Funny place, the music business – it eats the young and ignores the old. Or at least it can appear that way. Outside of a handful of responsible executives and the circuit of legacy jobs, employment opportunities in the industry for people of AARP’s age can seem slim. But there is one interesting exception: many of the industry’s most respected and permanently employed roadies, instrument techs and live sound people are in their 60s and even 70s.
They are the sound checkers who puff and count into the microphone. Runners in black who pull out guitars between songs. the brave who climb into the rafters to adjust the lights; Splunkers that go through stages to adapt cables. Their job is to create a seamless experience for the music fan and a painless experience for the musician. They keep the live music industry humming, and their ranks may have more Medicare-eligible employees than any other segment of the music business.
Kevin Duggan, 70, has been working with one-time Van Halen bassist Michael Anthony since Jimmy Carter became president. Dallas Shaw, 71, has been in the business for 52 years and has been working as Edge’s guitar tech since U2 was playing clubs and ballrooms (he moonlights with Bruce Springsteen). Betty Cantor Jackson, 76, first worked on a soundboard for the Grateful Dead in 1968, and still does plenty of local gigs in the Bay Area. “We don’t always have to finish, you know,” Cantor Jackson said. “I’ll do it until I can crawl in there.”
For the musicians who hire them, these veterans are often preferred over younger and less road-experienced tech and cool guys. “I haven’t filled out a job application in 50 years,” said Frank Gallagher, 77, who is still working on the Las Vegas residency for B-52, which continues in April. (When he started mixing Talking Heads live in 1977, he had already been in the business 11 years.) “Someone asked me for my resume the other day,” he said. “I said, just ask anybody I’ve worked with, you know?”
Danny Goldberg, veteran music manager and label executive, said these roles involve an unusually personal relationship with the artist. “It’s like a doctor – you want someone who knows you intimately. It’s a great advantage for an artist to have continuity, and if you don’t have to do that, you’re going to have someone new.” Don’t want to start over,” he said. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Isn’t it?”
Anthony, the bassist, agreed: “Kevin Duggan has been working with me for 43 years,” he said. “With that kind of experience, I can go on stage every night and feel completely relaxed and confident that he’s got everything covered.”
After 10:30 AM On a Saturday morning in mid-October, Bob Zakowski, better known as Night Bob, walked out of a Quality Inn in Seekonk, Mass., and climbed into the shotgun seat of a 12-passenger Sprinter van that carried him and the band Les Zeppelins. He went to his next section. The gig was a full day of climbing stairs, road case lifting, line checking, microphone installation, outlet testing, drum carpeting and sound checking.
Czaykowski, 74, was happy to finally feel almost 100 percent after two knee replacements. He’ll be doing what he’s been doing for the past half century: creating a weird, wonderful, louche and loud band that’s as wonderful, wonderful, louche and loud as possible.
Czaykowski is probably one of the most famous people in his business. Virtually every working tech reacts to his name with awe, as do many musicians, young and old. Czaykowski did “front of house” — the formal name for the person behind the knobs on the soundboard — for the New York Dolls, Stooges, Aerosmith and others in the early and mid-1970s; More recently he was a close associate and guitar tech for Steely Dan co-leader Walter Baker. For the past 13 years, Czaykowski has primarily managed the board for Lez Zeppelin, an all-female Led Zeppelin cover band.
“He just wants to be on the road and put a band together and hang out with the band,” said Steph Pence, guitarist for Liz Zeppelin. “That’s what a road warrior is, when you’re excited to get on the road, no matter what. You either dig it or you don’t,” he added. “Bob can get in a van, a Sprinter, a bus, whatever, and sit there with the rest of us for six hours. There’s never any kind of grumpy, ‘Oh my God, I can’t sleep.’ He never complains about it. He’s just built for the road.
