What it's like to tour with me
I've worked as a FOH engineer, monitor engineer, tour manager, and production manager - sometimes all four on the same tour. The roles are different, but the way I approach them is the same.
This is what that looks like.
Health and safety above all else
No show is worth a serious injury. No deadline is worth driving through the night on no sleep. No budget pressure is worth putting a band or crew in an unsafe situation. I will stop work, delay load-in, or escalate to venue management the moment a situation crosses a safety line, and I won't apologize for it.
Drive times. I follow a hard limit on consecutive driving hours. If we need to stop, we stop. If a routing means choosing between sleep and making doors on time, we find another solution, we don’t skip the sleep.
Load-in conditions. Wet stages, unstable risers, inadequate lighting, crew working without appropriate PPE: I flag these immediately. If a venue won't address a hazard, I document it and escalate.
Physical and mental health on the road. Tour is hard on bodies and minds. I keep track of how my crew is doing. I build in recovery time where I can. I don't run a culture where people feel they have to push through illness or exhaustion to prove something.
My own limits. I hold myself to the same standard. If I'm compromised, sick, exhausted, or dealing with something personal, I'll say so and we'll figure it out together. You can't take care of anyone else if you're running on empty.
A tour that finishes healthy is a successful tour, even if some nights didn't go perfectly.
The artist comes first
Everything I do on a tour is in service of the artist's performance.
This sounds obvious. It's not always practiced that way.
I've worked with engineers who seem to think that people came to the show to hear them mix. With tour managers whose daily agenda is about their own efficiency, not the artist's headspace. With production managers more concerned with hitting their load-out time than whether the artist feels set up to do their best work.
That's not how I operate.
The show is for the audience, and the audience's experience lives or dies on how the artist performs. Technical perfection that leaves an artist feeling unsupported, unheard, or anxious is a failure. A show that wasn't technically flawless but had the artist firing on all cylinders, feeling confident and connected to the room, that's a success.
I build monitor mixes around how each artist hears themselves. I keep the backstage environment calm and organized. I check in after soundcheck, after the show, after anything that went sideways. The artist trusts me with their performance. I take that seriously.
Mixing is only 20% of the job
The most valuable thing I bring to a tour isn't technical. It's the ability to read a room. To communicate clearly with a nervous artist at 4pm when the PA sounds wrong and everyone is on edge. To de-escalate a situation with a difficult local crew without blowing up the relationship we need for the rest of the night. To tell a promoter something they don't want to hear in a way they can actually receive.
People skills are the job. Technical skills are the entry fee.
The best shows I’ve ever worked weren't the ones where my mix was the most sophisticated. They were the ones where the artist walked offstage feeling like they'd done their best work. Those two things aren't always correlated.
Problems get solved before they reach the artist
At the core of everything I do, in every role, I'm a problem solver. Problems on tour are not a matter of if, they're a matter of when. My job is to see them coming, build systems that prevent as many as possible, and have a plan ready for the ones that get through anyway.
If I'm doing my job correctly, the artist doesn’t find out about most problems until after I've already solved them. That's not about keeping secrets. It's about protecting the one thing that matters most: the artist's mental and emotional bandwidth before a show.
An artist who walks into a venue and immediately hears about the PA problem, the missing backline, the promoter being difficult about the guarantee - that artist walks onto the stage carrying all of it. It shows up in the performance. The audience feels it even if they can't name it.
When something goes wrong, my first move is to solve it, not to report it. I work the problem. I exhaust my options. I call in favors, get creative, and apply pressure where it's needed. If I do have to bring the artist or management in, I come with the problem and a plan, never just the problem.
There are exceptions. If a problem directly affects the artist's decisions - a significant budget issue, a safety concern, a situation where their input is actually needed - I bring it to them. But I bring it calmly, with options, and with a clear ask. Not as a panic, not as a venting session, not as an invitation to spiral.
For anything critical, I have a backup, and a backup for the backup. The redundancy gets built in long before load-in, when there's still time to think clearly. This extends to scheduling. Things go wrong on tour. I build buffer time into every schedule so that when something goes sideways, it's an inconvenience rather than a crisis. A schedule with no slack isn't a schedule. It's a countdown to a bad day.
