Hayley: Is there anything you’ve learned over time about working in events that you could only have learned through on-the-job experience?

Natalie: A lot. A lot. I think the main thing is that 90% of the people that work in this industry are winging it. [That] as much as you might look at other people and think ‘Oh my god, they know exactly what they’re doing!’, a lot of the time, they’re just going with the flow. 

When I first started repping, I was really quite obsessed with everything going to plan and running on time, which just doesn’t bode well with live events, because a lot of the time, things go wrong and you have to have the flexibility to work around that. Eventually, I had to take a step back and be like ‘OK, if it doesn’t go on time, it’s not the end of the world’. I used to be a bit of a stress head, but I think I’ve calmed down a lot. I’m OK with things going wrong. I feel like I’m quite good at problem solving on the spot now, which I don’t think I was [in the beginning]. I’d get a bit overwhelmed and panicky, whereas now I’m like ‘OK, I can come up with a solution for this’. But I think that’s something you only really learn through experience. 

To be honest, I think repping is something that you just have to start doing—just start at the bottom and work your way up—because there’s no guide on how to do it. A lot of people have different ways of doing it too. I’ve worked with loads of reps who’d work a show completely differently to the way that I’d do it. I think you find your style and then you roll with it, but a lot of it you learn just by doing the job. 

Do you think you had an idea of what the industry was like before you joined it?

I think I had a glamourized idea of it. I saw it as this very far away, magical industry, where everyone was beautiful and polished… I thought working in the music industry was going to be glamorous and it’s not. I think that dawned on me when I was doing a festival once and the headline band got out of their tour bus and they were all in their pyjamas. They [wore them in] their dressing room and I think they even did soundcheck in them. [The singer] had the most beautiful voice, but [in that moment] she was just a normal person. I was like ‘Oh, OK. This isn’t that far away, magical world that I thought it was’.

[It’s different] now, because you see everything on social media, but when I was younger, the only things I used to see were documentaries about bands [which showed that] sex, drugs and rock and roll [lifestyle], and actually, most bands now don’t drink. Or they drink, like, kombucha. It’s all very calm and everyone’s really healthy. All the riders that I used to get were for ginger shots and IV fluid, which is not what I expected! 

It’s very different to what I [imagined], but I actually think I prefer it. There’s a real camaraderie within the industry, especially when you work within live music. I don’t want to say it’s like trauma bonding, but in a way, it is! Everyone’s tired, everyone’s pissed off to an extent, but you all just kind of get along. Especially when you’re working a long shift or a long event, you’ll become friends with people that you’ve never met before. It’s nice. I think my idea [of the industry] was very wrong, but [the reality] is better than what I expected it to be. 

Are you a 90s baby too?

Yeah, ‘96.

I’m ‘94 and can really relate to what you were saying there. I’m sure we saw a lot of the same stuff that made the industry seem wild and exciting, and not always even in a good way. It was a very particular kind of lifestyle that glamourized stuff like having three hours sleep… 

Completely. I think there’s still an element of that glamorization around not sleeping. It’s almost like people are in competition about how much they’ve worked. I don’t really know if that happens in many other industries. It might happen in accounting, I don’t know, but it seems really rife in music. People will be like ‘I’ve only slept for two hours this week and I’ve not eaten for the last four days…’, [and then] I feel like I’m falling behind if I have eight hours sleep. It’s not healthy to try and compete with each other about how little you sleep. That’s not a thing.

What got you into music when you were younger? Was there anyone or anything in particular that influenced your taste?

I think it was my Mum and Dad mostly. They’re not by any means working in the industry, they’re both ex-military, [though] my Dad used to DJ when he was younger. When I was about 11 or 12, listening to Hannah Montana and High School Musical, I remember him coming into my room with a stack of CDs, passing them to me and [saying] ‘You might like it, you might not [but] I want you to listen to these, because you’re doing my fucking head in [with that stuff] now!’. It was Joy Division, New Model Army, Nirvana, The Who… Joy Division in particular really stood out to me and then, that night, I watched Control [the Ian Curtis biopic]. Ian Curtis’s daughter is also called Natalie, so I was like ‘It’s meant to be!’. Weirdly, I really loved that unhealthy looking lifestyle that the music industry was all about [back then]. I kind of craved that chaos. 

I ended up doing Psychology and Criminology at uni, because it was the only thing I thought I liked. I did that for two years and then had a bit of a breakdown to my Dad, like ‘I want to work in music!’ and he was like ‘Nope, that’s not a thing!’. He suggested that I do something on the side, so I looked into it and there was a radio station at UCLAN in Preston, the uni I was at. I applied for that and ended up having a radio show every Monday, and because I was in this Facebook group for journalists, they were inviting people to interview bands. The first band I interviewed was Frank Carter and the Rattlesnakes, which was a bit of an in-at-the-deep-end moment, but I really enjoyed it. Then, I was on my way to meet my friend before their gig and I walked past BIMM. I was like ‘Fuck off can you go to uni to study music!’. I applied without really telling anyone [and] I wanted to do music business because I didn’t really know which area of the industry I wanted to go into. People kept saying [that I should] do journalism, but I don’t think I really wanted to. I think I just wanted a way in[to the industry]. I kind of figured out I really liked live music through that. 

That’s wild that you walked past BIMM, completely by coincidence. Had you literally never heard of it before?

