Giggs Podcast

After Ozzy Osbourne was kicked out of Black Sabbath, he moved into a West Hollywood hotel called Le Parc. To this day, people book rooms and ask for "Ozzy's old room."  Barry Podob has spent nearly 25 years booking the music and entertainment business there, hosting artists and crews for everyone from the Rolling Stones to 5 Seconds of Summer, and he never planned on working in hote...

What does a production manager and front of house engineer do on show day? The Giggs team spent a full day with Jacob "Trunz" Trunzo on NEEDTOBREATHE's Long Surrender Tour at FirstBank Amphitheater in Franklin, Tennessee, following him from morning load-in to doors. Along the way, Nikki Sanz meets the crew behind the show, from rigging and lighting to the PA and the tour bus, and se...

What does a production manager and front of house engineer do on show day? The Giggs team spent a full day with Jacob "Trunz" Trunzo on NEEDTOBREATHE's Long Surrender Tour at FirstBank Amphitheater in Franklin, Tennessee, following him from morning load-in to doors. Along the way, Nikki Sanz meets the crew behind the show, from rigging and lighting to the PA and the tour bus, and se...

Tyler Cain's first paid music job was at Busch Gardens Williamsburg, dressed like Pinocchio, playing the chicken dance next to an 87-year-old oompah singer for $12 an hour. The real assignment: catch the singer when he fell down the stage steps. Years later, Tyler came back to the same park to play the amphitheater with Colbie Caillat. In between came two decades on the road and in the studio...

We're rewinding it back this week with a favorite episode from last year... Ryan Whelpley is a Touring Director at Red Light Management with over 20 years of experience in live production. He started out mixing front of house at Nashville's Wildhorse Saloon, then hit the road full-time tour managing the Gin Blossoms. For The Lost Trailers, he did it all: tour manager, front of house, pro...

Chris Rippy's parents gave him a Canon Rebel T5 for Christmas his freshman year of college. A few years later, he'd left school, moved in with a rising country artist to film his life on the road, and found himself backstage on a Snoop Dogg tour, double-booked to shoot two artists on the same night. Chris is a Nashville-born creative director, videographer, and photographer who has spent...

In 1972, Ted Cohen talked his way through a crowd of 70,000 people and onto the side of the stage at a Led Zeppelin show in Atlanta. He had no ticket, no pass, and no plan beyond finding the tour manager. By Monday morning, the president of Atlantic Records had offered him a job. That's the version of the music industry Ted Cohen came up in. He spent the next five decades inside it: artist de...

Accurate Staging has spent 25 years building the structures underneath some of the biggest names in live entertainment — Travis Scott, Ye, Zara Larsson — without most of the audience ever knowing the company's name.  Founded in 2001 by brothers-in-law Jose Cantu and Freddy Gomez, the company has grown from a single warehouse into facilities across Los Angeles, Nashville, and Atlanta, staffed...

On this edition of Ask Giggs, Nikki Sanz answers questions straight from the Giggs community on topics like when trying to look competent on a job site becomes the problem, how to know when to step in as a leader versus letting someone figure it out, and when to say yes or no to a gig. What you'll learn: Why pretending to know what's going on is the fastest way to look like "a big d...

Adam Wells has spent nine years inside Ed Sheeran's touring operation, working his way from PA tech to audio systems engineer, the role responsible for the entire technical backbone of one of the most complex stadium shows on earth. He was offered the job twice before he finally said yes, then stepped into it for the first time in front of a quarter of a million people at the Melbourne Cricke...

Rachel Deeb got fired from a cubicle job three months after moving to Nashville, sat in her closet crying, and called her dad for help with the car she'd just bought. That was the beginning. Ten years later, she's the Media Director for The Lumineers — managing a global team of photographers and videographers across a two-year stadium tour cycle — Nashville Scene's Best Photographer...

Two artist managers from Neon Coast — one who came up through the road with Kane Brown, one who came up through finance, record labels, and social media — and both will tell you the same thing: you just have to figure it out. Nikki Boon has been with Kane Brown since before his first show — a 750-cap club in Darlington, South Carolina that sold out in 30 minutes, then again in 8 minutes the follow...

The Rock-It Company has been the logistics engine behind the world's largest music tours for 47 years. Every stage you've ever stood in front of — odds are, they got it there. This summer, they're doing that and something else: serving as the official logistics partner for the FIFA World Cup 2026 , the largest sporting event in world history, spanning three countries, 16 host cities...

