Richard Heaton

Artist Crew

Having a happy and efficient crew can do marvels for your career. It's not absolutely necessary to employ all these people, and you can do very well without them. However, it's a must for major stars to have a solid, reliable crew. Only band leaders can hire and fire crew members.

Crew	Employed	Experience	Weekly Cost
Roadie	10	50	12,600.00 M$
Sound Technician	2	50	4,200.00 M$
Lighting Technician	3	50	6,300.00 M$
Driver	2	50	2,940.00 M$
Personal Assistant	2	50	3,780.00 M$
Tour Manager	3	50	10,080.00 M$
Publicist	10	50	37,800.00 M$
Accountant	2	50	6,300.00 M$
Total Weekly Cost:			84,000.00 M$

Artist Crew Explained

There's a lot to know about the subtle effects of the artist crew as well as the effects of each type of crew member. Read more

The Basics

The cost of having a crew is paid once per week by the artist. If the artist can't pay their whole crew, their mood will sink, and they will do a poorer job. Since the efficiency of your crew is based partially on how happy they are, it's not a very good idea to hire people if you can't afford to pay them.

Hire people with care. Don't spend a fortune hiring as many people you can afford to get quick results. It's generally better to have a small, happy and skilled crew than to have a mob of confused, depressed metal heads trying to rig your latest Monster of Rock tour.

Crew Mood

A happy crew is a good crew. The mood of your crew will fluctuate depending on how well your career is going. The presence of a tour manager usually helps to keep the crew mood up, especially if you've got a fair amount of people working for you. Not being able to pay your crew the money they demand for their hard work will severely damage their mood. Firing members of your crew will also lower the mood of your workers.

Experience Level

Every new person hired into your crew starts with a low level of experience. Over time, as the crew gradually becomes familiar with your band and how you want things done, their experience increase. For this reason, it's never good to fire and hire a lot of people all the time to save costs.

Roadie

We could call them Backline Technicians as well. But how rock'n'roll would that be?These hard working people are responsible for all the equipment used by the musicians in their live performances. They will also ensure that the setlist, water and towels are available to the artist, and will assist the artist when something goes wrong on stage. Their most important function is to unload and set up the stage set for every performance. Having a lot of roadies also helps in maintaining the quality of your gear so you don't have to repair it as often.

Sound Technician

This valuable member of the crew makes sure your instruments and vocals sound their best on stage. After all... what's the point of having a kick-ass lead guitarist if all his face melting solos are drowned out by an over enthusiastic back up singer?

Lighting Technician

On larger shows, this wizard tailors the lighting and special effects to enhance the performance in order to make sure the show is as visually appealing as possible.

Driver

The driver drives the bus or pilots your plane. Day in and day out. You might want to have a spare one in case the regular one keeps falling asleep.

Personal Assistant

Personal assistants tend to each band member's individual needs. Everything from running to the off license shop to arranging the flowers on the bed. The personal assistant does his or her very best to make sure the band members are as happy and healthy as possible. There's nothing like a personal assistant to keep you healthy on a long tour!

Having personal assistants also frees up more time for other personal activities such as hanging out with groupies.

One personal assistant per band member should usually do the trick. No need to get overly extravagant here. Rockstars aren't that needy!

Tour Manager

Don't expect to get the most out a huge world tour unless you hire a tour manager. Without this person's skills, your roadies would most likely end up running around like confused rats in a maze, your driver would get lost, your sound technician would sleep in, and your assistants would run off with the nearest flight attendant.

Publicist

Artists in all sectors of the music business benefit from press and publicity representation. Here's where the publicist comes in.

The publicist takes care of all day to day public exposure of the artist, making sure all market segments get the best image of their client as possible.

Accountant

The accountant handles all the expenses and earnings of your tour - ticket sales, broken windows, lawsuits from injured fans, pizza runs, the gazillion beers consumed back stage, and more.

A good accountant helps you spend less money than necessary as well as protecting you from getting scammed by the countless number of dishonest people you'll find on the road.