Tour Manager Extraordinaire

07 August 2011

 While working on this week’s assignments for Full Sail University, I came across personal interviews with tour managers.  I am familiar with many of the jobs associated with a tour, but not the in-depth day-to-day activities of the manager.

It seems of the three tour managers I found to research, all of them found their way into their position by accident. Basically, their journey began because of their love of music and/or friends in the business. 

Jonny Ellett had an interview on July 14, 2011, “The Christian Music Junkie” blog, discussing his job as tour manager.  He talked about his “normal” workday being 16-17 hours long.  Ellett mentioned some of his favorite things about his job being learning new things, traveling and meeting new people.  I was most impressed when he said he enjoyed being part of the group that created a great concert experience.  Like me, Ellet has a hard time telling people “no”.  Dealing with conflicts and making decisions don’t always make you a popular person.

Another fascinating interview I read was with Thomas Reitz (Eventric, 28 September 2010) who was tour manager for Luciano Pavarotti, Nelly Furtado and Rihanna.  He started out as a translator for a friend who was a promoter.  What was interesting, he started a photography business during all of this.  Reitz met Pavarotti during a concert in Berlin where he was working as a photographer for that concert.  Pavarotti like what he did and from there spent many years working for Pavarotti even through the Three Tenors tours.  The article mentioned how Pavarotti became dependent on Reitz not just as tour manager, but some personal managing as well.  Reitz talked about how much Pavarotti treasured family; their daughters were one year apart.

A YouTube video, “A Day in the Life of a Tour Manager” by Josh Chambu (4 Mar 2008) also bravely recorded his activities in the middle of a tour.  He described much the same as Ellett and Reitz, but because it was a video, put a tired face on the job of tour manager.

Concerts and music events that seem seamless are the result of a tour manager’s or project manager’s devotion to detail, professionalism and inner drive.  My hat goes off to every road manager out there making the artist look great!