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Nicole Massey did her greatest to not appear nervous when she launched “the perfect 20-year-old boss on the planet” — Billie Eilish — previous to Eilish’s efficiency of “Happier Than Ever” on the sixty fourth annual Grammy Awards. Realizing everybody from her hometown was watching, Massey rehearsed her introduction and delivered her traces with good projection and ease, solely to be betrayed by her shaking hand.
“Individuals have been teasing me about my shaking hand – in actual fact, a couple of blogs talked about it,” says Massey, laughing as she recalled Sunday’s occasions. The manufacturing supervisor was certainly one of 4 touring professionals requested to introduce the artist that they labored for in the course of the Grammys broadcast as a part of an effort to boost consciousness of the difficulties the touring trade confronted in 2020 and 2021 as a result of international touring shutdown that adopted the COVID-19 pandemic.
Eilish was only some dates into her tour when the March 2020 shutdown halted the tour and despatched the highway crew again house. Whereas crew members have been in a position to keep lively in the course of the pandemic, not everybody was so fortunate, Massey says.
“I had colleagues that hadn’t labored a day because the tour was canceled in March and didn’t return till final September once we did festivals,” says Massey.
Between 15,000 to twenty,000 women and men work on highway crews for main touring reveals, in response to Crew Nation, the charity supporting highway crews, powered by the Music Ahead Basis and Stay Nation, which raised hundreds of thousands of {dollars} for the charity.
“All of us attempt to test in on each other and ensure nobody falls between the cracks,” says Katie Wilkinson, assistant tour supervisor to Chris Stapleton and Morgane Stapleton, who says she was honored to symbolize Stapleton’s 50-person touring crew on the Grammy Awards. Whereas Stapleton, Eilish and others continued to pay their crews by means of the pandemic, Wilkinson stated the isolation of the pandemic has been extraordinarily unsettling for some touring crew members.
“It’s very disruptive for households and I fearful about individuals’s psychological well being,” she says. Research have proven that substance abuse and psychological sickness are greater within the touring trade than in different sectors of the leisure trade.
“Now we have to essentially take care of each other as a result of in lots of instances all we’ve got is one another,” Wilkinson says.
Misha Mays, tour supervisor and day-to-day supervisor for H.E.R. by way of MBK Leisure, stated the touring neighborhood is house to many sensible and inventive drawback solvers.
“It’s Murphy’s Legislation on the highway — something that may go mistaken, will go mistaken. And I really feel like every thing might be resolved in case you’re it from the fitting perspective,” she tells Billboard. When the pandemic hit, many within the touring neighborhood discovered themselves going through a brand new set of challenges they by no means anticipated with only a few choices. Mayes stated H.E.R. was in a position to pay out her highway crew for her tour although it had been canceled.
“Fortunately we had a boss who actually cared and wished to maintain her crew collectively to guard the gifted individuals she had working for her,” Mayes stated.
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