“Hoogie” Donais

Photo Credit: Sanjay Parikh

Bass/Key Tech

Shinedown

CHANGEOVER: Tell us about what you do, where you're from and a bit of how you got into the industry.

Hoogie Donais: I've been a tour technician working in production and whatnot, mainly guitar and bass tech, for 23 years now. I hail from Chatham, Ontario, Canada. One hundred percent of what I do for a living is working with American bands, especially the last 10 years. It's one thing when a band stops, you go to the next band but what do you do when your whole industry shuts down?

As for getting into the industry, it sort of fell in my lap towards the end of high school. I had a friend who was in a band and I hung out with him a lot. I started going to shows and then he was like “hey. I want you to help me with my gear.” I was underage so no problem. I’d get to the bar and help my buddy out by bringing his guitar gear in. Next thing you know, they signed a record deal. He took me on the road. I was 18. I had my my fake I.D., went across Canada and it turned into a career. For 23 years I've been fortunate.

Shinedown has been a big part of my career. I've worked on and off with them since 2007. I worked with Lamb of God for five years. I've also worked with other bands like Staind and Breaking Benjamin. Theory of a Dead Man was the band that broke me into the U.S. I worked with them for quite a while and every band that we opened up for I ended up going on to tour with.

Are you mainly working with Shinedown now?

I've been with Shinedown for six years now, or back with them, mainly taking care of Eric[Bass]. I also got to work on their new record. It was the first studio project I ever got to work on in my career. I got to guitar tech on it as well. Eric owns the studio and didn't really have a staff in place so I ended up going to Charleston, South Carolina for three months. I got to work on ATTENTION ATTENTION and got credit for that. It was a really cool experience just being that fly on the wall. A lot of days it was just the guys and me. Watching these songs basically develop into what the fans hear was pretty cool and pretty surreal some days.

Photo Credit: Dave VonClausburg

How has COVID-19 affected your industry plans, especially now that you're in Canada?

It's pretty much like the US. Nothing's happening. The industry is shut down. Shows aren't happening. I think gatherings are 50, maybe 100 now. It changes every day. It depends on what province you're in. The border has been closed since the middle of March. It's not open. It's only open if you fall under a certain category or have a visa to go work down there. Luckily, I can still travel to work down there because of the type of visa I have, but I've had no need to because I'm not working. There's been no need to cross the border as of yet. It's a little surreal.

I have four kids and it's great because they're young and it's awesome getting to be with them, especially at that age. It's also distracting at the same time because we all save up for a rainy day, but not a rainy year. I've got to start thinking of a better means to support them while we weather the storm.

What have you been doing in the meantime now that the industry is literally on pause?

I have a company called WBGear, and I also do artist relations with 11 different brands. That, to me, is like a part time job where the touring is my full time thing. So I'm still doing that. A good friend of mine, Mark McKenzie, is a morning show host of a radio station here in Canada, 89X Windsor/Detroit. In the beginning of this whole pandemic, he started doing Instagram videos with artists. It was great and he was into it. He ended up talking with one of the artists after and was saying, "I'm not making anything to do this. I'm just doing it to kill time.” That artist said “why don’t you and Hoog start your own thing?” He thought about it and gave me a call a week later and said, “What if we start our own Podcast, YouTube show and go from there?” So we started The Mark & Hoogie Show. It's been a lot of fun and we've been getting a great response. We just had one of our episodes hit 1,200 views with Adam Gontier of Saint Asonia, formerly of Three Days Grace. It's pretty cool to see. I’ve got to say, the Shinedown fans have been amazing. Their outpouring and the amount they reached out in support has been really cool. I couldn't have done that without them.

Other than that, I’ve been doing odd jobs around the house and taking care of that extremely long honey-do list. I’ve also been trying to work on instruments out of my garage for local customers. I’ve had about 30 or 40 instruments come across my bench here. I'm not looking to get rich. I'm just trying to keep afloat, like most of us, until we can get back to somewhat of a normal industry.

Photo Credit: Sanjay Parikh

What do you feel is the future of the industry?

I wish I had the answers. I don't know. I personally don't see live entertainment happening until insurance companies figure it out. Somebody looks at you wrong and there's a lawsuit. What’s going to stop bands is, “well, we got sued by 15 people today because we did a show here and there was an outbreak.” I think you're going to see sports have large gatherings before us because they have that TV money. They've got deeper pockets than our industry. I wish I was wrong but until they can figure out how to get 15,000 people into an arena for a hockey game or a basketball game, I don't think we're going to get to do what we do in that setting. Either that or there's some type of way to treat this virus.

Moving on to a lighter note, let's wrap this up with something personal. What has been the greatest piece of advice you've ever received, industry related or not.

You definitely see the same people on the way up as you do on the way down in this industry. Put your all into a job. You could do a job 99 percent but a lot of times people remember that one percent that you didn’t do. Our industry is not just the job but it's the people you’re working with everyday, from the crew to the artists. Definitely just make the best of every situation. Not every situation is the same from band to band.