No! It was a serendipitous moment. I [thought] ‘OK, you can actually go to uni [to do music], which gives me a reason to tell my Dad. There are statistics here that show people do get jobs in the music industry’. He was like ‘Yeah, fair enough. Do whatever makes you happy’. I’m one of those people that believes things happen for a reason, and I really do think that happened for a reason, because I wasn’t happy doing psychology and I really loved being at BIMM. A lot of people slag it off, but it’s one of those places where it’s what you make of it. Like, if you actually do the [extra] things that they put out, you’re sorted. If you just sit there and think ‘I’ll get my degree and then someone’ll come and knock on my door and offer me a job in the music industry’... That’s not how it works. I thought it was great. I don’t think I would have got the job I got [with Now Wave] had I not been there, [or at least] it would have been very difficult. So yeah, that’s the long story short of why I chose this career path!

And why did you choose Manchester? Whereabouts are you from originally?

I’m a navy brat, so I’m kind of from all over the place. I was born in Plymouth, if that’s any help? But I moved around a lot because of my Dad’s job. I lived in Portugal for, like, 15 years. Then I came back [to the UK] to go to uni, because I didn’t want to go to uni in Portugal, and ended up in Preston because that was closest to where most of my family lived. 

But I’d [previously come] to Manchester when I was about 13—my uncle lived here at the time—and was like ‘Oh my god, this is amazing!’. It was always a bit of a pipedream to live here, and then obviously I started coming more once I was in Preston, because it’s only 40 minutes [away] on the train. I just sort of fell in love with the place. It sounds really cliche, but I think because I was so into Joy Division and all the other bands that have come from here… I have no family in Manchester, I’m not from Manchester by any means, but it was the only place I’ve ever really been where I’ve [felt] like ‘OK, this feels like home to me’. 

What a lovely endorsement of the city! Did you spend your formative years in Portugal then? Is that where you would have gone to some of your first gigs? 

Yeah. I think I probably would have gone to a lot more if I’d have been [in Manchester] then. I still went to a lot [of gigs], but it was small bands or my mates' bands that I’d go and see. I think if I’d have been here, I’d have been at gigs a lot earlier, but it was kind of nice in a way, because when I [arrived in Manchester], I was really excited to see all these bands that I’d been listening to in Portugal. I lived in the middle of nowhere, so it wasn’t really accessible for me to go to gigs. I’d have to get a bus or a train [to somewhere] two hours away, whereas [in Manchester], I was like ‘Shit, it’s round the corner from my house, this is great!’. It was nice to have that excitement at 19 or 20 years old [when] most people have it at like, 14. It was a nice experience to come here and be like ‘This is amazing!’. 

Do you think growing up in a remote area—and in a foreign country—almost added to the music industry’s exoticism? I imagine it would have felt even further away in Portugal.

I think so, yeah. Obviously, I was English living in Portugal, so I always felt like a bit of an outsider anyway. England felt really far away for some reason, and I was seeing all these bands online and on telly [thinking] ‘That’s where I’m from!’. It was a weird [source of] pride. People in Portugal really idolise English bands in particular too, so I was always like ‘I’m from England!’. It definitely added to the excitement and that [illusion] of the mystical world I thought it was.  

So you move to Manchester, go to BIMM and graduate in 2020, straight into a pandemic. With you saying that your Dad was a bit sceptical about you going into the industry in the first place anyway, did that cause any additional panic, either for yourself or your parents?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it was weird because every industry kind of went tits up, so I don’t think he was overly worried about it, but I think it put [things] into perspective, especially because I was freelance. My Mum and Dad—and me—have always been a bit worried about me going freelance again, because there’s no job security. I mean, I worked throughout [COVID], but I worked for The Perfume Shop. It was nothing to do with my industry. That’s one of the reasons that moving into freelancing [again] now has taken me so long. I was just coming out of uni and starting to get these bigger shows under my belt, and then it all just went quiet. I think they had faith in me at that point [though] that it was going to be alright and [eventually] things picked up again. If anything, it was a bit of a blessing in disguise, because I was so busy [once things opened up again]. I don’t think I stopped for the whole year after COVID, it was just gig after gig after gig that had been rescheduled. It was definitely a bit of a panic at the time though. I was like ‘Trust me to go into a fucking industry that can’t exist without people!’. It put it into perspective too, working for The Perfume Shop, that I [couldn’t] do a fucking desk job. I have to be busy. 

How quickly did you decide that you wanted to go into the live side of things?

I think it was because I started doing a lot of the stuff that they would put out [at BIMM], like [ads for] volunteers for festivals. It was usually that you [would volunteer in exchange for] a free ticket to the festival and I was like ‘Yeah, might as well do a couple of hours’ work for a free festival ticket’. Then I did, I think, Dot to Dot [Festival] and was working alongside someone at AATMA. She was a rep and I was helping her, and I really, really enjoyed it. It was a long shift and I didn’t get paid, but she was teaching me about what she did. I was like ‘This is the most hands-on experience I can get and the most hands-on job I can get’. As I say, I’m not really an office person. I can’t do that. I tried my hand at artist management and, again, it was too adminny. I had always loved going to gigs and then I realised you could actually work behind the scenes of [them]. I was like ‘This is the best case scenario for me’. 

I thought I wanted to work at a record label. I don’t think I really knew what it entailed, I just thought it sounded cool. I didn’t know that repping was a thing, but I had to do 40 hours of work experience as part of my first year at BIMM and I got in touch with Strange Days, the promoters. Mark got back to me and was like ‘Yeah, you can come and do work experience as a rep!’ and I was like ‘As a fucking what now?’. It came pretty naturally to me, because I really like organising things and I like looking after people. I’d done stage management for a festival in Portugal [before]—again, 16 hour days for three days and I didn’t get paid—but [repping] was the first time I’d ever done a job where I genuinely felt like I was good at it, and I’ve not really felt that since to be honest. I think I’m really good at repping and I’m really good at running a gig, but I don’t think I’m very good at much else—which [could] sound really depressing, but I’ve found my niche, it’s fine!

