#255 - Chris Lisle

0:01 Just finished recording a really great conversation with Chris Lyle, talking about his 33 year career in the industry but also talking about his organization that I believe he Co founded or founded and has a partner in it or whatever it is, but it is called the Touring Career Workshop. So Chris, again, Chris, Chris Lyle Lighting Design is his company, CLLDLLCI think is his company, but touring career Workshop, very, very important organization that provides anything from mental health support to sort of human resources for touring professionals.

0:44 And I think it's something that's always been needed. It's a very, very important topic, a very important group that, you know, helps people on tax planning, helps people on investment planning, just helps you be more of a professional and understand the things that you don't know. So very good organization, great guy. I hope you enjoy the podcast as much as I enjoyed recording it. Thanks. Hi and thanks for joining me today on Geez of Gear episode #255 Today's podcast is brought to you by Elation. Elation is excited to offer Soul a radiant new series of creative LED blinder and effect solutions that Mary's cutting edge technology with artistic ingenuity. Seoul is available in single cell, two or four cell designs and offers endless configuration possibilities for easy assembly of unique shapes and creative arrays. Multiple lenses and mounting options coupled with a host of front accessories allow designers to craft unique visual experiences tailored to each performance or event. Blazingly bright and ideal for magical eye candy looks, Seoul seamlessly integrates into any stage or event setting, offering endless creative potential.

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4:03 Hello. And again, thanks for joining me back for Geysers of Gear episode #255 And so if you haven't heard the latest podcast, Scott DeVos, excellent, awesome, great guy. He's, I think, fresh into retirement, but probably still doing the odd gig and I'm just enjoying the hell out of his life. He's got great stories. He only had time to tell about probably 10% of them. So we're going to have him back on at some point. And also him and I, off the air, talked about a really cool idea for LDI this year, which I believe we're going to be launching under the Geese of the Gear banner and more on that soon. I can't tell you yet, but I will tell you soon. And it's going to be fun.

4:50 So look for that one this week. No real big updates on AIA lot going on obviously, as there is every week, but I just didn't have time to go discover a lot of it. But yes, there is stuff happening in AI and I promise to come back to you on the next episode, which I will be recording tomorrow and I'll be much better prepared. So with that said, trying to think if there's any really cool, exciting industry gossip that I need to share with you. And I can't think of anything right now. Obviously, a ton of things going on, lots of big tours. I was talking with someone recently who told me that between the fall and next year, it's the biggest pipeline he's had in his entire career as far as shows coming up.

5:43 And so that's a good sign, you know, 'cause overall we're hearing lots and lots about, I'm sure you heard about the layoffs that have happened. Martin laid off some people, some very key people, including I believe Jim Fuller, who as I recall, I think I hired Jim and I left Martin in 97. So he's been there for a long, long time, from 97 until today at least. And I don't want to speak out of turn here or anything, but, you know, certainly a good guy who who has attached his his wagon to the Martin brand for a very long time. And unfortunately, this is corporate Business Today in the lighting industry and sound and touring and everything else. You know, I mean, it's all about what have you done for me lately at this point.

6:30 And I'm not slamming Martin because they're not the only one I've heard. And again, this is just a rumor, so I haven't confirmed it or anything, but I heard Verilite cut about 10% of their staff. I heard Ari has cut about 300 people and there are other companies as well. So there's a lot going on out there and not all good, but fortunately our industry's still doing really well. People are telling me about huge stuff going on between now and next year. And so I think overall we're in a good place. I think we're seeing a bit of a blip right now. I think there's sort of a, a shift happening, a changing of the guard as it relates to just sales and and progress and stuff that's happening in our industry. So let's see, you know, of course, if anything comes to me, I'll let you know.

7:19 I'm happy to share that information with you at any time. And so with that said, today's guest I'm looking forward to, as I do all of them. I don't have a great relationship or I should say I don't have much of a relationship with this, this gentleman. We haven't worked together much, I don't think. I've probably sold him some stuff over the years. But Chris Lyle has over 32 years experience in the entertainment industry. He has worked in a variety of roles including production designer, lighting designer, production manager, show producer. Chris started Chris Lyle Lighting Design in 1991 and is also the Co founder and executive director of the Touring Career Workshop, which is a nonprofit that serves as human resources for tour production professionals, Touring production professionals. So I'm really looking forward to talk about that particular thing 'cause it's something where I believe we've needed help for a very long time.

8:21 I know another group that was trying to set something up in that regard, might even be the same group, I don't know. But looking forward to discussing that. Again, I think it's a huge need in our industry and so please join me in Welcome Chris Lyle to Geysers of Gear Chris, hello, how are you I'm. Great. How you doing? I'm doing OK. I'm sniffling because it's smoky here. I'm up in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. And so I'm, I don't know if you know the area, but I'm really close to Banff. OK, yeah. And And so just up the road is Jasper, and Jasper has some pretty wicked forest fires going on right now.

9:03 And so it's all blowing this direction for some reason. And so like yesterday was unbearable. We had to close all the doors and windows and stay inside all day because it was It was nasty yesterday but. But you're safe from the fires. You're good there. Yeah, yeah, well, I mean, you know what, we live on the side of a mountain in in a forest, and so you're never totally safe from fires, right? But yeah, I mean, I've had this house 20 years, hasn't burnt down yet. Knock on my wooden head. Not that I'm tempting it to burn down or anything, but, but yeah, we're safe so far. I mean, they're pretty far away. Jasper's, I think about a three hour drive from here, 2 1/2 to three hour drive, so.

9:45 You know, it's funny you say Jasper. We have two dogs, of which the old, the oldest dog is a pug named Jasper. And I call him, I call him Methuselah because it is literally the oldest, oldest living creature that I know, that I know of this dog's like, however old dogs can be like, he's past that. He's blind, he's deaf, he runs into walls. But you know, he's the kids, he's the kids childhood pets. So we're we're keeping them around. He's still waddling around and he finds his food. So God bless him. But yeah, that's when I when I hear Jasper, I think of poor Methuselah and they're just talking to the wall. That's that's hilarious. Yeah. So I mean, actually, if you ever get a chance to come to Alberta and to this area, the Canadian Rockies, Jasper is actually a really beautiful town.

10:32 But unfortunately, just like the town that I live in, it's just gotten crazy, crazy expensive, crazy expensive. Like there's a pretty popular hotel called the Jasper Park Lodge, which I used to just go to for sort of a staycation, you know, because you could get a room for 175 bucks a night or something and spend a nice weekend there and have some dinners or whatever. Now it's like 6 or 7 or 1000 a night or whatever. It's just, it's gotten stupid to, to, I'm so fortunate and grateful that like, I've had this house for 20 years up here in, in Alberta. And for the 1st 17 years, I would come up with my now ex-wife and my son for two or three weeks every summer and then just loan it out to friends, rent it out occasionally if I could. And, but you know, for the last few years I've just spent the entire summer here.

11:30 So I come up in May or June and go back in September or October. So it's fantastic. I love. It. Very grateful. Yeah. And then Florida in the winter. So people say that's perfect. You know, you have the perfect situation. Well, it feels pretty good. Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. So where are you? I'm in a suburb of Nashville, Brentwood, TN, so I'm just southeast of town. Oh cool. Yeah, I grew up here. This is actually my home. Nashville is and when we, my wife and I got married during the pandemic and we because none of us were working during the pandemic, it was hard to get alone during the pandemic. So we had to wait a couple years before we were able to finally get our home that would hold our whole flock of children that we have.

12:12 And so we moved here last January and love it. It's been a great home for us and. Oh, wow. Good for you. Yeah, good for you. That's fantastic. I, you know, I I haven't been to Nashville in a few years now. I know it changes every single year. It just keeps getting crazier, but it's such a great area that I love Tennessee, I love Nashville. It's such a great area, such a great city. I'm so happy to see what's happened with our industry in Nashville, too. Oh, absolutely. Yeah, that's even in my career. I'm on year 33 of my career and I love watching what it's become beyond music, beyond the actual recording of music in Nashville. What production houses are here in the rehearsal facilities with Bright Nashville come to town?

