Austin Stillwell
Credit: Jane Jimenez Photography
FOH/Monitor Engineer / Production Manager
Pat Metheny / Radiohead / Thom Yorke
CHANGEOVER: Talk a bit about who you are, what you do and how you got into the industry.
Austin Stillwell: I'm Austin Stillwell and, most recently, was the production manager and front of house engineer for Pat Metheny and the monitor engineer for both Radiohead and Thom Yorke’s solo tour. How I got into the industry, I suppose, is from a very young age of being obsessed and in love with music. I started playing the violin when I was six. What I remember is that I saw a symphony when I was in elementary school and was blown away. I came home and immediately asked my mom if I could rent a violin and start taking lessons. So I started taking violin lessons when I was super young. In middle and high school, I started playing guitars because girls are into the guitar player. I also happened to be a bit of a gamer at the time so the technology side of things interested me. In high school, those two things came to a head and I started collecting recording equipment and started building my own recording studio in my my house in Tucson, Arizona. The next thing you know, I was the only high schooler with a fully functional recording studio. The band that I was in recorded there and then I started recording for other people. By that time, I had heard of Berklee College of Music, which was the holy grail of music schools for me at the time. I applied to one school for college and I got into Berklee. That was what sealed the deal.
When I went to Berklee, I studied music synthesis and music business and had a grand old time. I moved to New York and started working at recording studios after that. NYC’s recording studio world, around 2009-2010, weren't doing so well because we were in the recession. This was after the advent of home recording studios. A lot of people were just recording everything at home so I didn't see a lot of promise in my future in that world. I had some friends that were working in live sound at Webster Hall so I got a shot working live sound at Webster Hall. That was something that changed my life.
The major difference between live sound and studio sound is the fact that you have a very limited time frame. For live sound you have to do everything in the course of maybe an hour, or even less sometimes. There's an exhilaration that comes with having to do everything so quickly so I immediately fell in love with live sound. I started going to graduate school at NYU and got a shot at, in a weird way, getting into the touring industry by working as a MIDI robotics engineer for Pat Metheny’s MIDI controlled robotic orchestra that he calls the Orchestrion. They needed someone who knew Ableton Live and Logic, Digital Performer and Max/MSP software. I happen to know all of that, and was ready to go on the road, so I was the Orchestrion tech for his Grammy Award winning record Unity Band. Next thing you know, I’m in Germany on the road, taking pictures of my bunk on a tour bus and being very excited, because ever since I was 13 and saw a show and a tour bus in Tucson, I had been begging people to go on tour with them.
From there, I fell in love with touring and dedicated my entire existence to trying to succeed in any way possible in that world. Between my first tour in 2012 and my most recent tour in 2020, I went from working with Pat Metheny on my first tour ever to being a monitor engineer for Radiohead on an arena tour. Radiohead was my favorite band in high school so I went from working on my first gig to working with my absolute musical heroes in five years, which is amazing.
Credit: Sarah Bourque
How has COVID-19 affected your job?
As many others have already told you, 2020 was going to be the best year I've had yet as a touring audio engineer. I spent a lot of time stressing out about 2020 because I had two clients that both wanted to tour the whole year. I was front of house engineer and production manager for Pat Metheny and he had a whole year long tour planned out. Thom Yorke also had a whole tour based around Coachella and Glastonbury. I obviously wanted to do both of them and ended up negotiating with Pat so that I could be able to do both of them. Many thanks to him for being understanding of my desires to work for several artists.
Scheduling for touring personnel is a very difficult thing sometimes because tours do not always line up perfectly. I spent a lot of time trying to figure out how I was going to make 2020 work. It was supposed to be a gangbusters year for me. I started a tour at the end of February. We went out and did Singapore. We did Australia in Perth, Melbourne, Sydney and then hopped over to New Zealand. This was all while the virus was kind of starting. We had several meetings about the coronavirus and were wondering where it was going to pop its head and affect our touring schedule. We were kind of short sighted as to how enormously detrimental it was going to be but we made it to Argentina in early March. March 11th was when Coachella announced that they were not going to do their show and that was around when the entire world basically shut down all of their large events. We spent the next few days trying to figure out the logistics of getting our crew and gear home safely. Since then, I've been home in Brooklyn, New York. I haven't had any real gigs since then. I've had some tastes here and there of being able to touch a microphone, and I’ve done some mixing work in my home studio, but basically all of my work is still gone. It's been seven, eight months now and I'm still unemployed.
What have you been doing during this downtime?
One of the first things that I did was buy a motorcycle. I bought a vintage motorcycle which only kind of works so I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out how to fix it. I've been doing some mixing work in a small mixing studio that I set up in my apartment. I took online courses. I'm a big fan of continued education. I got my Masters degree. As soon as the touring world shut down, I took online courses at Harvard Business School. Those were fantastic, challenging and frustrating. I learned a lot and just signed up for another online course. I'm getting DANTE certification. I'm just trying to learn as much as possible.