“[Repping] was the first time I’d ever done a job where I genuinely felt like I was good at it.”

It must have been a relief in some ways to have found your place so early on. Would you say that work experience with Strange Days was when it all clicked for you?

Pretty much. I loved it. The good thing about BIMM is that, if you’re working in the industry alongside your degree, they don’t really care if you miss a few lessons here and there, because you’re actively doing what they’re asking you to do. So I could dip in and out of doing that, I worked at festivals in stuff in summer [too], and I was dating a guy in Portugal who was in a fairly big band over there, so when I would go back for summer, I was always at his gigs and would go in the van with them for a few [shows]. But I just loved the atmosphere. I really liked seeing [it through, from] the moment that it starts, when you’re setting everything up, to the end. It’s such a contrast. I was really lucky that I found [my passion] so early on, because it meant that I could spend the rest of my degree focusing on that, rather than not really having an objective. I knew that’s what I wanted to do. 

It must have been really helpful to have that kind of direction too, to know where you were heading.

It’s so much easier. Any essays that you’re writing, you can direct them towards that too, so it builds up your portfolio a bit [as well].

I always thought it was really weird that I actually enjoyed my job, because I didn’t think that was a possibility. I felt really lucky and having Strange Days [introduce me to repping] was a massive blessing. I love that company and those guys so much, and I’m so happy that they gave me that opportunity. I remember them paying me on the night and I was like ‘I’m doing work experience, what the fuck are you doing paying me?’. When I’d done the 40 hours, they asked me to stay on and it was great, and it was kind of through doing that that I started getting work with Now Wave.

I think that was because I ambushed [one of their reps,] Tom Stabler, at a club night. Somebody had told me that he was the golden boy of repping and that I was one step below him, so [after that] I made it my life’s mission to be better than Tom Stabler. I will never be better than Tom Stabler, but I remember going up to him like ‘You’re the golden boy of repping and I need to know why!’. He put me on Psych Fest after that. I was like ‘I don’t know why you’d have a drunk woman repping your stage, but great’. 

It just felt like the right job for me. I think it’s the only time I’ve told somebody what I do and I’ve genuinely, in my head, been like ‘Yes, that’s the right thing to be doing.’. When I told people I was doing psychology, I just did not believe it. 

I’m not super well-versed in the world of repping, but from what I can gather, it’s the kind of work that you’re often expected to do ‘for the experience’ in the beginning.

It can be, definitely. It’s one of those things where, as I was saying, you have to do it to get the experience. It’s not really a job where you can say ‘I have a degree, therefore you need to pay me’. I had no idea what I was doing for the first few shows. [But] you get to a point where you’re confident in [a venue] like The Castle—which is where I did my first show—and then you go on to a bigger venue, where there’s different things you need to do and then [once you’re confident there,] you go on to a bigger show where there are different things you need to do again. 

I feel like the bigger the show, the less you actually do as a rep, because there are other staff members there [to support you]. When you’re in a small venue, you’re doing everything. You’re one person doing everyone’s job. But when you’re [somewhere] like the Ritz or New Century, you’ve got so many people there to help you and you’ve usually got crew there [as well]. I’m not fucking dragging flight cases around, because somebody’s doing it for me!

It’s difficult to assert yourself when you have to do [the job] to get experience though. I was really lucky, as I say, that Strange Days paid me £30 to do a show. Most people wouldn’t have paid me to do my first show, but I think as you gain more experience, you get to a certain level where I think you can start to say ‘I’ve got a lot of experience in this job, you need to pay me properly’. But it takes a while. It takes a year, I’d say—[maybe] a few years—to establish yourself in that industry. 

Was it ever a case of weighing up the experience on offer—whether that be professional experience that might lead to bigger and better shows in the future, or the experience of being able to work at a certain venue or with a certain band—with the pay, or lack thereof, being offered?

That’s why I think it’s really difficult. Because it’s such a passion-driven industry, people will [work for free] because ‘Oh, I really like that band’ or ‘If I work at that venue, it might lead me to this’. People can take advantage so easily, because everyone is so passionate. You don’t work in this industry if you haven’t got any passion for it, because a lot of the time, it’s shit pay and it’s long hours and it’s late nights. But yeah, there were definitely times that I had to weigh up my options, and if I was asked to work two shows on [the same] day, I had to decide which one was more beneficial, both financially and for my career. It is hard sometimes, but I think once you get to a certain place [in your career], people just expect to pay you. [For instance,] I don’t think anyone would expect me to work for free now, but [they] definitely [did] when I first started. But then I think, actually, doing a lot of things for free is probably why I got the job I got [with Now Wave]. I did it for a year maybe, and then I was like ‘Right, no. Now I have experience, you need to pay me’. But I always tell people that first year is for finding your feet and putting your name out there, for working for free, essentially, and volunteering. After that, you’ve got the experience, so you can ask for money. 

They aren’t the sort of jobs I’m searching for obviously, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a vacancy or an ad for a rep role on Indeed or LinkedIn, so where do you look for work? Is it that classic music industry thing of it being about who you know?

100%, yeah. I was trying to figure out how to become a tour manager and I knew that I couldn’t just type ‘tour manager jobs’ [into Google] because nothing was going to come up. I had to speak to people and I had to make the contacts. Every single job I’ve got in repping has been through word of mouth. It’s been somebody that’s recommended me to somebody else, or it’s been me speaking to somebody else and [going] from there. I’ve never got a job from going online and searching for one. Annoyingly, that’s just not how this industry works. It’d be a hell of a lot easier if it was! But I think it’s so competitive, that if they were to put an advert out [for a job like that], they’d get fucking hundreds of applications. I think a lot of it is that you come recommended and then people trust that you’re good enough [to hire]. It’s definitely not a LinkedIn job. It might be different with other people, but it’s only ever been word of mouth with me. 

