For nearly twenty years, I’ve worked on the road with Randy Bachman and a long list of remarkable musicians. Somewhere around 400 shows, give or take, I stopped thinking of touring as one particular job. I’ve worked front of house, monitors, stage, backline, video and whatever else the day required.
I’ve travelled through theatres, arenas, casinos, festivals and hockey rinks across Canada, the United States and beyond. I’ve worked with Bachman-Turner Overdrive, Bachman & Turner, the Randy Bachman Band, the Heavy Blues Band, Vinyl Tap, Symphonic Overdrive and The Guess Who. Along the way, I’ve also had the privilege of working with artists like Neil Young, Buffy Sainte-Marie, Peter Frampton, America, ZZ Top and The Sadies.
The road teaches you quickly that the visible job is only part of the job. There’s the show itself, of course—the lights going down, the band walking onstage, the first note landing in the room. But underneath that is a whole moving system of people, trucks, schedules, hotels, venues, equipment, personalities and last-minute problems.
Things go wrong constantly. Technical glitches appear. Gear doesn’t arrive. Somebody is tired, somebody is worried, somebody needs an answer immediately. You learn to stay calm, to listen carefully and to figure out what actually needs to happen next. Sometimes the most useful thing you can do is make a decision. Sometimes it’s to give somebody room. Sometimes it’s to quietly notice what everyone else has missed.
That has probably been my real role more than anything else: helping hold the centre.
With Randy, I’ve often been more than the person standing behind a console or looking after a guitar. I’ve been a road companion, a keeper of the history, someone who knows the songs and understands what the show is supposed to feel like. I’ve learned the material deeply enough to hear when something is missing, when something is being overplayed, when a familiar song needs to be allowed to breathe and have occasionally even jumped in to play when the show required it.
More recently, with The Guess Who, I’ve continued to bring that same familiarity and steadiness to a new chapter in the music. The circumstances and the responsibilities change, but the basic principle remains the same: protect the songs, support the people and help the performance reach the room.
Touring can be beautiful, but it is not always glamorous. There are long days, short nights, buses, hotels, loading trucks and a lot of time spent waiting. There are stretches where you are far from home and living inside a schedule that belongs to everyone except you. The road can be physically, emotionally and financially demanding, even when the work matters deeply.
It also creates a strange kind of community. For a little while, a group of people from completely different places becomes a temporary family. You share the pressure, the jokes, the bad food, the victories and the absurdity of trying to make everything happen in a different building every night.
After enough years, you begin to understand that a live show is not a machine. It is a living thing. You can prepare for it, build systems around it and try to control the variables, but eventually the room, the people and the moment all become part of the music.
That’s what keeps drawing me back. I still love the feeling of a show coming together—the small adjustments, the collective focus, the instant when the room opens and the song becomes larger than the people who brought it there.
Keeping the rock rolling, one hockey rink at a time, is a serious craft with a slightly ridiculous address. I’m grateful to still be doing it.