Backstage Pass: Review Zoo Catch Up with Drum Tech, Rob Mills (Johnny Cashback) — From Terrorvision to Fear Factory

Rob Mills: “There’s a million stories like that — I’ve just been lucky none involved an exploding drummer.”

For people who might not know, what does a drum tech do on tour, and how do they help free up the drummer’s time and energy before a show?

A drum tech is basically an upskilled and more technologically knowledgeable roadie – the industry has become a lot more ‘technical’ in terms of the amount of electronic equipment working alongside a standard acoustic kit and as a result, even at pub gig level, performers and musicians are incorporating a lot more ‘plugged in’ elements into their set-ups, by way of SPD’s (digital sampling pads) M-Live B.Beat modules, triggers, click tracks and ‘on the fly’ in-ear monitor apps. 

I get why some people in the industry prefer the term ‘tech’ because it’s evolved into a feasible career path rather than a job, but I still go by the old school ‘roadie’ moniker – I personally don’t feel the need for the status or validation of being a ‘technician’ because the same term applies to the mechanics of something snapping or falling off mid gig; you still need the technical knowledge to know how to fix it - it just comes with the turf…you wouldn’t call a mechanic a car technician would you?

Maybe you would and I totally respect anyone who prefers the term ‘tech’, but for me it’s an equal balance of progress and heritage…I’m from a different era of backline crew, pre-samplers and sensor pads and I’ve had to upskill to become a ‘tech’ but will always be a ‘roadie’ at heart – was it Shakespeare or Lemmy who said, “A tech by any other name would smell as sweaty.”

The tour aspect of being a roadie/tech hasn’t changed all that much in the years I’ve been doing the job, other than all the electronic elements I’ve mentioned and essentially follows the same pattern that it always has, with your duties being split into five basic sections:

• Set up and teardown: handling the transport, setup and breaking down of the drum kit, hardware and cymbals into relevant cases, bags etc.

• Tuning: adjusting the drumheads to meet the drummer’s preference and the venue's acoustics.

• Maintenance & troubleshooting: replacing broken gear (heads, sticks, cymbals, cables), fixing hardware, cleaning and then addressing issues during a show.

• Preparation: preparing the kit and area with appropriate gear like the SPD, iPad app, cable management, as well spares to hand like snares, pedals, gels, towels, drinks etc.

• Communication: acting as a liaison between the drummer, other techs and audio engineers to address any sound issues before and during the performance.

All of this basically gives the performer less to worry about in terms of their equipment working and being gig ready and being able to turn up, plug in their IEM’s and be good to go. There have been instances where more seasoned drummers/bands have trusted their roadie/tech’s to the point of the crew performing the soundchecks without any involvement from the artists at all, but that only comes with having built a good reputation within the industry to know that you’re trusted.

There’s a lot that goes on away from the stage that performers are generally busy with like interviews, photoshoots, meet and greets as well as recovery time from the previous night’s show, especially if it’s a tour lasting several months without many days off in between. Despite this, no matter how routinely you set a drummers kit up, they will always find something that’s not quite right - like the height of a cymbal, even though you’ve marked the entire kit up and it’s been the same for the past three shows! Still; it keeps you on your toes and builds the relationship of trust and reliability, so that the performer knows you’ve got their back whatever might occur during the gig.

Which bands or artists have you worked with on tour?

I’ve been doing this for so long that I can’t even remember half of the bands and artists that I’ve worked with…I’m fifty-three now! I did have a career break when my kid was born, because I didn’t want to be one of those absent dad’s and so a lot of my ‘hey day’ bands are a bit of a distant memory, but I think they’re all still around. I was with Terrorvision for around ten years at their peak from maybe 1994, there was New Model Army for a while, The Wildhearts, Fear Factory and more recently I’ve been back out with Paradise Lost and High Parasite. There have been lots of bands and artists that I’ve worked with – the ones I can remember are all on my LinkedIn profile www.linkedin.com/in/johnny-cashback if anyone’s bothered and covers everyone from U2 to Carl Cox in various roles. 

What does a typical day look like for you as a drum tech on tour?

I always try to get up for breakfast at the hotel, because you never know when you might get a chance to eat next a lot of the time. I generally try and have a look around whatever city I’m in before lobby call – the downside of touring is that you get to go to a lot of places, but you don’t always get to see a lot of places because of the job commitments e.g. repairs, head changes, time slots for rolling risers at festivals on so on, so I always make the effort to get out of bed and see stuff.