With you mentioning the number of people who’d likely apply for roles like that, I suppose doing it through word of mouth or networking also acts as a bit of a filter. When you consider what those jobs entail, I guess you want those people who are friendly and resourceful, and out and about at gigs already. 

I always find it quite weird that there are networking events in the music industry. I mean, I’m just not a fan of those things. I don’t like the idea of going around, telling people what I do and trying to sell myself. I remember doing it in my first year and I just immediately hated it. It’s not for me. I don’t really think you need to [do it either]. Going to gigs is a good enough way of networking and speaking to people, [chatting] to the sound engineers or the venue managers when you’re working a gig, stuff like that. It really is such a small industry and everyone knows everyone. It doesn’t take long for people to start clocking onto who’s working where. I find networking a bit of a dirty word, in this industry [anyway].

So you mentioned that Strange Days was your starting point, but are there any other key moments you can pinpoint from across your career so far?

Working with Strange Days was a great starting point, because Mark and Nath always really backed me. They always really pushed me and they were always really confident in my abilities, even when I wasn’t, and I think that gave me more confidence too.

Then I think [another key moment was] when I was asked to manage Psych Fest [in 2022]. I’d [repped] The Pink Room [at YES] the first year it happened after COVID, which would have been 2021, and it was fucking mental. Because all the bands had been booked before COVID, they’d all massively shot up by the time it was happening, so all the bands [on that stage that year] were massive.

Was that the year with, like, Yard Act?

It was Yard Act, Los Bitchos, Dry Cleaning, English Teacher… All of these bands were huge and [their sets were so busy that] we couldn’t fit anyone else in the room. You still had to wear a mask. Crack Cloud were there as well. There’s like 19 of them and they arrived in a tour bus. I was like ‘You can’t come to YES in a tour bus!’. As soon as one band [had] finished, I had to kick them out of the dressing room and bring the next one straight in. It was a logistical fucking nightmare. I had to hide all of the rider at the back of the room and then carry crates of beer through the crowd. I was literally bashing people out of the way. I think I [worked] 16 hours or something stupid that day, but I got to the end of it and I was like ‘That was amazing, let’s do it again!’. 

The year after that, I got asked to manage it—to look after the [entire] festival—and that I think [has been] my favourite moment in my career so far. I did something ridiculous like 21 hours that day, but there was all of the work that I’d done in the lead up to it [as well]. I learnt so much. Gaz [from Now Wave] taught me loads of stuff about the logistics of organising a festival, [which] is mad, especially when you’ve got [around] 80 bands across 8 different venues. I learnt so much and then I did the shift and [the day] went really well, and I think it took me a few days to realise what I’d done—that I’d just managed a festival for the first time. That was definitely a big moment in my career.

I think [another key point] was when people started asking me to do stuff like this [project too]. When people started asking me to do panels, at first, I was like ‘...Why?’. But I’m also fully aware that I’m a woman in a pretty male-dominated field. I had to work twice as hard to get people to believe that I was actually good at my job. A lot of the time, I’d get people thinking that I was a girlfriend of the band when I walked in, the [usual] shit like that. When people started to realise that I worked in the industry, I think that was a big shift too and I definitely felt it, when people started to contact me about gigs. 

“I think it took me a few days to realise what I’d done—that I’d just managed a festival for the first time. That was definitely a big moment in my career.”

It’s really stood out to me that, so far, you’ve mentioned having a lot of backing from male colleagues early on in your career. Obviously, it’s important that we all support each other, but I don’t think it should be underestimated how powerful it can be for men who are able to support women in the industry.

A lot of them were, yeah, and it’s equally important. I think it was the fact that they were men who had all been in the industry for a long time as well. It was just really nice to have people believe in me, [people] who thought I was good at my job. I’ve got a lot of very, very strong women around me who [also] pushed me up, but [throughout] a lot of my initial career, it was a lot of the men around me [back then] who helped. It was Mark and Nathan [from Strange Days], Tom Stabler, Wes, Jon and Gaz from Now Wave, and my teachers as well—like Mike Hosker, who was my course leader—and Jeff [Thompson], who I used to do Unconvention with. They all really supported me throughout, and still do. But to me, [it felt] unusual that I had all these men supporting me. I think women are naturally quite supportive of each other anyway, but the men I was more shocked by.

Before we talk anymore about the actual work that you do, can I ask, in your opinion, what the differences are between artist liaison, stage management and event management?

So artist liaison is more [about] looking after the artists [themselves], so [things] like buying the rider and catering to whatever they need on the day. Stage management is more the production side and looking after all of the timings, so making sure that the crew are there and that the changeovers happen on time, stuff like that. It’s less person focused and more gig logistic focused. Then event management is all encompassing. You’re pretty much the first point of contact from when you start doing the advancing. It’s less hands-on and more [about] the organising. [For instance,] when I was doing Psych Fest, I’d say I was the event manager of Psych Fest, but a lot of that work… On the day, I was chilling. I was sat back, because I’d done all of the work prior to that [in the lead up]. I knew it was running on time and I had people working the different stages, so I didn’t need to [worry] about any of that. That’s the difference between the three jobs in my opinion. 

Do you think that having experience in such a variety of roles feeds into what you do now?

100%, yeah. I think you need to have that experience to be a good event manager. The event managers that I’ve worked with who haven’t, I find that they miss out certain things sometimes, whereas, because I’ve been on all sides of the job, I’m looking out for certain things, like if there are showers in the venue, if the band might want to get in a bit earlier [to use them], if there are things like towels on the rider… They sound like really stupid things, but a lot of the [job] is like babysitting. It’s like glamorized babysitting. 

