if shit goes wrong, I'm going to be sitting in front of a judge trying to answer why I didn't enact safety policy. Wow. Yeah, I think the gap is leadership. I don't think the gap is that interesting. But you know how like, and I'm sure you ask this to yourself every morning, You know, how how does that shift happen? Aside from just checking every disaster box that one could think of. So you know, when did a State Fair box checked? We're not going to make that exact same mistake again, you know, God, I hate to say it, even, you know, paratroopers flying into an EDM festival.

1:43:57 Next time we see parachutes coming into an EDM festival, we're going to question that that might be a problem. And you know what? You do. I don't know if there's rules being created in the background by guys like Eric Stewart who are saying, you know, we shoot them down or something. Like, I don't have any idea. Yeah, I. I think, I think the challenge for production people is how much of that lies, lies in the hands of the production. Person that's true to. That yeah, that's handled by a guy like Eric Stewart, right? Yeah. So I I would argue that that there's a great place to Start learning about it. Absolutely, yeah. That and that's the event safety guide and that you know, reasonable adults in charge, production managers, term manager, whatever the role title is project manager. Reasonable adults in charge should see the necessity to be informed about safety at the very least to be able to spot risk at the very least and then know what to do with that risk. We do things that are risky and that's OK. It's OK to have risk providing you have the mechanisms to not let that risk become a catastrophic in that it's OK to have fireworks.

1:45:07 In other words, it's not OK to let that fireworks land on fire in front of an audience member. Right. So I I think while daunting, and I was you know, our first keynote speaker at the first event safety conference was John Barelick, the part for the Station nightclub fire where 100 people died in the doorway of. That nightclub fire. And somebody irresponsibly set off fireworks there. And he, you know, by the time he was done, couple hours into it, you were like, I don't want to work in this business anymore because he was able to draw, he was able to connect the dots to responsibility, to places he never would have thought their responsibility. So if nothing else motivates you as an adult in charge but to cover your own ass, then let that be your motivation and learn about the things that you have responsibility for. You don't need to know how to take the paratroopers out of the sky.

1:46:02 You don't need to know how to avert a bombing. You don't need to know about hostile vehicle mitigation measures around an outdoor show. You need to know how to produce your show safely, and you need to make sure you need to know how to spot that. You have the Eric Stewart's of the world on your side, looking at all the things that are a different duty of care. Well, yeah. And again, there should be a a sort of concerted plan where like you said before like you know everyone's got a plan, let's get together and figure out whose plan sort of takes top priority on this and and how they all relate to each other etcetera. But I think just getting it top of mind, it being safety and and you know, your responsibility to keep audience members safe and all of that kind of stuff.

1:46:50 Getting that top of mind and and not just we've been doing this years. We've never killed anyone. You know, that's right. I mean that's just silly. You know, it it thank God. Airlines don't just say, well, you know, we have way less accidents than cars, so we don't have to fix anything, you know, but they're much louder, more catastrophic accidents typically than car accidents. Yeah, but all of our work, all of our work at the Event Safety Alliance has been derived by other examples. We're not making it up out of thin air. We we've got corollaries to construction. We've got corollaries to airlines, you know, to medical, you name it. Because we, we just don't want to repeat the same accidents, right.

1:47:32 And we want to inform our constituents. We've written now six American released now six American National standards. You know, if you need a place to start, go to the Event Safety alliance.org website and look under guidance and you'll see that we've got one on rigging, one on structures that we talked about right, One on fire requirements, one on event safety, event security, weather preparedness, crowd management. It's right there. You know, Are these standards necessarily going to change the world? No. But if you read them and you understand them, they will help you avert problems. And without them we can't expect to elevate those who work in our business.

1:48:12 So we've got reference material now that that Stan has stood the test of a decade and and a peer and peer review And it's no, it is a starting point, nowhere near the finish point, you know, and things like I, I, I can't even speak about what happened in Israel. But things like that, like those are what we refer to as Black Swan events like like Vegas and Manchester, but they're occurring with greater frequency which makes them scary and it makes us overwhelmed as production people. How do I protect against those things? You know, it's really not our job to worry about those things, and that's not to be dismissive of them, but it's like do your job right, like the the the Israeli Defense Force, That's their job to prevent those sort of things from happening. Yours is to make sure that if that trigger, if that trigger moment occurs, your team knows what to do and where to go. Keep your teams safe.

1:49:10 Yeah, yeah, No. And unfortunately, they're going to keep happening these types of events. And unfortunately we're a big target because when you're looking to cause maximum emotional impact and fear, you know you go to the biggest crowds of people having the most fun because you want to change our lifestyle, right? Like that's the whole thing is to you can't be happy, you know? And so anyways Jim, thank thank you so much for jumping on and doing this. I've, I've learned a bunch. Whoever on your team would be the right person to communicate with us as far as marketing materials or whatever. If they can just get in touch with Sarah or Sarah will try and get in touch with them. You should have.

1:49:51 Her e-mail address. It's producer geezesofgears.com and again, thank you so much for doing it. I appreciate it. It's been fun. Marcel, I appreciate you taking the time with me. That's great. I'm so grateful. All right, great. Have a good one. See you None.