One of the most amazing things about touring professionals is that we are very resilient. I try to steer clear of the word workaholic but we're a very hardworking bunch. One of the most beautiful things about everyone that I work with on tour is that we want to get the job done. We wake up and want to go to work. We want to do a great job. We want to make the show happen. We want to loadout and close that truck door and go to the next place. One of the most useful things I think I’ve gotten from touring is routine. Sticking to a routine by getting up early, exercising and trying to get work done has really helped me to not go crazy during this pandemic.
What do you miss most about touring?
Credit: Jane Jimenez Photography
I'm a big foodie. I love eating food from different places in the world. One of the big things that I do any time I get to a new location is find a street market, or some sort of street food situation, and immerse myself in the food culture. One of my favorite places in the entire world is Mexico City. I was supposed to go there on the Pat Metheny tour. I was really looking forward to eating thousands of tacos and drinking plenty of mezcal. Enjoying the cultures of the world, and feeling connected to the world, is what I miss most about touring.
Another thing that I miss is is being able to accomplish a set goal every single day. When we wake up at 6:00 a.m. and load-in to a venue, you have one goal that day, and that is to put on the show. Then you work all day and you encounter a thousand different problems that may have been foreseen or unforeseen. There's a thousand different things that happen but the one goal is that you put on the show and the audience enjoys it. You achieve that 99% of the time, and then you load-out and close the truck doors. If everyone can give each other a high five, and know that we did a good job that day, then you move on to the next gig. There's a really beautiful thing with being able to accomplish your task every single day.
What is it like working with Radiohead? What are some of your best memories with the band?
When I first got the call, I could not believe it was happening, and I would not allow myself to believe that I actually got the gig, until it was absolutely 100% positive. They were definitely my favorite band growing up in high school. Being in a band, I wanted to write music like them. I idolized them and that makes it more difficult to go work for them. As a monitor engineer, you're working very closely with the band one on one, very personally. I didn't want my fandom to get in the way of my job. As soon as I got the job, I immediately decided that I needed to do whatever it took to not show that I was a fan of the band, which is a very difficult thing to do. I will say that they are the kindest group of people that I have ever worked for in my entire life.
I had the opportunity to shadow the previous monitor engineer, Mike Prowda, who’s one of the best monitor engineers out there. He had a conflict with Nine Inch Nails. I was brought in to make a seamless transition so that Radiohead could have seamless monitors throughout their whole tour. I shadowed Mike on the South America tour and got to learn his workflow and his console. I then mixed monitors for their US tour. The first day that I was up there mixing monitors for them, the entire band came out and thanked me and hugged me. They were like, “thank you so much for being here and for doing this job for us. We really appreciate it.” I was awestruck. They shouldn't be thanking me. I should be thanking them for this opportunity.
They're all about family, and they're so grateful and generous. They have awards for tour members that have been working for them for five, 10, 20, 30 years. They very much appreciate the crew and anyone that's working for them. It is the pinnacle of a touring organization. I really cannot say enough nice things about them, including Thom Yorke’s solo tour. Thom Yorke joined a Zoom call this year with the crew because he wanted to hang out. We had a couple of Zoom calls with the touring crew when we were supposed to be on tour in Europe just to get together and see how everyone was doing. Thom went out of his way to join the call because he wanted to see what we were doing and to make sure everyone was OK. These are people that really care about their crew and really care about making sure that it's the best show possible for everybody. They would debate the setlist every night for like an hour because they wanted to make sure that the audience got the absolute best show possible.
What do you think is the future of the industry?
Credit: Sarah Bourque
I don't think that we're going to see large scale touring return until we get a vaccine. As of now, we have a small hope of a future vaccine. Even after a vaccine rolls out, you have to regain the trust of people that want to go enjoy large scale events. Despite that, I think the idea of joining a large group of people together to enjoy live music is something that is ingrained inside of us as human beings. There's nothing quite like it. We've seen several instances in the United States where people have had concerts with and without COVID safety. Some people have been chastised for not following guidelines, but that goes to show that people want it. People love it and will do anything to go hang out in a sweaty crowd together and scream along to their favorite songs. I would do it tomorrow if I could but I want to follow the safety guidelines so the rest of my industry can get back to work.
I see the industry coming back eventually. I don't think we're going to see large scale, full touring until at least summer or fall of 2021, if we're lucky. 2022 for sure. I don't see us getting back to 100% of what we were trying to do this year until 2022 or ‘23. There are going to be a lot more safety protocols. Insurance is a huge factor that a lot of people are talking about. Even if you wanted to have a concert right now, you could not find someone to insure it. That's a big factor when you're talking about big companies like AEG and Live Nation. This is just the world that we live in and we're going to have to get used to having a safer work environment, which is good for everyone involved. I think one of the beautiful things that might come out of this is that the touring professionals of the industry might get more representation and have a seat at the table because, up until now, we've been the unspoken voice. We make it all happen but nobody actually knows what we do. Hopefully we'll see some progress in having a seat at the table in the future. I think there's good things to come. We just have to get over this little hump,
What is some of the best advice you've ever received?
My grandfather Arthur Woodrow, one of the smartest men I've ever met, always told me that the harder it is to tell someone something, the sooner you have to tell them. I've always held that close to my heart. The harder the conversation is, the sooner you have to do it. It rings true to this day.