As I say, I love organising shit, so it’s my dream job. Like, buying a rider and making it pretty? I love doing that. But I think it all definitely plays a part. In order to be a good event manager, you have to have an understanding of artist liaison, you have to have an understanding of stage management, you have to have an understanding of production management. Having said that, I’d only ever really done event management for music [prior to] this job I’m in now, [and] there are so many things that are different when it comes to corporate events and conferences. When you’ve got [corporate] clients, that’s completely different. I’m going in blind on stuff like that. 

You’ve mentioned organisation a few times now, but what other personality traits do you think make for a good event manager?

It sounds really cliché, but you know how everyone puts that thing [about] being calm in high pressure situations in a job application? That’s the most important thing I think, because if you start flapping, it makes it so much worse. I always say that my approach is to hope for the best, but prepare for the worst case scenario. I’ve always got contingency plans in place. I think having that foresight [to predict] what could go wrong is a really good skill to have, but again, that only comes with experience and [even now] there’s stuff that goes wrong that I have no experience with. I’m always like ‘Oh, for fucks sake!’, but after [it’s happened once], I know how to deal with it and it’s fine. So being calm in high pressure scenarios is a big one, definitely. 

Being able to talk to anyone [is important too], because it’s such a sociable job and you kind of have to leave any issues that you’ve got outside of work at the door. I used to have to put on a bit of a facade [in order to] be like ‘Hiya! Are you alright?’ and that can be quite tiring. It’s not for everyone, being in such constant social situations. Also, you’re working with people that have probably been on a tour bus or in a splitter van for the past four weeks and they’re tired, so you kind of have to match their energy. There are some bands that come in and they’re on the first day of their tour, [so] they’re high energy and they’re really excited, then there are [others] that come in and they just want to chill, they don’t want to be bothered, so I think having an understanding of people is really important too. Knowing when to just leave someone alone and when you can be that high energy version of yourself is something that I’ve learnt in this job. 

Being organised is a big one [though]. It took me a while! I was so fucking unorganised when I started. I think they’re the main things.

Is there anything you think might surprise people about the job?

It can be quite boring sometimes. I mean, I don’t think it’s boring at all, but I do think that some people would see it [that way]. I know that sounds really stupid, but it’s not the most glamorous job in the world. People always used to say to me ‘Oh, that’s such a cool job!’ and I’d be like ‘It’s not all that’. It’s great and I love it, but there’s a lot of waiting around and a lot of carrying stuff backwards and forwards. I mean, I used to come home covered in oil from flight cases and drum kits, it wasn’t a glamorous job by any means. I think if you go in thinking that it is, you’re going to be very disappointed very, very quickly. 

You’ve definitely got to have a lot of love for this sort of work. You have to work really hard and you have to work really long hours a lot of the time. I used to get a lot of [students] from BIMM come in and shadow me for the day when I was at Now Wave and I could see sometimes a bit of disillusionment [set in] because [they were] like ‘Is this all I have to do?’. Also, I had a routine—I knew what I was doing at what point—so it was really difficult for me to bring somebody into that, [although] I would try and teach them! People seem to think that all you do is spend all day hanging out with bands, but I didn’t see the bands very often. I was sat in a production room with the venue manager and the tour manager and the production managers, not sat having a drink with the band. That’s not part of the job! I think that surprises people a lot of the time. 

Also, you aren’t only going to work with bands that you like. You’re also going to work with people that you’re not really arsed about and that’s just part of [the job]. Unless you tour manage your favourite band, you’re going to work with some artists where you’re just like ‘Yep, that was a gig’. But again, it’s not about the music all the time—it’s about the people that you meet and the environment that you’re in. Because as much as I could not be a fan of a band, I always really enjoy seeing how people react to gigs. I love seeing people’s reactions to the people that I’ve spent the whole day with. If I told my younger self that this is my job now, she’d be like ‘That’s so cool!’. And it is. But it can be quite a repetitive job, doing the same thing again and again and again.

On that note, I remember feeling slightly fed up after a few months in the marketing role I have now, and having to give myself a talking to. Reminding myself that even though it’s a job in the music industry, at the end of the day, it’s still a job! There’ll be bits that I don’t enjoy, bits that I find boring… All the usual complaints. Maybe you don’t have such high expectations if you’re working in a—quote-unquote—‘normal’ job.

I think that’s it. People come into this industry thinking that it’s going to be exciting all the time and while it’s probably more exciting than a lot of jobs, there [still] are the odd days… I mean, my enthusiasm got shot down pretty quickly when I was asked to work with Jedward two nights in a row. I had a bit of a lightbulb moment where I was like ‘Oh god, I’m going to have to work with people that I don’t like listening to. That wasn’t part of my plan!’. But actually, there have been bands that I’ve not really been that bothered about or I’ve never heard of before and [then] I’ve watched their gig and been like ‘This is amazing!’. There are two sides to it. Sometimes you come out [of work] more excited because you’ve just [discovered] a band that you love. Sometimes you come out of [work] like I came out of Jedward: confused and wondering if this was [really] the job for me.  

With you saying earlier that a lot of the work, in your case, will take place before a show, does the show itself act as a bit of a pressure valve for you, especially if it’s been stressful in the lead up? Is seeing the band on stage and the audience enjoying themselves when you get your pay off?

It’s kind of different in the job I do now, because the advancing that I do now isn’t on the band side, it’s on the audience side, so I’ve got to think, operationally, how [that gig’s] going to go. [For instance,] we had 15,000 people in across three days for Fontaines D.C. and on the first night, they were giving out 1,000 balaclavas to the crowd. It was my job to [consider] what problems that could cause. [For instance,] if they give them out at the pit, are people going to crush to the front? Are people going to become completely unidentifiable, [meaning that] if somebody does something in the audience, I won’t know who they are because they’ve all got fucking balaclavas on?