If it’s a venue show and you’re with the headliner, then you are generally there first, but if it’s a support slot then your call isn’t usually until about 3pm after the main band have finished with soundchecks and stage dressing. A lot of the daily duties depend on the individual drummer – I’ve had people who didn’t want their cymbals cleaning because the lack of ring was part of their sound, whereas other players have insisted on handling them with gloves to avoid oil marks and to have all the logos facing them…I personally am from the school of ‘if it sounds good, then it’s fine’ but I’m not the one paying for a client based service.

Once the riser is in position and central to a stage marker like the backdrop or lighting array, then the kit is assembled – I tend to spike the drum rug to exact positions for pedals, legs and consoles just to make it quicker by labelling everything. I tend to use soluble paint markers on stands, to ensure that the heights and angles are exactly the same every time. With the hardware in place, I then check tensioners and memory locks and the general condition and tone of the heads and replace or adjust if necessary before tuning. Again, depending on the drummer, some are happy that the toms go ‘bish, bash, bosh’ but others want them tuning to a specific note like a 12” tom to A#-B or a snare to A3 – I think Terry Bozzio’s kit is tuned to piano keys…absolutely bonkers.

I generally don’t clean the cymbals or the shells until after soundcheck, purely because the drummers usually fiddle with them and I usually use the interim time for setting up and testing the electronic elements of the rig i.e. sample playback, click track and liaise with the FOH for mic positions and levels. Some drummers use screens to mask the stage noise of cymbals etc. for the rest of the band and once cables have been tidied around the kit, then this gets put in its final position. Once soundcheck is done and the band are happy, that’s when I do a final tighten, tune and clean.

Pre-show usually entails providing the drummer with a pair of sticks and a practise pad, as well as prepping the riser with drinks, towels etc. and doing a line check – support bands are renowned for moving and unplugging stuff during changeovers and so it’s essential that you check everything still works the same as it did in soundcheck. During the gig, it’s mostly about pre-empting what could go wrong, observing and reacting from tightening a spinning wingnut on a china to something major like replacing a snare head, but that’s why you have your toolkit and box of tricks to hand. A lot of the time it’s minor things like monitor tweaks, drink passing and so on because you’ve done the prep work, but there can also be times when technology lets you down and you have to sit there tapping the drummer’s back in time to the song, because the click track has failed.

Post show is generally quicker than the set-up, with everything getting a quick wipe over so that sweat and beer doesn’t tarnish the cymbals or heads, before casing everything up and making sure that it gets loaded onto the truck in the right order. I think the only thing that I’ve ever forgotten has been a drum rug, but that was because it was what’s known as a disco load out (club night starting straight after the gig) and I lost track of which local crew member had moved it – ultimately though, it was my responsibility…I’m a big believer in owning your own fuck ups. It all worked out okay because I sourced a spare and arranged with another band who were playing the same venue the following day to get it returned to us a couple of shows later, it just meant that I had to set up from memory rather than spikes.

How did you first get into drum teching, and what was your path to working on tours?

Like most people, it was with just being on the music scene and helping bands out for free entry into gigs when I was about fourteen or fifteen. I was quite fortunate in that the city I moved to (Bradford) had a massive musical heritage and thriving local scene, but without the competitiveness of places like Manchester or London – it was more of a collective movement as opposed to one-up-manship with bands and everyone helping each other out…you could probably trace the city’s rock family tree to about a dozen people for every band that ever existed at the time.

Everyone was either in a band, part of the DIY gig movement or was a mutual friend with someone in the industry. I was the drummer in a band called Green, whose singer was the girlfriend of a guitarist in a band with New Model Army’s drum tech and as a result, I ended up being his tech. I wasn’t always a drum tech though – I think I started doing merch, then went to guitar/bass tech, had a stint as a lampy and eventually, because like many people in the game, became a tech for the instrument that I played, just due to having prior knowledge of how it worked.

My path to working on tours is probably the same as everyone else’s in that, unfortunately this industry is based on who you know and not what you know. You could be the greatest authority on Quantum 338 software that the world has ever seen, but unless you know someone who knows someone willing to take their word for giving you a shot, then it’s going to be a hard slog. That’s not to say that it’s impossible – there are plenty of people who are still not cut out for touring, despite getting the work and are soon found out and relieved of their duties, whether that’s because of addictions, personality or lack of knowledge. 