12:56 It's become this hub for touring all drivers and absolutely it's it's a beautiful thing to see for sure. I remember when it was just like Bandit and TLS, you know, and, and a tour was a dozen I beams and, you know, that was about it, you know, and then all of a sudden country acts started carrying bigger rigs than than rock'n'roll acts. And it was like, wait a second, what just happened? Right. So and then it all just kind of blended there in Nashville and you had rock'n'roll people, country people, everybody. So yeah, it's it's a. Beautiful thing it's and I feel like, you know, a different vendor opens a shop here every month it feels like but you know there. Or, more commonly, buys one.

13:40 Yeah, yeah, oh, yeah. That, there's that, there's that. But it's, there seems to be enough work for everybody. And so everybody seems to be thriving and doing well from, from, from an outsider looking in on the vendor world. So. Yeah, you know, I hate to be a doomsday or anything, but imagine what it'd look like if if, God forbid there were a blip in our industry, you know, similar to COVID, but maybe just impacting our industry for some reason, like some weird strike or, or something happened. I it would really impact that local economy, you would think, because there are so many lighting sound vendors and everyone else, everything, you know, busing companies, trucking companies, everybody based on a Nashville. Yeah, no, you're, you're right.

14:27 No, that's hopefully we don't go through that. I think we're all yeah. Battle Scars from 20, 2020-2021. And we made it and. Hopefully we don't have to revisit that anytime soon. I don't. Even like to talk about it anymore. It's just such a it's such a horrible period of time to look back to it. Every once in a while I go back and I'll watch one of those Zoom calls that I was doing during, during COVID, we were doing a weekly Zoom call every Wednesday. I don't remember if you ever joined it or not, but you know, some of them were super fun and really awesome and some of them were just downright depressing. And, and you know, they all served a purpose. But just what we went through as an industry and as a as a world, as a nation, as a whatever, as a humanity, what we went through was just insane. It was.

15:16 Absolutely. But yeah, so how's your summer going? Like you're crazy busy like everybody else or. We're busy. We do so many festivals now that summer is obviously peak festival season. So yeah, we're, we're, we're busy. You know, we these days I'm balancing my career between, you know, festival and tour lighting design, special event lighting design, but also doing some production management. It's something I've done, you know, even as a touring guy early in my career, I did some production management work, but also event production management. So between those hats that we wear, I mean, we've, we've, we've definitely had a busy year and it's nice. I mean, I look, you know, talk about coming out of the pandemic.

15:58 What are you grateful for? I'm grateful for work, and you know, that's one thing I learned is to be grateful for what I have. Definitely feel that. Oh, hell yeah. And also maybe to save some money. You know, I think that's what a lot of friends of mine in the industry have been like, you know, well, because, you know, I, I fell into business like most people in our our industry did. You know, I didn't go to Business School and say I'm going to open a company that does this and this and this and this. I just kind of, OK, there's an opportunity. I'm going to go do that. And they tell you to keep a cash reserve on hand, you know, And So what is that? Well, that's enough money to pay your bills and pay your staff for 30 to 60 days in case shit hits the fan, basically. And but nobody told you like two years. You know, I didn't read that in any textbooks anywhere. You know, two years of cash reserves. Well, and you know, the the crazy thing and you know, I know you know this, but speaking on the touring side of things, touring, you know, historically has been cyclical where come November, December, people are, you know, they're off for the year minus a few Christmas tours. So November, December, January, maybe February are the slow times where you've been saving up all year for those four slow months.

17:19 And so people, the pandemic hitting in in mid March when it did or when the shutdown started occurring came at a time where people were just getting getting ready to go back to work because they burned through all it's. Interesting. I didn't know that. Actually, I didn't. I never really thought of that. But you're, you're exactly right. Like it came at the worst possible time. For that, absolutely. Yeah, because that was when they were going to go back into their big earning months. Exactly. March, April, you know, rehearsals getting to around the road for spring, summer. And it was just gone. And so, you know, yeah, it's, it's, you know, it, it hit a horrible time for that in that regard. Yeah, you know, the depressing thing from all of that, or one of many depressing things. Every once in a while I'll send out like a group e-mail like, hey, this killer new listing just came in on gear source. You got to see this because it's like, you know, 80% below market price or something.

18:12 And I'll get back a whole bunch of, you know, domain no longer exists. Domain no longer exists or I'll get back. Occasionally you'll get back like a, a scripted response that says, you know, Bob unfortunately is no longer with us. He passed away and you know, June of 2020 or something. And I mean all of those like how many companies went out of existence during that time? It's so depressing 'cause it. Truly is. As a small business guy like you, you know how hard it is. I mean, this is everyone thinks, oh man, you're so lucky, you're your own boss and all of that stuff. I mean, there's a lot of days where I'm thinking, you know, like, oh, that job over at Roby over there, it looks pretty good.

18:59 You know, those guys get paid well, and they paid you all the way through the pandemic and, and that kind of thing. Like, I mean, I haven't been paid in years because of that stuff, you know? So yeah, it's it's an interesting thing. It is. Yeah. So, you know, I don't really know much about your career. Like, I know we've been friends on Facebook for a long time, but we haven't been friends in real life. And so how did you get started? Like you said you started 33 years ago I think, which is about the same time I guess I started ish, maybe a little longer but similar. Yeah, yeah.

19:43 I started in March of 91. You know my story. You know, again, I grew up here in Nashville. I, I attempted college. I went to MTSUI, was going to study advertising. I, I went down there in August of 1990 and by November of 1990, I was gone. You know, I found that fraternities and hanging out with these at frat houses and drinking beer was more fun than going to class. So yeah, I I made it just a few months and I dropped out. And then early 91 finds me working, you know, delivering food. You know, there's a place called Steak Out. We delivered steaks and hamburgers and stuff. And two of the delivery drivers, I had a band. And literally my career started by hanging out with these guys, getting to be friends with them. And one of them inevitably booking shows out in Oregon and Washington state and going, hey, what do you think about coming on the road and running lights for us? Like, yeah, that, that sounds cool. I know nothing about lights, but I love travel. I love music.

20:39 That's hilarious. Let's learn lighting. And so I I got paired up with a guy here in town named Tim Ranson. Tim had a company called Delta Stage Lighting. Unfortunately, they're out of business. I. Remember. I remember Tim and I remember Delta. Yeah. Yeah, Tim, a great man. Really, really great man. Yeah, he he took me under his wing and taught me enough to Get Me Out on this tour. And when I say tour, we had a converted bread truck, like literally a bread truck that held the gear that two people rode the bread truck and the other four or five people rode in. AI think he had like a Toyota Celica or whatever he had. And we followed each other. We started in Birmingham, AL and we drove all the way to bend OR in these two vehicles.

21:21 Couple, yeah, couple breakdowns along the way and but anyways, we went out, did these four shows and played some high schools and stuff and it was, I had so much fun. I was around live music, which I always loved, and I was in the state I'd never been to after going through states I'd never been to and in just the creativity of of Light, which at that time was a parking rig, really drew me in. And then but. But before you got to bend OR like, did you at least study the console or whatever the the I mean, it was probably like some 2 scene thing or something, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it was a Leprechaun 2 scene board, but.