I feel like when I was repping, [I’d do] all of this hard work and then a gig would happen, I’d see everyone really happy and the band would be enjoying it and I’d be fine. This job’s slightly different because I’m on edge the whole time that we’ve got that many people in the building. I’m like ‘Is the fire alarm going to go off, am I going to have to evacuate 5,000 people? Is there going to be a fight? Is somebody going to get too drunk? Where are the paramedics in relation to the people?’. Now, it’s like the gig finishes, everyone leaves the building, and then I can [relax], [whereas] before, it was seeing people’s reactions and how the band were reacting, and then them coming off stage.

I spoke to a friend for this series who now works in ticketing but started out as part of the crew. He said he likes working in that department now because he found that he was always too busy to actually enjoy whichever show he was working on when he had responsibilities on the night. Do you find that as well? Even if you’re a fan of whichever band might be playing, do you find you can’t really enjoy it?

Weirdly, I actually find it quite difficult going to gigs now as a punter, because I think I’m so hyper aware of every single element [that] my brain doesn’t really switch off. I used to go to gigs because it would give me a chance to switch off and focus on what was happening, but I don’t really feel like I can do that anymore. It’s kind of sad. Like, I went to see Phoebe Bridgers [recently] and because I saw the guy on the side of the stage flashing his light at the sound engineer, I knew exactly when she was coming on stage. No one else [there] probably clocked onto that. Or if there’s a tech issue, I’m always like ‘Shit!’ or if [the band] are late on stage, I’m like ‘Come on!’. I feel like I can’t compartmentalise my job from actually going to a gig I enjoy now. It’s really difficult, which is kind of sad actually. I don’t really go to gigs anymore, partly because it just feels like I’m going to work. That’s something I didn’t really consider [when I started in the industry].

That said, sometimes when I’m working a gig that I really enjoy—like with Fontaines, for example—I still manage to enjoy that. But there were moments… Like, they had a tech issue and we were like ‘We’ve got to do a show pause’. We didn’t know if they were going to get back up again, so it was like ‘Shit, am I going to have to get all of these people out of the building?’. So even though I was enjoying it, I’m not absorbed by the music anymore. It’s one of the things that I’ve struggled with in this job, losing that side of going to gigs. I’m hopeful it will come back [though]!

On the occasions that you’re working with bands you like, does it make the job more exciting? Or do you find it distracting or stressful?

It’s quite strange, because I’ve gotten to the point now where I can work with bands I really love and also know that they’re just completely normal people. I don’t get too stressed about it anymore. I’ve worked with a lot of bands I really like and when I was starting, yeah, I’d have been all over the shop. I’d have been excited, but I’d have been more stressed because I’d have been [thinking] ‘What if they hate me and it all goes terribly?’. Now, I think I’m just more used to it. I like having the opportunity to talk to people that I never thought I’d get to talk to, but in a calmer way than I would have done when I first started working in the industry. [Back] then, I would have been fangirling, but now I’m like ‘It’s just a band!’. Having said that, there are probably still certain people who I would pass out on the spot if I met. 

“I’ve gotten to the point now where I can work with bands I really love and also know that they’re just completely normal people.”

Does anybody come to mind?

Kate Bush. I mean, she’s never going to tour again is she, but I think if I met her, I’d just keel over. That’s probably it. Or Stevie Nicks. Stevie Nicks, definitely. 

How different is it working for an indie promoter like Now Wave compared to a big organisation like Aviva Studios? Also—potentially a related question—in what ways does your job change when the capacity of a gig or venue changes?

Working for an independent company, I was definitely [a lot] more comfortable. I felt like I could get away with being myself completely and that was nice, because I worked by myself a lot of the time. It’s very different when you go into a big corporate organisation. It was a big culture shock for me, [for example,] when I was told I couldn’t wear jeans to work or that I needed to stop swearing so much. I was like ‘What’s going on?’. It was a big culture shock and I think that’s why I’ve struggled… Not struggled in this job, but I’ve not really ever felt comfortable in this job because I’m so used to working in that independent capacity. It took me a while to switch my mind into working in a corporate setting, because I hadn’t been in one before. I’d never worked in that sort of [environment]. It’s a big difference working for the likes of Now Wave or Strange Days and then working for a [corporate organisation]. It kind of sucks the fun out of it. I used to have loads of fun at work. I was still doing my job, but I was having fun and I felt like I could have a laugh with people. I feel like they’ve toned me down a lot to fit in [at my current job]... which is why I’m leaving. 

With the capacity difference, I think there are elements that remain throughout 100 people to 10,000 people, but obviously it depends which side of it you’re looking at. If you’re looking at front of house, there’s a lot more to consider when you’ve got 10,000 people in because there’s a lot more that can go wrong. [That’s when] you have to look at security measures and the demographic [of the crowd], stuff like that.

From a band perspective [though], it’s pretty much the same [no matter what the capacity]. If you’re a rep, it doesn’t really matter, because the band are still going to go on stage, regardless of how many people are there [to see them]. The production levels will obviously be massively different [depending on the capacity], and the [chances] of you needing to get in at 7am for a load in [at a 100 capacity venue are pretty slim compared to] if it’s a bigger show… I think for repping, it’s pretty much standard for any size show, but for front of house, it can be massively different. There’s so much more work put into big shows. 

Would you say those same differences apply when it comes to gigs and festivals? Are there a lot of differences between those too?