As mentioned before, the music industry has become a career path as opposed to a job and there are so many dedicated courses in stage and event production out there, like Production Park’s ‘Academy of Live Technology’ that it is moving away from being a closed network of insiders to being a skills and CV driven based platform, with formal interviews and practical demonstrations as opposed to “Yeah, I know a guy…” It’s great to see the rise in young people getting into the industry, especially the increase of females in TM, sound, lighting, backline and managerial roles.

What’s the biggest misconception people have about being a drum tech—and what’s the reality?

The misconceptions that people not involved in the industry are usually the same whatever role you’re in; that it’s all parties, hanging out with celebrities, sexual encounters and mountains of drugs and alcohol. The reality is that, although some of the people you work for might get to do all that, you are just an employee – no one cares what goes on behind the scenes or who makes it happen because all they ever see is the finished product. It’s kinda like any job that you do for a long time, it just becomes something ‘normal’, like working in a factory or on a check out…it’s the same repetitive thing night after night, with the occasional bit of drama.

You have a messed up sleep pattern because of time zones, early flight check-ins, delays and your nutrition goes to shit because all that’s left open when you’ve finished a load out is a dirty kebab shop with a hygiene rating of one star. I guess the thing that keeps me doing it, isn’t the job itself but the joy it brings to others - I occasionally peer out from behind the stack of guitar cabs (where I’m usually sat hiding out of sight) and seeing the smiles, hands in the air and bouncing of the crowd in that collective unity of being ‘in the moment’ is to me, what makes it worthwhile.

What’s the most chaotic situation you’ve had as a drum tech—either right before a show or even mid-set—and what happened?

There are quite a few, for example; at a festival in Santiago the wireless rack went down during line check, with 15,000 people waiting for the band to come on and none of use could work out why. We tried everything from XLR replacement cables, re-scanning the wireless channels and nothing was working – the thing that solved it…it just needed turning off and on again, because it had got itself stuck in a loop. The band went on, only had to drop one song from their set and everybody went home happy.

Another incident involved a full on brawl between QOTSA and Terrorvision at Metallica’s Big Day Out festival, right before the band were due to go on stage. In fairness, it was the MCP promoters fault for skimping on the porta cabins as dressing rooms and giving each band ridiculous exit times. Basically, QOTSA wouldn’t leave and unsurprisingly it was Nick Oliveri who threw a cooler box at the other band, which resulted in an almost comedic fight and ended up needing police intervention. Needless to say, this caused stage delays as the drummer was involved but the most amusing part, was when we turned up in Greece for another festival and QOTSA were all sat around the hotel pool…they’d been given the hard word by their TM about having visas revoked, so nothing else happened.

I was working for Raymond Herrera of Fear Factory on the Obsolete tour back in the late 90’s - he had a beautiful Tama Star Classic kit that was triggered, his previous tech had a bit of a strop about not getting a visa and didn’t pack the spare D-Drum pads as an act of sabotage, which are basically used for the whole Fear Factory drum sound. As a result, there was one night in San Sebastian that had some pretty interesting misfires, but there was nothing that I could do about it mid song…no-one but Ray and I noticed though, even the rest of the band thought it was some extra beats he’d put in for effect. There’s a million of these types of stories, but at least I’ve not had to deal with an exploding Spinal Tap drummer so far.

What’s it like living on a tour bus for weeks or months at a time?

If you’re with a good bunch of people, it can be like just hanging out with your mates on holiday, at least for the first couple of weeks anyway – it depends on the size of the production as to whether everyone is on one bus or over multiple ones. Generally, the band and management are on one and the crew is on another, but you sometimes get lumped together to save on costs and if half of you are party people and the other half are quiet, then it can get a bit fraught.

The main thing is keeping the place habitable and the driver happy – everyone knows the unwritten law of ‘no solids in the loo’ and there have been times when carrier bags have come into play, in the absence of a motorway services – told you it wasn’t glamourous! Your only real escape is your 6’ x 2’ coffin bunk and headphones, but generally the top lounge is the quiet zone and the bottom one for partying. I’ve been on tours where the bands have bought into that whole Motley Crue debauchery thing and so they can get pretty annoying pretty fast, where the only other option available is to just join in – I ended up with bleach streaks in my hair, sharpie tattoos and alcohol poisoning by the end of one tour…it wasn’t big or clever.