22:01 Did you go in the shop and practice a little bit or something? Yeah, I did. I you know Tim because it was Tim's gear and he was renting it to this, to this artist. He taught me how to build the system. He showed me the difference between a very narrow lamp, you know, a narrow, a medium, and a wide. He showed me, you know, about picking colored gels and why you would use certain color combinations with what? But we're talking, I mean, I had a back trust with 16 park hands and two trees on the front with four park hands each. And that was it, a four piece band on stage. And I, I thought, I thought this is the coolest thing. But yeah, I honestly, once I knew I was going to do this too, I went to a couple shows at 328 Performance Hall, which is now gone Music Hall here in Nashville, and just watched. And I stood over by the LD and just watched like, OK, oh, I see what they're doing.

22:51 They're keeping in time with the kick drum or, or they're hitting these snare hits. I see what's going on here. And I wasn't a musician. I've never, you know, unfortunately I just never had that opportunity to have music lessons growing up. But I, I love music. And, but yeah, I watched the LDS at these clubs and then went out and tried my best to, to do the same thing. And I'm sure that those first few shows, I don't know if they exist on VHS, but they had to be awful. I'm pretty sure I used Christmas colors on some, some heavy metal rock songs like Reds and greens. I don't know, maybe that works. But well, your timing might not have been great unless you had a background as a drummer a little bit too. You know, that's one of the things that probably takes a bit of time to to gather yourself on is getting good timing on the light. It's not just flashing different colors all the time. And look at me.

23:42 Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's what the first show was. I'm almost positive that it was that bad. But you grow and you learn. That's my career has been a series of grow and learn lessons. Yeah, finding your way and making mistakes and learning from them. So. Yeah, well, that's, that's how you do it. And, you know, couple of things. So one have you ever thought of what would your life look like if you stayed in advertising school? I think about that every day. Do you really? Well, I mean. In a good way or a bad way? Well, no, I've had, look, I'm kind of in a some way, I mean, I'm the only one of my four siblings to drive out. The other three siblings went and got college degrees and have excelled in their careers.

24:24 When I dropped out, it was tough, you know, for parental, you know, having to answer to my parents for what I had done after they put us all they, that my parents, we grew up blue collar and they put all four of us through private school just to ensure we had a great education and we. Did it? And then I get to college and pissed it away, but I had a fire inside of me and I took that fire and just, and I, I learned, you know, I took it and made my career out of it what I could and tried to prove that you didn't have to go to college to be successful. And I feel like I did that. Yeah, good for you, man, Good for you. Similar, I mean not really that similar because I didn't have siblings who were competing with me going to college and all of those types of things.

25:06 Growing up in Canada, it was a lot different because people didn't really go to College in the city that I grew up in. It was kind of like you, you barely made it through high school if you did, and then you went and got a job and you know, I didn't want to do that. So I joined a band and, you know, toured as a musician until I realized that I was spending 250 on beer every week and making 200. And the arithmetic didn't work, as George Bush used to say. And so, you know, that got me looking to. OK, I like music. I like concerts. I like all this stuff. How can I make a living without, you know, losing money every week on the road?

25:49 And but, yeah, so that's, that's interesting that that you look back and you don't regret it because, you know, certainly, yeah, in the advertising world, you probably would have made more money, but you would have had a much more boring life. That and this is my path. I'm doing what I was. Good for you and for you. Serving my purpose. And you know, honestly, now that I'm a father of four, we have a blended family of four kids. It is, I am a firm believer. I think college is great. I think if you're cut for that. And I think we need people to, for the, for society to function and have college degrees, but it's not necessary.

26:29 And all of our kids have taken different paths. And out of our four kids, we had one go to junior college and one is going to actual university. But we have AUS Marine. And then my, the youngest who wants to go to welding wants to go to tech school and learn welding. And I love every bit of that. That's why. That's amazing. I, I love that too. And, and I love that you support that because I'm the same way with my son. Like I created a college fund for him when he was born. The money's there. And, you know, he went down a different path being a racing driver for a while, but you know, now he's like, he's still driving, but he's also thinking what's next? And you know, he thinks he wants to be an entrepreneur.

27:12 He thinks he wants to do similar to what I've done. He's pretty smart like that. And you know, my only advice to him is if you can do something that you love to do and get paid for it, you've won life. You know, you, you've basically won life. You're you're where you want to be doing what you want to be doing. And guess what? It's also paying the bills you've won. So be passionate about what you're doing. Don't just, you know, I could have made a lot more money in a lot of other industries than ours, but I really like the people and I really like the the feel and the atmosphere and stuff in our industry. I like show business and I completely. Agree with you. I think it's a it's a magical dysfunctional world, there's no doubt.

27:56 So tell me more about the the the from the that first band. So the first weekend went pretty badly and then what happened? What we we're, you know, we're, we're driving home. We did these four shows. It was great. You know, it was fine. So you drove? Across the country just to do 4 shows. Yeah. Oh wow, so that wasn't profitable. No, there's no way. No, no, no. And we were like, you know, four or five to a Room 0. Jeez. But I didn't know any better. Like literally I thought this was the best thing that in the world. I thought, wow, how cool is this? I'm in this converted milk truck carrying these metal lighting fixtures across the country and all of a sudden I'm traveling through 15 different states there and back that I never would have. Never been to Yeah, I love that.

28:42 In my aha moment, and I tell this story a lot because it's true, I believe in aha moments and I I and aha moments were what I wish for my own children. But my aha moment was my turn to drive. And I'll never forget we were coming back across. The shows are done and we're driving through Wyoming, which if you've driven through Wyoming, is a beautiful state. It's very flat in places. But anyways, I'm driving and it's about 5:00 AM. We're heading east and like, there's a killer. I think I was like a Kansas cassette. And we're listening this Kansas cassette and the sun is rising. And my high moment was, I love everything about what's happening right now and this is exactly what I want to do. For the rest of that is so cool. That is amazing.

29:24 I love that story and. I don't regret it, man. I mean, has it been hard? Yeah, absolutely. The hardest part were at that time really figuring out how to how to get into the industry and how to make make how can I go pay my bills doing what I want for a living. And honestly, that's 1991. I did not go and and was able to tour like as a career until 95 S 91 to 95 in my life is this era of literally I worked at McDonald's, I did land surveying, I worked at Sears putting tires on cars. But then I'd go gig on weekends for little local lighting companies or little small bands that could afford to pay me the literally 25 to $50 a show that that time.

30:10 And but I, I just wanted to do it and I was like, whatever I need to do at that time, if I've got to go work this shitty job just to be able to go and still go do lights on the weekends, that's. Well, and learning your trade too, like getting better at it, practicing basically getting paid a tiny little bit of money to get better at what you really want to be doing for your life. So I love that BB on the aha moments because I, I used to always talk to people like that about that on this podcast. You know, the aha moments are one of the things that really just keep you coming back and back and back. You know, in golf it's, it's sinking that 40 foot putt or, or getting a hole in one or whatever. In our industry, it's you know, house lights out and, and you know, the crowd goes nuts and that first note of the first song when the lights come on, it's incredible. And every LD that I know is like gets goosebumps when you talk about that even though they've done it 1000 times or more so. Completely agree.

31:12 And, and I'll add me to that list because if, if you were to ask me what's my favorite part about a show, man, the the sound the crowd makes when the house lights go down, it's always, man, there's something about that. Yeah. I've never taken that moment for granted. And, and you know, as I stepped away from the role of as of being a touring LD years ago and becoming more of a designer as I've designed tours and I'm having, you know, the conversations with the touring LD and we're working on the focuses during the day and things like that. One of the things I always point out to the LDS is I want you to, and this is going to sound cheesy and I recognize that, but I mean, what I'm about to say is I want you to, to look around the arena and look way up high in the 300 level. Look around.

31:54 And I want you to think about this, that tonight is somebody'd date night that they've been saving a lot of money for that they probably couldn't afford to go to. Tonight is somebody'd very first concert. Tonight maybe somebody'd very last concert. So everybody in this room matters. And even if it's as easy as when you do your audience wash, just because you're at front of house, that's not where the whole audience is. You look around all 270° of the arena and paint the audience as it's sold and let everybody have an experience. Yeah, You know, Chris, that's such an important point. And and if you ever get a chance, listen to the podcast that actually just came out today with Scott DeVos, who you probably know another local, but we talked about that same thing. He he just said, every single person in here is creating a story.