Yeah, there are a lot of differences. When you’re working a gig, you don’t usually have event control, which is like security that looks over the whole event. [Before I worked in the industry,] I didn’t realise when I was at a festival that there were people watching me from above! There are just so many moving parts at festivals too. I did [Sounds of the City at] Castlefield Bowl a couple of years ago and I was there for like 14 days. There were so many moving parts and so many people involved. It really opened my eyes to the difference between a gig and a festival that’s running for that long. The amount of people that were coming in and all the different teams… You’d got the cleaners coming in at one point and then the bar staff coming in and then the security coming in and the paramedics coming in. You don’t really deal with that when you’re repping a show, so that was really eye opening, but also really cool. I loved it. I loved seeing all of the different parts. There’s so much work that goes on behind [the scenes of] something that big that I think people just wouldn’t realise if they don’t work in the industry. 

I think that’s one thing that really surprised me when I first started working on gigs. A lot of people just seem to think that the band turn up, play and then leave, but there are so many different people involved in putting on a show and so many different elements. Seeing behind the scenes is so fun. Sometimes I wish I didn’t have to, because then I could just go to a gig and be like ‘This band’s just got on stage, they were great and I can go home now.’. That’s genuinely what I thought for a long time, which is kind of mad [to think] now. 

How do you deal with the schedule that comes with working in events? You’ve mentioned a few times now that it’s long hours and late nights, but when you’re working 14 days straight, how do you make the time to look after yourself?

It took me a while to figure it out to be honest and I’m still not 100% certain that I’m there.

I think when you’re doing a festival and you’re doing it for, say, 14 days, you’ve kind of got a deadline in sight. You know that after 14 days, you can chill out. It’s different when you’ve got gig after gig after gig after gig. Like, the year after COVID, by the time December came, I was a fucking dead man walking. Everyone was, you could tell. There was this really weird vibe in the music industry where people were really short with each other and getting angry over [little] things, and it was just because everyone was so tired. We were doing probably three [or] four times the amount of gigs that we would do in a normal year because of the backlog, so people were fucking knackered and it is difficult to look after yourself [when you’re so busy]. I think, as I’m getting older, I can have a bit more of a work life balance, but at the time, I was so hyper focused on work that everything else kind of went out of the window.

Again, it’s that thing of it being such a passion-driven industry. People do it because they love it, which means they put more effort into it, which means they almost forget that they have a life outside of work. I think it’s important to kind of ground yourself and [say] ‘Alright, this is just a job’ and also to be careful about getting involved with that culture of ‘I’ve finished a show, I didn’t get to enjoy it like everybody else did, so now I’m going to go out and get pissed, because everyone else was getting pissed’. 

Especially when you’re working with bands and you’re buying the rider for them, you [might be] sat in your office [thinking] ‘I wish I could have a beer’. [But] then you’re burning the candle at both ends, staying out until 4 o’clock in the morning to then get back up the next day and do another gig, and then going out again and getting back up [and so on]. I think once the novelty wore off [for me], I was like ‘I need to chill out a bit and go home to bed after I’ve finished work’. But it is difficult. It’s great when you’ve got catering, because then you actually eat. I used to forget to eat all the time or I’d just be [existing] on meal deals. It’s not the healthiest of lifestyles, working in live music, by any means. 

There’s a woman that I follow on Instagram, she’s a monitor engineer for a touring band and she’s been in the industry for years. She meditates on tour in the tour bus and does breathwork, and posts about all these things she’s actively doing to look after herself while she’s on tour. I also just bought a book called Mental Health and Touring. I’m really interested in how [working in the industry] affects people’s mental health. I’m interested in seeing how people can [achieve] that balance, because I think it’s so normal for people in the industry to go full whack into that rock and roll lifestyle, but nowadays it’s changing a lot. You don’t get the riders that you used to of [stuff] like whiskey and cocaine. Like I said to you earlier, a lot of it is quite healthy now, so I think people are starting to cotton on that, actually, if you’re going to have a sustainable career for the rest of your life, you do have to chill out a bit. Not every night can be heavy drinking and staying out. I think [that shift] is helpful for everyone in the industry, the crew included. 

It’s not as cool anymore to be this wreckhead band. People just get annoyed with you now. It’s different when you’re crew, because you can’t get pissed on shift. It’s not an option. I never, ever drank on shift. In that sense, I’ve always looked after myself, but it is difficult. It’s something I’m still learning to do. There are more resources out there now and there’s more help out there now as well. Bands are starting to take therapists on tour and all sorts, so… It’s hopefully something that I’m going to get to the end of my career and [think] ‘I can do this really healthily now’.

With you mentioning the woman that you follow on Instagram, I think it’s really helpful when other people are open about how they deal with things. Hearing how someone else takes care of themselves can encourage you to do the same. I’ve heard a lot of people who work in the industry say recently they aren’t drinking at all at the moment, just because they want to stay sharp.

As I say, I never drank on shift, but at one point, I was burning the candle at both ends and I knew that the quality of my work was [suffering], so I just completely cut out drinking after work. I’ve always seen this as my job, regardless of the fact that it’s in music. It’s always been my career, so I’ve never wanted to fuck that up for myself. 

I mean, when you’re working behind the scenes—say, if you’re a sound engineer—you can’t drink because you’ve got to have your wits about you. Even if you're in the box office or repping, you need to be on it in case anything happens, so I do think it’s a bit of FOMO sometimes, like ‘Everyone else is drinking and having a great time [while] I’m running around like a fucking idiot!’. Sometimes at the end [of your shift], you’re just like ‘I need to relax.’. Also, I find it quite difficult when I go [straight] home after a really busy shift sometimes, because I can’t just go straight to bed [even though it is] 2 o'clock in the morning. My brain just won’t switch off. So stuff like that woman [on Instagram] speaking about meditation and all that is really, really helpful, because it’s more fun to work in this industry if you’re not fucking hanging out your arse every day, as I’m sure it is most jobs!

