Brad Clifford

Credit: Joe Leonard

Guitar Tech

Slipknot / Mastodon / Against Me! / The Gaslight Anthem

CHANGEOVER: Tell us a bit about who you are, what you do and how you got into the music industry.

Brad Clifford: My name is Brad Clifford and, in a normal world, I am a touring guitar tech. From a young age, I just was playing in bands and started touring for a long time, maybe 10 or 15 years. It was pretty much full time, at least as full time as I could be at that point. When my last band went on hiatus, I decided that I would try being a crew member by guitar tech’ing instead of starting a new band from the ground up. It was a way to travel and stay on the road doing shows. 

How did you get your first gig as a guitar tech?

It was sort of a silly idea in my head that I lucked into. I really didn't know much more than the average guitar player. I definitely never soldered a cable before and just kind of faked my way into it. I put together a resume, which was basically just a list of bands that I had been in to show that I was part of this community. I also knew how to tour, which is a big part of the job, aside from the technical aspects. A friend told me about the Bobnet emailing list so I put my resume up on that. When you post on there it’s just blind submissions. For example, a band will post a job without saying who they are and then people will submit resumes to the email that was referenced in the posting. I submitted my resume to a posting and about a week or two later I got a call. I didn't answer it because I didn’t know the phone number. When I checked the voicemail it was something like, “this is Brendan [Ekstrom] from Circa Survive. I'm just giving you a call to see if you could still do that tour that starts next week.” I didn’t know what was going on. I never had a conversation about this in my life. I called him back and was obviously confused about the conversation and the timeline of things but they got my resume from Bobnet. Brendan thought his tour manager had already talked to me but he actually just passed my phone number on to him instead. He asked if I wanted to join their tour next week so I did. It was a support tour with Coheed and Cambria. I pretended I could do things and figured them out on the fly. The rest is history.

What are some pros and cons of being a guitar tech?

Credit: Jonathan Minto

It's sort of the risk versus reward thing. A band is typically a democracy. If you have an opinion on something and you kind of stick to it, or push for it, you've got some more skin in the game. As a tech, I couldn't tell you how many times people would get into a discussion with one person wanting to do this and another person wanting to do that. As the guitar tech, I stay out of it until a decision is made. There have been so many times when I was stoked I wasn’t in the band because of situations like that. As much as I may love all the people in the band, there are those moments when I’m grateful for the freedom of not having to deal with that.

When I first started tech’ing, I was a bit concerned because I didn’t want to be the kind of tech who would watch from the side of the stage and wish they were on the stage playing. I was never interested in being in the spotlight, but it was something I was sort of used to. On that first tour as a tech, it quickly became clear that it wasn't a factor. I definitely got just as much enjoyment out of doing my job tech’ing as I did performing. It felt like everyone together was creating this truly positive experience. Everyone has a part, whether you are the person who writes and sings the songs, or if you're behind the scenes making it possible. I was lucky to have a decent perspective on that.

What were you doing when COVID-19 hit and how did that affect your job? 

We were just finishing up a Slipknot tour in Europe. We heard talk of COVID but things hadn’t gotten quite out of hand yet. There were a couple of people coming to join the tour, like significant others, that would fly out and had to wear a mask. It wasn't really affecting our world. Luckily, we didn't have any shows of that tour canceled. We finished up and then all flew home. Maybe three days later was when mask mandates, lockdowns and mass cancelations started happening. We were in the middle of a world tour cycle for an album so there were a lot of things canceled going forward. I spent the first three or four months, like everyone else, taking things as they came. I don't think anyone really expected it to be this far out on the timeline so I wasn't really stressing too hard. I thought I would be fine financially for a while. I was just doing things that I wanted to do by playing guitar, building pedals and doing all these other projects.

A few months later I got a call from a nice vintage guitar shop that I go to sometimes in my neighborhood. They needed someone to do repairs full time so they asked me if I wanted the job. It ended up being a really good fit so I’ve been doing that for the last eight months or so. It’s basically the closest possible thing to what I do on tour anyway but the job is in the same building every day. It’s a much different lifestyle and it’s the most I've ever been in one place for my entire life. It's definitely the most consecutive days I've ever seen my dog or my girlfriend. It's a much different change of pace and it's also the first time I've ever had a nine to five job in my entire life. I went to college and had part time jobs but everything else was sort of in support of touring. I would only take jobs that would allow me to go on tours here and there so it's interesting to have a shift to the standard job set up.

What was it like going from a touring schedule to a regular 9 to 5 job? 

I’m super thankful for it and that's been the overriding feeling to any ups and downs of it. It’s such a different way of life, as opposed to traveling and always being on the move. It does take a bit of a mental shift to change and not feel like you're in a rut with doing the same thing every day. I am so thankful and feel very, very fortunate to not be in a worse situation with my health, or finances, or any of the problems that most people I know are having during this time. I feel fortunate. I came into a job that is the closest possible thing to what I was doing before, and I do enjoy it just as much. I got real lucky.

What sound, or part of the work day, do you miss most from touring?

I would say it's probably the radio call of my friends that are backline tech’ing. We would all go to catering together for dinner. I definitely miss that. No matter what's going on in your workday, there will always be someone who gets on the radio and says, ”is everybody ready?” Then you know it's time to go hang out with your friends and have dinner before you get back to it. It's the first thing that came to mind. Another thing that's missing, for a lot of people, is the community, time with friends and the camaraderie. A lot of those people that I got used to seeing, more than anyone else, I haven't seen in a year.