32:43 And like a lot of these people are gonna 30 years from now say, you know, I was in so and so place and I saw such and such band and I'll never forget blah, blah, blah, whatever happened. And sometimes it's a lighting look, sometimes it's a note that somebody played or a guitar solo. You know, sometimes the singer fell off the stage because they were drunk. You know, I mean, just all of those things. These are memories being created. And if you undervalue that, you probably don't belong in this business. You know, it's such an important thing. It's very important. You were saying your favorite moment every night is, you know, house lights out and the audience goes. Nuts.

33:24 I would I would give you an an example where that doesn't count or or when that's not my favorite moment. So in the same year I was involved with, I think Steve Cohen had both Brittany and *NSYNC. And this was like in the 90s or 2000 or something when they were both at, at the pinnacle of their career. House lights go out. I've never heard a sound like this. Like, it's probably one of the only times that I actually wore earplugs at A at a concert. And it wasn't because of the music, it was because of the audience started screaming when the house lights went out. And they never stopped until after the last when the house lights came back on, basically. Yeah, they never stopped.

34:08 Have you had a chance? And I haven't seen this, but have you seen Taylor Swift? Have you seen the Era tour at all? Nope. I'm, I, I from colleagues that have gone, it sounds like a similar experience, like that sounds like an immersive audience experience that really you talk about people that there's definitely a lot of people going to the first concert in that crowd, but they're having just such a good time. They're pretty passionate I've heard. That in there does not stop all night, that it's just yeah. So that's. Yeah. You know, as great as Taylor Swift is and as much money as she's made and as I'm sure the show is wonderful and stuff, I've gotten to an age and to a point in my career where I don't really go to shows unless I kind of want to see them or unless there's people there that I really, really need to see or want to see.

34:53 And she just didn't check any of those boxes. So, you know, I've avoided that one somehow. But anyways, yeah. So it's funny how we get jaded about concerts and and my wife, I love her. She's a huge concert person and love concerts. And like, literally I'm like you just said, I'm at the point right now there's very few people IA want to pay a ticket to see and B even give me a comp ticket that I really want to see. So I've had to learn to suck it up. And it's how, you know, you still got to have date nights. But like, we went and saw two weeks ago, we went and saw foreigner and Styx. Yeah, and we bought a ticket and and we had a great time, but I'm literally there. I'm like, you know, it's hard not to get distracted, look up at lights, but it was so fun.

35:40 Yeah, yeah. Well, those are both great bands, even though one of them is a cover band. But yeah, I mean, they're they're both great bands and and both have great and by the way, they both sound incredible. You know, again, Foreigner is a cover band, unfortunately. But but that singer, the guy from what band was he in in the 80s? He was in not Halloween, but one of those kind of 80s. No hurricane, hurricane. That's what it was. I knew it was an H word. But he's a fantastic singer and he's quitting now because I think he's 70 or something. But he he does an awesome Lou Graham and they've just done an incredible job carrying on that legacy. But there are no original members in that band. You know, every once in a while, Lou Graham will come out and do a song or what's his name, the old guitar player will come out and play a song.

36:32 But but Styx, like Tommy Shaw blows my mind. That guy is so talented and he still sings so well and looks like a rock star still. God bless him. You know, I mean, there's, there's a handful of those guys, him, Steve Perry or Steve Perry. Steven Tyler. Sorry, I was mixing up a bunch of people in there, but Steven Tyler, Sammy Hagar doesn't look so good anymore, but he still sings like a bird at 76 years old. You know, those guys blow my mind. Like I know how hard it is. I'm, I just turned 60 and doing some of the things, especially singing songs that I did in bands in when I was in my late teens, trying to do those now, forget it. I couldn't do it.

37:19 There's just no possibility, no. I agree I'm not. I feel I'm 51 now but I I think every morning I'm reminded of my age when my knees creak. Oh yeah, yeah, I know all that stuff. Trust me. You know, I have a remedy for that, but we'll talk about that later. But yeah, it's age is, is not something that any of us are going to escape. But, you know, there's certainly ways to, to improve your journey through age, I guess. And that's what I've, I've been focused on for the last 10 years or so. My dad died of a heart attack when he was very young, 52 years old. And so I've always tried to ever since at least I turned 50, you know, mellowed out on the drinking completely. Like now a heavy night for me might be two glasses of wine, you know, and all the other bad stuff has just been gone for years, you know, So even I don't even smoke cigars anymore. I like on occasion I might have one once every six months or something.

38:19 But you know, it's, it's just like live clean. Yeah, I get it. I try, I don't. Yeah, I try, Yeah. So you actually started your company in 91, did you? Well, I mean, I, I started in 91 my, I didn't become CLLDLLC until, Oh my gosh, much later. I wouldn't call it O 7 when I actually formed the company, you know, because again, I took this journey of lighting director and occasional production manager a lot of my career, but realized I started to get more into the design phase of my career and I actually bought a little bit of gear. I think I bought some consoles from from some somebody from you, maybe I. Don't.

39:02 Yeah, yeah. But then I decided to form the LLC and and you know. Smart, yeah. Yeah, do do it the right way and make sure I was covered, yeah. So you said that until 95 you were working any odd job you could and and then doing lights on the weekends. So at what point did it become like a full time gig? So I got a call on April of 95 from a friend of mine that I've been doing some of these club shows with. And as everybody, we all know, you know, this relation, this this industry's relationship based. Oh. Yeah. So this guy calls me. I had a pager. I had a pager and he beat me and I was out. Lancer. Dang, he goes, hey, I got a tour for you, but you got to leave Sunday.

39:46 This is like a Tuesday, she said. You got to leave Sunday. It's the Walmart Country Music Across America tour. I said whoa, and so he said call this guy. So I called this guy and I said what? What's going on? He goes well we got this tour. It plays Walmart parking lots seven days a week. The tour goes shit but it already been going for. Maybe 8 weeks at that point. It goes all the way till late October, seven days a week. It's on a little SL 100 stage. It's got like, I think I had 30 par cans, but we need somebody to come be the LD and we need to get somebody out there on Sunday. I'm like OK, so I sat there and I thought about it's like, well I've got to quit two jobs because I was doing land surveying during the day and working at Sears at night putting tires on cars. I had my own duplex and I was like, you know what, I'm going to do it.

40:35 So within three or four days I quit both jobs, put everything in storage, broke my lease, and on Saturday I picked up a 15 foot box truck that had some replacement gear. Drove to Sherman, TX just outside of Dallas and the very next day did my first of 181 shows straight on the wall. Is it tour? Seven days a week. You were working for 181 days. Days without a day. Off. Geez, you made some money. Well, I mean at the time. Well, let me tell you, it was enough money that quitting both jobs, I was like, Oh yeah, let's do this. But even now, now that I look back, I was like, was that really great money?

41:17 Probably. But it it, it that tour and the relationships I made on that tour without a doubt started the trajectory for my career to go to the next level. Because on that tour, every Monday we got two new bands. So you got to keep in mind this is 95. This is when that 90s area country is just popping. And so these labels would put two new bands out every week to play the Walmart tour. So every every week I'm meeting 2 new TMS, 2 new PMS and I'm this, you know, 2023 year old kid, I guess at that time out there flashing lights, you know, during the day nonetheless and. Yeah.