Would you say there are any other ways in which your work might have shaped you more personally?

It’s definitely made me… weirdly calmer, I think. I feel like I can problem solve a lot better now, and that’s kind of seeped into my [personal] life as well. This job has definitely shaped me [in the sense that] you do have a different outlook when you’re meeting loads of different people from all over the world. You get quite good at speaking to just about anyone, and like I was saying earlier, you get quite good at picking up on people’s cues as well. 

It’s difficult because [my current] job has definitely sidetracked me a bit. I was very comfortable just being myself in my last job, whereas now I’m definitely more professional, which is great, and I think I’ve grown up a lot in this job because the pressures are very high. To open a 7,000 capacity venue is actually pretty hard and I had to grow up a lot in this job, which I’m really grateful for. I’ve had a lot of training and it’s given me a lot of confidence in my abilities, [because before] I had only worked gigs, but I’ve worked all-fucking-sorts now. I think this whole [career’s] given me more confidence, because you have to push yourself to be more outgoing. Also, when I say that I grew up, I also [mean] recognising the need to look after yourself alongside your work. That was a big turning point, I think. I had to [move away] from that glamorized outlook that I had and be like ‘No, you have to eat properly and sleep properly and do all this [other] shit alongside that’.

I’m quite all or nothing when it comes to pretty much everything, so to not make my job everything about me is hard. I don’t want to say it’s completely shaped my personality, but it probably has in a lot of ways. I’ve probably completely changed as a person since I’ve been in this industry, and I think for the better for the most part. I mean, I was pretty shy when I was younger and I wouldn’t consider myself particularly shy now. 

Do you think the direction you want to take your career in has changed at all over time? As in maybe, originally, your aspirations were based around things like working with particular bands or venues or capacities, whereas now you’re maybe more focused on things like fulfillment or balance?

I definitely still have aspirations in my career, but I think now [I’m considering] how I can still do what I really enjoy doing [while making] it work as healthily as possible [for me]. Now it’s less about what band I want to work with and stuff like that, and more about what I want to do in my career. I’m thinking more about [roles], like ‘I want to be a tour manager’. I don’t really care who with, but I want to be a tour manager and then eventually I want to get into mental health in the industry, so I [guess they’re] more long term aspirations rather than specific goals. 

Before, when I first started, I was like ‘I want to work with this band and this band and this band’ and within that year, I’d pretty much worked with all of them. I was like ‘I’m going to have to have bigger goals!’. I’m looking more towards the bigger picture now. You know, there are still things that I would love to do, like I’d still love to go to Glastonbury with a band and I’d still love to go on a big world tour with a band, that sort of thing. But I think there’s that and then there’s also how much of that I can do while also keeping myself healthy, which is a big priority in my life now. 

Speaking of, you mentioned before we started recording that you’re about to leave your current role and head out on your very first tour, which is so exciting! Are you looking forward to a new challenge?

Yeah. I mean, I’ve never been more excited about a job than touring. I’m fully aware it’s not a glamorous job and I’m not going in with that in mind. I don’t know what it is that appeals to me about it so much, I think it’s [maybe] the idea of taking a band [out] and seeing people reacting differently in different places. But I’m really excited about it and it’s put a lot of the passion back into the job for me. I feel like elements of me lost it in this job, but having this in mind for the future has actually made me really excited about doing this job again, which I haven’t felt in a really long time. I want to get back into repping as well. I love doing that job so much. It was almost weird to me, because I’d be happy to go to work and I didn’t think that was something that anyone really felt. Then I [had the experience of not being] so happy about going to work and it made me want to make a change. Being [away from it] has made me realise how good a job it is and how much I love it, if that makes sense?

I think it’s a really brave thing to do—to leave behind what might seem to others like a really impressive role in search of something that’s more fulfilling. It’s important to keep checking in with yourself and making sure that you’re still happy. 

Yeah. I think it’s important in any job to step back and reevaluate every so often. To ask ‘Even though, in theory, this was the perfect job for me, is it actually [making me happy]?’. And yeah, working in a massive venue was something that I really wanted to do, I thought. But now that I’m there, I’m like ‘Hmm, maybe not’. And, you know, I might not like touring. I might do it for a while and then decide it’s not for me, but I want to at least give it a go. If I don’t like it, I don’t like it, at least I’ve done it. As you say, people look at [the role I’m in now] and are like ‘Wow, great job’ and I’m like ‘Yeah, I don’t enjoy it’. 

I imagine it can be hard to acknowledge that, for a whole variety of reasons.

It’s quite difficult sometimes, because you feel like you should love it, so you almost force yourself into trying to enjoy it. You get into that [headspace] of thinking ‘Loads of people would love to work somewhere like this, I’m really lucky, so why am I not enjoying it?’. [But] I think it’s really important to, every so often, just take a step back and [ask] ‘Is this making me happy?’. Just because you’re working in what you thought was your dream job, [doesn’t mean] it’ll be as good as you want it to be. [But then] there’s been stuff that I’ve done that I didn’t think I was going to enjoy, and I loved it. It works both ways. 

A lot of people in this industry have their fingers in a lot of different pies, and I think that’s because you kind of have to. You have to have a lot of different things you can do, especially if you’re freelance. You need to be able to do merch and be a tour manager and a rep [and so on] in case anything comes up and you need money. I think that’s why I’m looking forward to being freelance [though], because there’s less pressure on me to be enjoying something that I’m stuck in. I felt a bit stuck in this job. Now, if I’m doing something and it isn’t for me, I don’t have to stay there. I can do something else.