The other part of this is knowing when to start working the contingency. I don't wait for plan A to collapse before I think about plan B. The moment I have an inkling that something might be going sideways - a gut feeling, a venue response that's a little too vague, a piece of gear that's behaving slightly off - I'm already working on plans C and D in the background. By the time a problem becomes obvious to everyone else, I've usually already mapped three ways out of it.
I am the buffer
In every role - FOH, MON, TM, PM - my job is to sit between the artist and everything that could go wrong with the venue, the promoter, the local crew, the gear, and the logistics.
The venue is behind on changeover. The monitor system isn't responding to MIDI recall. The promoter is trying to renegotiate the deal at load-in. The local crew chief has a different idea about where the barricade goes. These are my problems to solve, not the artist's.
Being a buffer also means being an advocate. If something matters to the artist, a specific stage setup, a hospitality request, a production element the venue is pushing back on, I fight for it. Professionally, diplomatically, and persistently. Venues push back on riders for all kinds of reasons, some legitimate and some not. It's my job to know the difference, find a workable solution when there is one, and hold the line when there isn't. The artist shouldn't have to go to bat for their own needs. That's what I'm there for.
From the artist's side of that wall, everything should look smooth, easy, and taken care of. They should be able to focus entirely on the performance because they trust that someone competent is handling everything else.
That trust isn't automatic. It's built over the course of a tour, one small handled moment at a time. Every time I absorb a problem before it reaches them, every time I deliver a solution instead of a complaint, every time I say "don't worry about it, I've got it" and then actually have it, that trust gets a little stronger.
By the end of a long run, the artist should feel like touring is easy. Not because it is, but because I've made it look that way.
How I work in each role
As a FOH engineer
I think of myself as another audience member. My job isn't to demonstrate technical sophistication. It's to make the show sound the way it should feel. If I'm doing it right, I'm genuinely enjoying what I'm hearing from FOH, the same way someone who paid for a ticket would. That's the calibration I trust.
I advance technical requirements thoroughly. I'll have the venue's PA spec, the monitor setup, and any known problems with the room before we arrive. If a venue has unusual requirements, I'll work them out before load-in rather than on the fly.
I keep FOH organized and professional. When something goes wrong mid-show - a failed input, a feedback moment, an RF dropout - I handle it. The artist should feel it get fixed, not hear me explaining what happened.
As monitor engineer
Monitor world is where trust lives. If an artist doesn't trust their monitor engineer, the performance suffers. It's that simple. I build that trust by listening first. I ask questions at soundcheck. I watch how the artist moves and responds to their mix. I learn what they can't tell me in words.
If an artist's mix doesn’t sound, or more importantly feel, good to them, I take ownership of fixing it.
As tour manager
My job as TM is to make sure the artist never has to think about logistics. If they're wondering whether the hotel is confirmed or whether the rider shop will be in the green room when we arrive, I haven't done my job.
I run daily financial reports. Every expense is tracked and accounted for. Management gets a clear picture of where money is going, and the artist never has to play accountant on the road.
I advance every show in writing. I document the things venues tell me verbally, because verbal commitments have a way of disappearing by load-in.
Master Tour is up to date at all times. The moment I have information - a confirmed hotel, an updated load-in time, a new contact at the venue - it goes in. Not later that day, not when I have a few minutes. Immediately. Everyone who needs to know where to be and when should be able to open the app and trust that what they're looking at is current. That only works if it's actually maintained that way, so I maintain it that way.
As production manager
I build riders that reflect what the artist actually needs. A good rider is a communication tool, not a list of demands.
I build stage plots and input lists that local crews can actually follow. I keep them updated when the setup changes. I advance technical requirements far enough out that problems can be solved before load-in. I don't leave known issues for the day of show.
I respect local crew. They know their room, their gear, and their venue better than I do. I work with them, not over them.
If any of this sounds like the kind of person you want in your corner on the road, let's talk.
