The Road Crew

‘This short, highly engaging book lets us into the backstage world of the workers essential to the live music industries. Through ethnography, interviews, and archival research, Kielich provides an intimate account of the labor which sustains the tours of major rock artists. With an eye towards the details of crew members’ working days, their camaraderie and culture, gender norms, and the “care work” of tour managers, The Road Crew places rock stars as bosses, crew members as part of the vast numbers of freelance gig workers animating popular culture. Kielich documents road crew work’s informality and rules, its social costs and joys, its brutal schedules and surprising power relations. An essential book for anyone seeking to grasp the full scope of the labor of live music.’

Shannon Garland, University of California, Merced, USA

Gabrielle Kielich is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Huddersfield. She has a PhD in Communication Studies from McGill University. In addition to touring and live music, her research interests include women and the electric guitar, rock music history and culture, the music industries and qualitative research methods. She has been a visiting researcher in the School of Culture & Creative Arts at the University of Glasgow and a course lecturer at McGill University.