42:00 And I just met great people and I learned to stay in touch with them. But man, I it was a fun tour. Yeah, well, I, I mean, again, what a way to build your chops too, you know, like to learn so much and meet so many people. And, you know, I mean, what a tough schedule, though. 181 days straight. Jesus. Well, I, well, I want to be clear. So I let me just real quick, I'll tell you our typical day. And this is because it's we would only drive 50 miles a day. We had a an RV and a box truck and then the stage and the stage was pulled by a Dooley that had a generator on the front. And so we would load in about 9 or 10 by noon.

42:41 One O clock we were set up, the bands would come in and sound check. One band would play 7 to 7:45, the other one would play 8:00 to 8:45. We were typically loaded and loaded out by 93945 and we would go get a hotel and and then drive, get up the next morning, drive 50 miles and do it all over. Again, so it wasn't brutal. It wasn't like, yeah, like a real load in. We, we, we, we definitely, we learned our Walmarts very well and we learned, you know which we, you know, definitely judge them by the restroom cleanliness if they had a McDonald's built into it or. Not. We had a lot of fun that tour, Probably too much fun because the next year, that was 95, I came back the next year. The tour was so successful, they did it. The next year they went up a stage size. I went from being LD to stage manager, but we all had to sign waivers agreeing that we wouldn't sleep with Walmart employees.

43:41 That's funny. That is funny. Well, I can tell you right now, I swear to God I've never slept with a Walmart employee. I'm going to. Say that I, I, I, I was, I was a good kid. I yeah, I'm, I'm not probably, I probably had some questionable moments, but the waivers were directed to other people that just I felt that's. So funny though. That's hilarious that they felt the need to do that. Yeah. That's, that's wild. What a cool story. And so a couple of questions. One, did they pay your per diem in like Walmart dollars or something? Yeah, we've done. We got cash for DM, but man, we got so bored.

44:22 We we would go. We obviously we walked in Walmart today. The amount of useless shit I came home with from that tour, I had a whole crate of useless shit like we would we would make these rocket cars out of rocket parts. These Walmart sold the model rocket it's and we would go buy these big plastic cheap cars, put rockets under them and have rocket car races. Then I think there was a fire, so we couldn't do that anymore. That's hilarious. Yeah. A lot of fun. I mean, we were all kids, man. Playing Wall, Yeah. You know, well, I could only imagine like, you know, for me, because I've always been a little bit entrepreneurial. I think I would probably be buying things in one town and then finding the town. I could return them and make a profit, you know, So I'd buy things just to return them and I'd I'd be calling around going, Hey, how much are your, you know, ladies, bra model, whatever, you know, and then I'd buy forty of those and return them in the next town or something.

45:19 Yeah, man. But anyways, yeah, that's that's a cool story. What a what a interesting way to start your career. I mean, really it's like bang, here you go, you know, all at once. That's cool. So you know, obviously from there it's it's gone pretty well and and you've built a real career of it and a great career. By the way, you've done a lot of really cool stuff, which I want to talk about. But one other question I want to ask before I forget you so or before I forget about it before I forget you. You know, one of the really cool things I love about being able to do this podcast is the early stories. And you know, a lot of people much older than you who talk about like, you know, one day I was just outside playing with the kids and, and you know, somebody drove up with a pickup truck and said, Hey, jump in, I got a gig for you.

46:11 And they're like, what's a gig? Come on, you know, or whatever. Like, you know, one day you're a a sheep herder and the next day you're on ACDC tour or something, you know, and so many careers in our industry. And in fact, if you look at people over maybe 55 or 60 years old in our industry, almost all of them didn't go to school for this, didn't go to any kind of theater or technical school or anything. They were at a crossroads in their life. And it was join the military or go on tour with this band, you know, or whatever it was. And I think part of that is because back then it was much less structured.

46:55 Obviously we didn't know what, it wasn't an industry. It was sort of like a traveling circus kind of thing, right? And there weren't experts yet. There wasn't a lot of expertise. You know, it was pretty simplistic systems and and products and stuff like like you said, a tree, you know, with four lights on each side of the stage or whatever. But I think, like me, you've probably noticed a big shift now where obviously it's much more corporate. You do have a lot of training available for people, much more rigid formal training available for people in schools. And that's a good thing, right? Absolutely. Yeah. It's great.

47:36 It seems like an easier path than just winging it and hoping that somebody comes and throws you in the back of a pickup truck or whatever. Well, no, to your point, and I know we're going to talk about this, that's one of the reasons, one of the reasons touring for a workshop exists is because this isn't a fly by the seat of your pants kind of joke job that I don't want to mean. I shouldn't say joke job, but I'm saying it. I I feel like the career of being and I don't like the word roadie, but the career of being in the live entertainment field had a lot of negative connotations in its early part, early early adoption and and. Some of them deserved. You know what I'm saying? Like vagabonds and, and, and just maybe not well organized and people just kind of flying by the seat of their pants.

48:18 This is a sustainable real career now. And that's the big changes. We've got people that can look at this and go, no, I'm going to do this for a living. I'm going to retire doing this. And I love what I do for a living. It's not a joke. It's a serious. Some of those negative things you talk about I think are, are well earned, you know, heavy drug use and, and partying and all this stuff, especially from the 70s to the 90s kind of thing. Like I think when you got into the 2000s, it started to get more serious, more corporate. I think a lot of companies started having, you know, very strict policies with regard to what you were doing with your downtime or what you were ingesting in your body or whatever.

49:04 You're even seeing healthier food on tour buses and things like that. After show stuff is getting healthier, which is all good. And I'm sure you're a part of that. Your workshop is part of that. And I wanna talk a whole bunch about that. But so some of it's deserved, but I think there's still sort of a negative. The idea of our industry being, you know, carny, it's it's a carnival, it's a travelling carnival. And you know, those carnivals that set up in parking lots, you know, with the zipper and all of those rides. And I hate to say it, but most of the people operating those rides, I look at them and I'm like, I ain't putting my kid on that ride, you know, like they look like they haven't showered in two weeks and, and they're high on something. I don't know what, but they're so they seem to be still where we were like 30 years ago as an industry, right? So, but I, I think that there is still there. I think there are people especially like my son, you know, 'cause that's one of the things I talked to my son about who's 20 now.

50:05 And I said, would you be interested in going on tour for a couple years just to AC the world B learn the industry and then come back and work for me? And and he's like, why would I want to do that? Like, what's that all about? And he has no idea. To him it, it just looks like a weird thing, you know, like, why would I do that? That just seems really strange, you know, But I think if he actually went and did it for a few months, he'd be hooked. He'd he'd never want to do anything different. Right. No, I agree. Yeah, there's still a lot of misconceptions about our world and what happens and what goes into it. But yeah, I love how how much, how far we've come.

50:46 I love how diverse our industries become. I mean. You know, when I, when I was first started to tour, most of my career was, you know, straight white males. And we are so diverse now and I love that, that we've become, well, you know, 'cause we, I, I use this term on another podcast and I mean it, but we really are this big goofy, I live a misfit toys. We're all unique in, in our own ways and characteristics and got our quirks and our things. And it works. We're all we all get the show done and I love it. You know, and it's not dissimilar to the racing world, you know, where, where I've spent because of my kid the last 13 or 14 years, similar people, very, very smart people who travel with this circus, you know, and you know, they're racing engineers and they're they're coaches and, you know, just all these people with all of this information and stuff, but they're just looked at as a bunch of goofball, you know, mechanics, basically you're a mechanic.

51:49 No, I'm a I'm a Motorsports engineer. And they actually went to school though for Motorsports engineering. But but again, 20 years ago they didn't or 30 years ago they didn't, There was no such school. You know, it was just a bunch of Yahoo guys who just learned a lot about how to make cars go fast and and therefore got hired. So you know you you founded this touring career workshop. Myself and a guy named Eric Parker, who a friend of mine, actually, I taught at Belmont as an adjunct for 10 years and he was one of my students who. Got interesting. And he's still, he's got a great career in the industry. And but he and I formed this in 2011.