Another element is that, because you’re run down with the long hours, travel etc. if one person gets a cold, then you’re all getting a cold – there’s nowhere to hide, especially when you’re sleeping quarters are no bigger than a corridor. Then there’s the snoring, stale sweat, stinky feet, flatulence and more often than not, damp clothes hanging from bunks in the absence of a day off to do laundry. Fortunately, the drivers are usually pretty good at freshening the place up and restocking tea and coffee, along with weekly linen changes and so it’s tolerable in a Lord Of The Flies kind of way.

When you’re out on tour for a long stretch, what do you miss most about home?

I don’t really get homesick because I’m away quite a bit and so my flat is just somewhere as a base, as opposed to a home, but I do miss my kid and my friends. Don’t get me wrong, you build up some great friendships on the road but it’s not the same as going for a pint with your old school mates. I think I miss my kid more than he misses me, purely because he’s a teenager now and who wants to hang out with their parents at that age – I certainly didn’t. 

I message him every day, wherever in the world I might be and video call whenever there’s reliable Wi-Fi, but it’s obviously not the same as being there. He lives with his mum and so I know that he’s being taken care of, so I just make sure that when I am back I spend as much quality time doing activities and hanging out with him as possible.

And when you finally get home, what do you end up missing about life on the road?

Coming back from a tour is a funny thing – you’re kind of glad to be in familiar surroundings, sleep in your own bed and have your own space, but there’s always that bit of a comedown in terms of not being in that ‘high alert’ frame of mind. It usually takes me a few days once I’ve caught up on sleep and done three loads of washing, to get the pang of “I was in [wherever] this time last week” but it soon goes once the mundane pile of bills or invoices become part of the daily routine again.

If I were to miss anything about life on the road, it would be the camaraderie alongside the daily challenges and problem solving – I’m at my best when I’ve got something that requires a bit of thought, logic and co-operation that goes into making something work. I do like the travel, not the ten hour airport layovers, but going to somewhere new, whether that’s a town or a venue that I haven’t been to before or to for a while and seeing what’s changed.

Is there a drum kit you’ve worked with or played that really stands out to you, and what made it memorable?

I got to sit behind Paul Bostaph’s kit at Bangers Open Air festival in Sao Paulo thanks to his tech Dave - it was the full Slayer badged Yamaha oak custom. It’s on a rack mount, but I’ll forgive him that due to the Paiste cymbals, Evans heads and sheer majesty of the kit – more drums than you’ll ever need, but very metal. It stands out because Bostaph’s such an established player and been in bands like Slayer, Exodus, Testament and Forbidden to name a few and although he’s not in my top five drummers, it was a privilege to see his set up – put me behind Matt Cameron or Stewart Copeland’s kits and then I’d be gushing.

I still have a Philippine mahogany and birch 1990’s Yamaha Rock Tour Custom six piece in black sparkle finish, that has a place in my heart and is the kit that I keep coming back to – I’ve bought it back from a friend twice in the past thirty years! I also have a nostalgic spot for an orange pop coloured Premier kit that I used to play in one of my old bands; it used to be one of the Top Of The Pops house kits back in the 1970’s but was only on loan to me unfortunately…it was in Mu Studios in Sheffield last I heard.

Is there a piece of drum gear or a trick you swear by that most drummers overlook—and why?

Aquarian drum patches – in the event that a tom head gets a tear mid gig, these things will get you through because you can’t obviously swap it out mid show, like you would with a spare snare. I also swear by plumbers PTFE tape for use on hardware – due to the wear and tear of stands being adjusted and the threads on tighteners becoming worn, this stuff basically fills the gaps…it’s worked on two whole High Parasite tours so far, without having to replace it.

Is there a country on tour where the food is so good you always look forward to going back?”

I’m a sucker for stuff like burritos, tacos and enchiladas and so anywhere Latin American suits me fine. I’m not really a big fan of Scandinavian food, purely because I’m not big on fish or pickled stuff and I tend to stick to skomakarlåda (steak with bacon) if I end up there. I don’t really have a favourite country food wise, because I’ll always try something local where I can – how else would you find out that sledzie marynowane (Polish pickled herring) is rank?!

Chad Smith (RHCP) and Shutty (Terrorvision)

View from the back

Heidi (Butcher Babies)