For the 20th annual CMA Touring Awards, Giggs went backstage at The Pinnacle in Nashville and talked to over 20 winners, nominees, and industry leaders across one night. We open with outgoing CMA CEO Sarah Trahern — her 13th and final Touring Awards — and SVP of Industry Relations Tiffany Kerns , on peer recognition, what this event means to the touring community, and what they're building fo...

Alex McNamara is a technical director, welder, rigger, and Yale School of Drama graduate who installed the turntable for the original Hamilton production, led 600 workers on a $300 million Soundstorm build in Saudi Arabia, and built her career one job site at a time as one of the only women in the room. She's also the founder of Built Pretty — which she started a year ago on a forklift at an...

Ryan Maag started as a backup dancer on the Weird Al Yankovic tour in 1998 and figured out fast that the person choreographing makes more than the person performing. Twenty-something years later, he's been creative director for NFL halftime shows on two continents, the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, and the D-Day ceremonies in Normandy, France — shaking hands with five-star generals and th...

Neville Shende — known on the road as NELVIS — has spent more than 40 years in the concert touring world. He started as a guitarist and guitar tech in Winnipeg, stumbled into bus driving on a 9/11-disrupted Aerosmith run, and spent the next four decades driving for some of the most iconic artists in the world: Prince, Madonna, Alicia Keys, Black Sabbath, Shakira, Ronnie James Dio, Papa Roach, Dist...

Mandi Naylor has spent over a decade running food and beverage at some of the biggest events in the country — the NFL Draft, the Super Bowl, Bonnaroo, ACL, Lollapalooza, CMA Fest, KAABOO, and the NASCAR Chicago Street Race. She's managed catering for commissioners, artists, and crews of thousands. Now she leads events for the Robertson County Chamber of Commerce in Tennessee. This conversatio...

We're bringing back one of the most practical conversations from the Giggs archive. Nikki Sanz sits down with Rachael Bronstein , founder of Life's Jam — a financial coaching service built specifically for the touring and live events community. 70% of music industry professionals are freelancers. Just under half report feeling financially anxious or stressed. Rachael has spent the last f...

Recorded live at Rock Lititz, Brandon "Fitz" Fitzgerald is back by popular demand after his previous episode (#19) became one of the most-DM'd conversations we've ever put out. One year later, Fitz comes back with a year on the road that includes Beyoncé's Cowboy Carter, Post Malone's world tour, Playboi Carti, and a set up in New Orleans during the city's bigges...

We're bringing back one of the most popular conversations from the Giggs archive. Nikki Sanz sits down with Marty Hom — a true legend of the touring world with 40+ years of experience tour managing The Rolling Stones, Beyoncé, Fleetwood Mac, Barbra Streisand, Stevie Nicks, Shakira, Alicia Keys, Janet Jackson, Van Halen, Olivia Rodrigo, Lionel Richie, and more. Marty started with Bill Withers...

Recorded live at Rock Lititz, Nikki Sanz sits down with Doug Wilson — long-time tour manager and Director of Touring — for a grounded, honest look at what 20 years on the road teaches you. Doug's path started with a chance encounter with a tour manager in catering in Glasgow, Scotland. He bought a Sprinter van, converted it with his dad, and four months later was on his first US tour. From th...

Recorded in Nashville, TN, this special docuseries episode of The Giggs Podcast steps inside Kingfisher Production Studio , the new virtual production offering from LEO Events . Nikki Sanz walks through the space and talks with the team behind it to see how virtual worlds are built, lit, filmed, and finished. This episode is worth your time if you work in production, post, creative, live events, o...

What does real support for music professionals actually look like when the gigs stop, the bills pile up, or the stress gets too heavy? In this episode, Nikki Sanz sits down with Theresa Wolters , Executive Director of MusiCares , to talk about the health, financial, and emergency realities facing people across the music industry. They get into the gap between how glamorous the industry can look fr...

Recorded live at Rock Lititz, this episode features Patrick Ledwith , Managing Director of North America for ES Global , reflecting on a career that spans nearly four decades across touring, staging, and large-scale live production. Patrick takes Nikki Sanz from his start as a 17-year-old stagehand in London to building stages on U2’s Joshua Tree run, managing major tours, and eventually stepping...