52:31 Yeah. And we, it was really formed out of seeing this need within our industry of, of having some kind of collective human resource information. I had a point in my career where I was getting a lot of questions, Hey, who do you use for accounting? And hey, what, how do you do your quarterly taxes and what are you doing for your health insurance? That we kind of brainstormed, had this idea of putting together this workshop in which we did the first one in November of 2011. And the idea was simple is that we were going to have these these guest speakers come up and talk about all these different topics from, you know, again, health insurance, tax planning, retirement planning, all the way down to how do you stay fit on the road? How do you make your marriage or relationship work on the road?

53:13 All these different topics. And that first workshop again in 2011, we had 50 attendees that went very well to the point that between 2011, 2012, we went ahead and became an official 5O1C3 and moved it over to the sound check Complex in 2012. And it's just grown since then. We, we still do the big fall workshop every year. We have a great board of directors now with a lot of industry pros, TMSPMSA, lot of vendor employed persons, just a very good diverse board. But what I'm most excited about what we've done is our our ventures into the mental health field.

53:55 Yeah. You know it. Very necessary. Yeah, if you're cool with me talking about it, I'd love to share a little about that. No, no, I want to talk about it because that's, I've actually had podcasts just to talk to people about that. Because, you know, one of the things I did during COVID, I started this weekly Zoom thing. And a lot of that had to do with mental health because I had people reaching out to me, friends or friends of friends who were like, I don't know what to do. I'm useless. I can't take care of my family. I can't do this. I probably would be better off if I weren't here. And I'm like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. Hang on a SEC. Where are you? I'm gonna come see you with a mask on, but I'm gonna come see you. You know, there were people that just didn't know how to cope with this stuff.

54:39 And there were also people who didn't know, like the other stuff you talked about. Like I coached so many people and I can't. Looking back, it's hard to believe, but in the beginning of 2020, not a lot of people knew how to use Zoom. And I spoke to so many business owners who didn't know how to move their files into the cloud because they were using these on Prem servers and they had no idea how to use like Google Drive or, or Dropbox or any of those things. And so I was actually coaching people for free as a just a friend. I was showing people how to how to set up on Zoom, how to set their company up with, you know, a Google Drive set up and, and move all of your files on there so that you could work from home without having to drive, drag a server home or VPN into the office or whatever It was, right?

55:34 There was so much need out there. And then I started doing these weekly Zooms and, you know, it was just really about camaraderie, helping each other, sharing ideas. You know, we talked a lot about probably some of the stuff you were much more officially talking about. And I wish we would have gotten together on some of this stuff. But I'm a 1099. How do I get taken care of? You know, I'm, I, I have an LLC, but it's only got 1 employee. How do I get taken care of? Can I get any of that PPE money or whatever? And so we were bringing in experts to talk about that. We were sharing information on that. Certainly, you know, bringing Strickland in every couple of weeks on to our our discussions was helpful because he had the handle on what was going on congressionally or within the government, sort of, I mean, you know, it, it was pretty hard to have a real idea of what was going on there because they they shared with you what they wanted.

56:33 But yeah, I mean, sorry to go on and on and on, but I think this is such an important topic. And the the mental health thing just kind of rose above everything because even, and I won't mention any names but seasoned like lighting designers or sound engineers or production managers who've been doing this for 40 years after the Zoom call were calling me up and going. Marcel, I'm really struggling. Like, either I'm struggling super financially or my wife and I are about to get divorced because she can't stand that I'm in the house for six months in a row or, you know, like I've become a drug addict because I'm at home and I don't know what to do with my time.

57:15 Yeah, I've heard so many of those stories. And it was just so sad that I had nowhere to send anyone. So I was reaching out to like, you know, Lori Rubenstein and and different people like that and just saying, can you help these people? You know, like, is there anything you can do to help these people? Because I feel like we're going to lose some of these people either, you know, through overdose or through eating themselves to death or through suicide. Yeah. So. Yeah, no, it's, you know, it was definitely, I think that that's another pandemic thing was a really big wake up call and directed toward making mental health an important factor in all and, you know, addressing mental health in our lives.

57:57 And I think it's I love where the conversations at now. I love that it's an honest conversation. I think that's great. We so in 2014 we started what we call our standard All Access program. That program is pretty straightforward. Basically through that program, we have several counselors throughout the country that we have agreed upon set rates with you go to our website, you make an appointment with the counselor. We will pay for up to four sessions of per year of counseling, no questions asked. It's super simple, like literally find the counselor, make the appointment, they send us a bill, we pay it. How? How are you doing that? Is that through sponsorship or? Through, through our, you know, because we are 5O1C3, we, we do have sponsors, we have donors, yeah. It's part of what what that funding goes. Wow, that's incredible.

58:44 Actually, a huge part of what that funding goes to. That's really, really great. That's. Amazing. To date, we've paid for almost 500 sessions of counseling. That's amazing. Yeah. And and you know what if if those 500 sessions of counseling saved one person, Well worth it. Oh. Well worth it and. Honestly, last year after something happened here in town, I ended up opening it up to, I say we ended up opening it up to spouses and partners as well. So not just if you are working in the live entertainment industry full time, but your spouse or your partner as well as welcome to those four sessions per year. And after those four sessions, we don't just turn you loose. We've got other resources we can point you to. Or worst case, we'll keep paying for them. Like if it's at that point you can't afford it, we'll keep paying.

59:31 But that's, that's been such an awesome thing to watch that come to life. Well, the, the next phase of that, one of our board members, Brandon Sausman is he's the director of production for C3 Presents. You know, C3 obviously a major, the biggest festival producer in the entire country. He's on our board. He at a board meeting last last spring, he goes, what about taking counsellors and bringing them on site to some of our festivals. And the next thing I know at Bonnaroo last year, 23, we had, we brought in counsellors, we set up back by Artist Village. We had a trailer and we ended up. Bringing in counselors that was on show days from, you know, nine to five or whatever the hours were. But we ended up giving doing 22 sessions of counseling at Bonnaroo last year.

1:00:18 And we were like, man, this is on some, we call that program All Access on site. And it's, it's blown up to the point that this year I think we're at 9 or 10 different festivals. We've hired a program coordinator that just focuses on growing and building that program, implementing, you know, on site, being there on site, running it, finding our therapists that are on site. And man, it's been beautiful to watch that thing take off like we've been. Just so I understand, so that's that's for crew specifically and and it's free. Oh, 100% free. And it's for anybody who makes we, I like to it's somewhat very broad stripes, anybody that makes their living working in live entertainment.

1:01:00 So artist, band, crew, side OPS people, if you make your living working around entertainment, you're welcome to, you know, and we've got QR codes with these festivals. We're going and putting QR codes in every dressing room. They're in catering, they're in every office. So that man, if you're having a rough day, you know some shit, maybe going down at home and scan the QR code, make your appointment. And we typically even have, you know, two therapists on at any given time. We've been, we can, we've been had a quite a bit of walk UPS, like literally people walk up and go, man, I really could go, I could talk to someone. And right in the trailer. And without getting into detail, some of the feedback we've got has been to your point a while ago about if it saved one person's life. I can undoubtedly say that this program has definitely saved at least one person's life.

1:01:46 That is incredible. Good on you man. Congrats. Like that's, that's so good and so important. You know, again, this is like some people might say, come on, tough it out, you know, come on, what are you doing? Why are you having so much trouble? You're in paradise. You're out there on Bonnaroo, you're working on a festival with a bunch of pop stars and stuff. How rough is your life? You could be digging ditches, you know, but you don't know what it's like to live with a bunch of strangers on a tour bus or to, you know, I, I mean, there are challenges to this industry that I think are unlike most others, if not every other. And look at all the musicians who are wildly successful and commit suicide, you know, same thing. Like, it's just, it's a weird dynamic. You know?