A good tech job is mostly invisible to the audience. “People go, ‘Wow, what a great show, man. They played 90 minutes!’ But you have no idea what it takes to make those 90 minutes,” said Ingo Marte, who has worked with hard rock bands such as Danzig, Saxon and Armored Saint for 41 years. (He’s a relatively young 65.) “I actually had a heart attack like eight years ago,” he added, “and that’s when I thought, OK, I’m done. More Not touring but I picked myself up and I’m still at it.
The show’s work with Edge included sustaining and tuning as many as 27 guitars a night, as well as mind-blowing effects used in real-time by the musicians to create their sound. The rows have to be fine-tuned. Schoo said that of U2 Residence at The Sphere in Las Vegas 2023 and 2024 were particularly difficult.
“There are 17 steps from the floor — where my guitar world is — to this stage. So, I was 70 years old at the time, and I’m running up and down those stairs with an eight-pound guitar for 40 shows. I get paid pretty well for it, but I’m always thinking, when am I going to trip? Am I going to fall down those stairs tonight?
He added: “I say a prayer every night, I really do. I ask, please help all these machines. Please let my command of them work, not for me and not even for Edge, but for those 30,000 fans. Let it work for them. They deserve it, they want to hear this great act and these great songs.
Like Schoo, Lorne Wheaton, better known as Gump, has been closely associated with a musician: Neil Pratt of Rush, who Died in 2020. After 50 years in the industry, Wheaton recently retired at age 69. His last big drum tech gig was long. Farewell tour kiss. But this is a “loose” retirement. He maintains his membership in IATSE (The International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees), and still does local theater and corporate gigs in his native Toronto.
Could he have ever imagined that he would work as a tech for half a century? “No, never,” Wheaton said. “I didn’t think I’d live to be 69. Let’s be honest here. You never really think you’re going to hit 70 and actually retire from this business, because to do that You save a lot.” Freelance work is a constant hustle, she said, and the ravages of aging sometimes have unexpected consequences: “You don’t want to pass out in your bus bunk or hotel room.”
Knee and hip problems seem to be particularly endemic in the tech industry, due to the constant need to lift heavy equipment and climb and descend endless stairs. And street workers also have to deal with a schedule that stretches from dawn to midnight. Recently, Duggan, who has worked with Anthony since the early Van Halen days, told his boss (who now tours regularly with Sammy Hagar and Joe Satrani) that he was thinking of slowing down. .
“When I first told Michael I wanted to get off the road, he said, ‘I’m not going to do it, why would you? I’m still going out there,'” Duggan said. “And I said, ‘Michael, are you trying to compare your day to mine?'” she explained how her work starts at 8:30 a.m. and ends at 2 p.m. “‘You come out and do a show,'” he said “You get in the limo, go back to the five-star hotel, or go back to the private jetway and fly home.” Your day and mine are worlds apart.
A road warrior of a certain age working 14-hour days has to make some adjustments. “I’m back on the road drinking,” Duggan said. “I can’t imagine working with a hangover.” I did that for many years. And when you’re middle-aged, you can bounce back from a hangover, but now it takes a long time.”
Elderly women working on the street are relatively rare because before the late 1980s it was extremely rare for women to find work as techs. (However, many women were studio engineers and producers, and many venues were managed by women.)
A notable exception is Betty Cantor-Jackson, who began working with the Grateful Dead in 1968, and Family Dog two years earlier. He is a legend in the Dead community, and has since recorded numerous performances of the band known as “The Betty Boards”. She continues to work gigs in the San Francisco area, and has gone on the road with Chris Robinson in the past decade.
“The road is normal. I’ve lived on the road so much of my life, you already know how to deal with it,” she said. “I’m the old lady on the bus with all the boys. I got my bunk, I’m fine.”
With the exception of Wheaton, none of these road techs have any plans to retire. “I may be 74, but the funny thing is, there’s always someone older,” Czaykowski said. “It’s because the more experience you have, the better shows you can get. When people have confidence and they trust you, it’s one less thing that they have to do on their own. The mind must be clouded. I know this man will work, because he has done the same thing for me 700 times before.