1:02:34 When, when you get to such a high during the show, sometimes you know, in more ways than one and then boom, you come crashing down cuz the night's over and what do you do now? And that's when artists typically get involved in all of the bad things that, you know, end up killing them a lot of times, you know, or at least turning them into addicts. Well. Improve people too, same thing. I mean, look at the hours we work, the working conditions, the healthy lifestyle with lack of exercise and typically overeating or not eating right. I know not everybody does it. I'm just, you know, it is a problem. And then you add in being gone away from your, your partner, your spouse, your children, your whatever's at home.

1:03:16 You know, you add in all these factors mixed in some addiction. I mean, you've got you got people with some real problems that just gets coming out. And again, like I said, lack of sleep if you're only getting four or five hours of sleep a night. No good, no balls, no bueno. No, it's not good. No, it's just not a. It's not a until you find a healthy routine through all of that, it's not a healthy lifestyle. It just isn't, you know, and, and even just the sleep thing, like, you know, it took me 50 some odd years to figure out, Hey, this sleep thing is kind of important. You know, like I thought you just slept because you were tired. You didn't sleep to, you know, keep yourself alive. Like it wasn't a huge part of your health, but it really is. So the workshop happens, you said, every fall? Every fall, so this year will be on Tuesday, November 12th. We're we're back at the same, we're still at sound check annex once they move to Rock Nashville and that's done in a year or two, we'll move out there.

1:04:16 But yeah, it's, it's a free event. Basically it's, you know, we typically do Dorset for events starts around 5:00. It starts out with the general session, typically a keynote speaker. And then from there it goes into three groupings of breakout sessions of 45 minutes each where attendees can pick and they can find a track or a breakout that works for them. And then we wrap it up again at the end of the night with some net, what we call networking time, just because that is again, this industry is all based off relationships. So we can. The biggest part of it? While we've got people in the room, they get FaceTime with some of the sponsors that are there and then they get to know each other and that all helps foster that community mentality that we have. So what?

1:04:56 What kinds of workshops or or like what are they going to learn there? We're still in the planning phases for this year. We have what we call our standards. Our standards are all, we always have a tax planning, we always have a retirement planning. We always have a health insurance. We always have a mental health component. But then we start looking at other things like how do you, how do you write your resume or how how to administer Narcan or how to do somebody weight exercises on the road. How do you manage being a parent while you're on the road, getting the most out of your air miles, buying your first house? I mean, literally every year, other than our standards I listed, we try to break it up so that as people come back every year, if they're all good on the tax planning front, they can go learn about something else. Yeah, that is great.

1:05:44 So this is really for touring professionals. It's not for new people trying to get into the touring business or anything. This is for more so for people who are in it or even new to it, but but you're in it and you know the troubles, you know the parts that you're missing. You know what you don't know? Correct. And but I was, yeah, we, we, we want all live event people in there, whether you're working festivals or touring. But the thing I'll tell you is we do get a lot of young people. We do have a couple of sessions we'll do that are curated toward young people that really just tease them with some of the career paths they can take. But the the goal, one of the big goals we've always have with this organization is that I would rather get somebody in there with their 20s to start thinking about a retirement plan than wait until their 50s and going, oh shit, you know, what do I do?

1:06:28 And you and I both know that happens. So, you know, can I go make a 22 year old go get a four O 1K or an IRA? No, but if you can get them thinking and get that on their radar, maybe they will. The goal is capturing, capturing them young enough that they're thinking, Oh yeah, I probably should be thinking, I know retirement's 45 years away, but I probably should be thinking about what that. Yeah, I mean it's, it's also important and and you know, I mean, most companies in our industry don't have that kind of information available to them. So the fact that these, you know, roadies, like you said, not always the greatest term, but the fact that they have those types of resources available to them is, is incredible. And you know, I applaud you for putting that together because I know you're not making money on it. It it is a 5O1C3.

1:07:17 You're doing it because it's important and because you love doing it. So just a couple of things about it. So you said it's it's run by a board? Yeah, we have a board. There's thirteen of us, fourteen of us on the board. OK. So how often does the board get together? Is it like quarterly meetings or quarterly? Meetings, yeah. In fact, we did our quarter, quarter three meeting last Tuesday in which we talked about the fall workshop and starting to really dive into theme. We always try to have a theme, whatever is relevant to our industry at the time, but also diving into what's going on on the road, you know, what's the hot topics, what do we want to address. And so, yeah, we're diving into that now. Interesting. And how do people find it?

1:08:02 We, we do a lot on our socials. You can find us on Facebook and Instagram and then our website tootouringcareerworkshop.com has a lot of good information. We try to keep, keep people up to date. And then we have, you know, an e-mail list. We'll do e-mail blast every now and then just to kind of make people aware of the big events that we're doing. We do, in addition to the fall workshop, we do some, we do monthly events. We call day Off. We have one of our board members, Sharon Lee, she owns a High Road Trucking, had this idea and her idea was let's give an opportunity for touring people to get together once a month, but not necessarily in a bar environment, bar bar environment. Not that that's wrong, we love a good bar environment. But. You're promoting all this stuff you're trying to teach people to stay away from.

1:08:45 Yeah, that's the hard part. Yeah. So we've done things like we've we've done, we went to a baseball game, we they went kayaking, we did Top Golf, We've done all these other things. Just giving people the opportunity to just get together and get to know each other and we do those every month. That's cool. That's really cool. It sounds like you're well funded. So is, is that industry funding or is that more on the sort of supply side like these, you know, whether it's it's HR companies or payroll companies or those types of? I will say, yes, we are well funded, but we can always use more. So anybody out there listening, don't forget us, but we're actually getting ready to start our big donation drive here in the next couple weeks. But no, all of our all of our donation money comes from vendors, manufacturers and companies associated with live entertainment.

1:09:37 Yeah. You know it pretty much if you, if you name it a production vendor in Nashville, they have or do sponsor us. Now again, manufacturers have stepped up. We've, you know, Robbie and Elation and Chauvet, they've all been great sponsors of ours for years. Yeah, that's fantastic. Really, really great. You know, through the podcast, we'd love to help however we can. So, you know, just reach out to me, reach out to Sarah and, and just say, hey, you know, if you guys could help us promote this or you, if you could help with this, You know, the podcast itself doesn't make a lot of money. So it's not like we're we're going to be, you know, throwing out sponsorship dollars or anything, but certainly will help bring in sponsors similar to some of the stuff I've done with with Jim Digby in the USA, you know, just promoting the USA and, and talking about it as at any opportunity, I think.

1:10:34 Do you involve yourself with them a little bit as well or? I love Jim. I think he's a great man. He's actually, he's been a part of our workshops two or three times. He was actually our keynote several years ago. And I'm a member of the ESA. I think I love what they do. I think they're. Fantastic. Yeah. It's an important organization and it's really a sad but interesting story on how it kind of came about or how the need for it came about with Jim, you know, when when the the system went crazy and killed a girl, you know, it was an incredible story. I was like, oh, my God. Like, I didn't know the story when he told it to me on the podcast. But.

1:11:15 And I understand you also get involved with the Acms and Cmas and so you're a bored kind of guy. Yeah. Well. Yeah, apparently. Well, I'm an admitted workaholic. I, I don't have a ton of hobbies, so I, I love to work. I love our industry. Yeah, on the board of the Acms and Cmas, I'm one of the, there's only a couple of live event people on the boards. And so I love being a representative for our industry on there because both boards were doing great things with, with financial support on, on both of those boards have charitable wings that have done a lot of great financial support for our industry, but also they both back mental health initiatives and just general, you know, seminars and other networking things that they do CMA has hosted the, you know, the touring awards. You know, it's, it's become this great event here in Nashville that it's like, it's like a high school reunion. It's that one time a year we know we're all going to be in the same room and, and get to celebrate each other. And it makes real quick on that because I think it's such a great event That's we do that every January. But the amount of artists that show up to support their cruise is one of the most beautiful things I've seen. Looking though I had, I got on stage this year to talk about a mentorship program we're doing with the Cmas. And I look out and there's Laney Wilson and Chris Stapleton and the Old Dominion guys, all they're doing nothing but supporting their crews.

1:12:41 And I just. That always means that's awesome. Yeah. Well, and it, you know, I hate to suggest that I'm putting down any other artists, but country artists seem to be much more into that kind of thing. You know, like they, our crew is our family more so than the pop stars and, and even some of the rock stars and stuff. Not sure why. Like, I don't even know if that's fully true, but that's the impression that I get. Yeah, yeah. No, it's, you know, the Nashville touring models always been one of the beautiful things I love about this industry. You know, we call it the weekend Warrior model. Where you you leave out on Wednesday night, you do shows Thursday, Friday, Saturday in your home Sunday. So you're getting this beautiful balance of home life with your family and then Rd. life. And because so many of the artists embrace that lifestyle as well, so many of these country artists, they literally do treat their crews like family. And yeah, the pandemic here in town, I can't speak to the rock world because I don't do a lot in that world other than festival stuff.

1:13:40 But the country industry, most artists took care of their people during the pandemic so well. When they had no income, no shows, they did their best. Even if they can only pay 25% of salary or whatever it was, they did their best to help. And. This shows you what country music artists are like. Well, I know a lot of rock bands that didn't, you know, and, and I won't mention specific names, but you know, there's a particular very good friend of mine who's worked for a band for a lot of years, a lot of years. And he was practically destitute. And, you know, the band who had loads and loads and loads of money didn't take care of any of their people. And, you know, it caused him to to be a little bit, you know, angry or, or, or sad, you know, I don't know. He was just like, I can't believe after having served these people for so long that they're just leaving me to rot And, and everyone else too, not just me. I wasn't prepared for this, but neither was anybody else around me.

1:14:42 And so it's nice to hear that so many artists were not that way. Oh, absolutely. No, it was, it was really. I love watching who truly care about their people and and stood up and did. It was a beautiful thing to watch. Yeah, I mean, so your kids are all grown up, right? So it's not like they're all going Daddy, daddy, daddy, let's go to the park. I want to throw the football. Our youngest is, is getting ready to enter his senior year in high school. So we're, we're yeah, we're on the home stretch here. Yeah, Yeah. No, I was just curious because I know one of the challenges in our industry, summers, especially when you're big into festivals like you are, summers tend to get eaten up with a lot of work.

1:15:24 And that means less family time, less ability to go do things with your kids. And kids I think are pretty awesome at understanding that for the most part. I think some of them get angry when they turn into teenagers and they start thinking their parents are the devil 'cause they didn't play baseball with them every, you know, Saturday like other dads did or whatever. But but yeah, I guess Sears are grown up, so that's not as much of an issue. They are. But look, I'll tell you, especially as I look back like, and we all know this, all of any of us that has raised a child in, in, in this industry know this. I mean, you definitely have some cats in cradle cats in the cradle moments where you, you realize that you missed out on a lot of stuff.

1:16:07 And, and I hate it. It'll be one of my life's regrets that I missed out. I missed out on a lot of first days of school, but I've tried to be there for as much as I could. And the other thing I've done is I try to make what time I do have count. Like I when I'm home, like today and I'm, I'm working, I will try to shut down at 5:00 and less urgent, no 5:00 till I go to bed, which at age that much later. That's family time. That's good for you. And even to your point, looking at my summer schedule is making sure these little three or four day pockets of time I have between festivals, then we booked something we just got back yesterday from going to the Smoky Mountains just because that was the four or five days we could fit it in.

1:16:53 To go. Do things as a fancy. Good for you. Yeah, that stuff's important, man. Like, I mean, if if you came back from, you know, a four week tour or something and went to play golf with your buddies for three days, what message is that sending to your wife or to your kids or whatever? Right. It's like, hey, you're not very important to me. These, these my buddies playing golf, that's more important to me and not so good. Probably not the smartest thing you've done, right. But but yeah, no, it's great to hear that you've got that kind of balance going on 'cause it is hard. I mean, for me, not so much. You know, I've always either been on the vendor side, the, the manufacturer side, or, you know, with gear source. It's, it's a remote company.

1:17:36 So literally you can be anywhere in the world and, and run that company. And so the bigger problem with me was my son's racing cuz he, he was racing two or three weekends a month usually. And that a weekend was usually leave on Wednesday, come back on Monday. So you know, it's pretty much a week. And what ended up happening is, you know, my ex-wife, myself and my son, we all celebrated a lot of birthdays, a lot of wedding anniversaries, a lot of different things at the racetrack as opposed to, you know, at a resort or something, right? Sure. But, but it is what it is. So these are the sacrifices, whether it was for his career or for my career or whatever, right? Do what you got to.

1:18:18 Say yeah, did we miss anything? I feel like we've missed something here. So what? What are you doing now? Like lots and lots of festivals I guess for the summer. Yeah, I've got a really, my career's a really cool spot. I still put out two or three tours a year because I love tour design. It's so fun. I love putting on that creative hat and I still get to put out two or three tours a year. But a lot of my work has become festival work and especially network. What I love about that, two things I love is I love looking at my calendar in January, knowing, oh, I've got these 10 things already lined up for the remainder of the year. But I also love the idea of staying in a hotel or Airbnb for a week.

1:19:01 You know, kind of the other thing I love about festival work is at any given time that we leave for Lollapalooza this Sunday, you know, I'm going to come across 40 LDS while I'm there. Just, you know, getting to see them, see old friends, make some new friends and, and, you know, put on that hat and, and just interact with them. I really enjoy that. Yeah, you need to try and keep up with Cosmo on the selfies though. You know, Cosmo is Cosmo is the selfie king. You know, Hey, look who I'm with now, Look who I'm with now, Look who I'm with now. It's, it's awesome. I mean, you know, some people, I, I hear people poking at them, which I just kind of did. But I love the pictures 'cause I'm like, Oh my God, Bob. I haven't seen Bob in friggin 25 years or whatever. Right.

1:19:46 And, you know, it's certainly better than the alternative, which is Bob's no longer with us, right. So I love those pictures. And, and I know that that's why Cosmo does it too. You know, nobody, I don't think on the planet has more friends than Cosmo does. It's it's insane. But, you know, the sad thing is you don't see anybody posting as many, like, obituaries as as Cosmo either. Yeah. So that's the downside of having lots of friends. Yeah. No, that's a good point. That is. Good. Yeah, but, well, you know, I appreciate you taking the time to do this. Sorry about the little snafu with Chrome at the beginning. No, we made it some Mac.

1:20:27 I'm sure it's a Mac thing. But nothing like pissing you off right before you got to get on and record a podcast. No technology pisses me off. No, I was glad to be here. I just. I get technologically challenged sometimes, but. No, we, we got it done and I appreciate it. And for sure reach out to us about the, the touring career workshop, if, if there's anything at all we can do, you know, promote something, help with something, whatever it is like it's, it's an important thing. And I love what you're doing there. Well, I appreciate it. We appreciate the support we'd love to have y'all even just help spread the word. Means of time, because like I said, we do, we are 501 C three. We do survive off of donations and so even just getting the word out helps on time.

1:21:15 Yeah, yeah. And so again, for people to find that it's touring careerworkshop.com or go to any of the socials and just search for touring career workshop. Yeah. I think we're at touring workshop on Instagram and may even may even be the same thing on Facebook, but. Yeah, easy to find. We do a good job of posting our event info on there and keeping our back tool going on. Very cool. Awesome. Well, thanks so much Chris and enjoy the rest of your summer. Yes, Sir, you too.