Giggs Podcast

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 sees how a touring production handles a tight stage, a hot day, and a front of house console that fails hours before showtime.
For the best experience, make sure you listen to this one with video on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube.
What you'll learn:
What a production manager handles on show day, and how one person runs production and mixes front of house on the same tour
How touring rigs work, including bridles, trim heights, and why the rig changes from venue to venue
How a systems engineer tunes a PA so the mix sounds the same in every seat
Why NEEDTOBREATHE's front of house mix leans on analog character and low latency
How a lighting designer runs a show with no video and every cue fired by hand
What happens during line check, and how the crew swapped a console before doors
What life on the road looks like for a tour bus driver
Featured Guests:
Jacob "Trunz" Trunzo, Production Manager & Front of House Engineer
Johnathan Rickard, Lighting Designer & Director
Dalton Brandt, Head Rigger
Zach Johnson, Systems Engineer
Greg Tribble, Bus Driver
Join the #1 community and career platform for the live event industry: https://www.giggs.live/

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Youtube: https://youtube.com/@giggs-live
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/giggs-llc/
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Host: Nikki Sanz

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 with Darius Rucker, Shaboozey, Gavin DeGraw, Big & Rich, Billy Currington, James Otto, and Ashley Monroe, plus Bold Music Group, the experiential music company he built with his wife, Meghan Linsey. It's also where Nikki got her first job in Nashville, after Tyler and Meghan watched her outwork a room full of CMA Fest interns.
Tyler and Nikki get into the indie label that collapsed under an FBI investigation when he was 21, the vacant studio that became his first production credit, the 3-year-old in Arkansas who asked if his band were clowns, and why he's recording on tape with no click track now that AI makes perfect easy.
What you'll learn:
Why the FBI questioned him in an apartment with no furniture, and how that label's collapse put him on a radio tour with Ashley Monroe the next day
How an empty studio at Wrensong and an engineer friend's borrowed gear became his first production job, a six-song EP for Ashley Monroe
What it looked like to watch "Just Got Started Lovin' You" take James Otto from empty rooms to sold-out shows in a couple of weeks
The filters that shrink the pool of working musicians: talent, then showing up on time, then showing up prepared, then being someone people want around
Why every tour he's had came from a friend's call except one
How Bold Music Group started as a way to cover studio rent with four shows a week
The Planet Fitness trick he uses on tour, and how he handles the post-show comedown
Featured Guest:
Tyler Cain is a Nashville-based artist, producer, musician, and entrepreneur who's worked in the studio and on the road with artists including Darius Rucker, Shaboozey, Gavin DeGraw, Colbie Caillat, Big & Rich, Billy Currington, Chingy, Aloe Blacc, and Shaggy. As an artist, his own music has racked up millions of streams, and as an entrepreneur, he co-founded Bold Music Group, one of Nashville's go-to spots for high-end, immersive music experiences. His latest release is Generations, an instrumental EP from Tyler y Zoro, his project with legendary drummer Zoro.
Follow Tyler Cain:
Website: https://tylertheproducer.com
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisistylercain/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/artist/7xmVA0jnh2yjM3S642J1Bd
Tyler y Zoro, Generations EP: https://open.spotify.com/album/60GPHSvKkXvNvqpZtmdqyD
Sponsor:
MOC is looking for new volunteers to help share the joys of live music. Volunteer Guides are the friendly faces who host the programs as volunteer musicians perform hopeful songs to put a smile on the faces of hospital patients, families, and caregivers. To learn more about becoming a Musicians On Call volunteer, visit https://www.musiciansoncall.org.
Join the #1 community and career platform for the live event industry: https://www.giggs.live/

Stay up to date:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/giggs.live
Youtube: https://youtube.com/@giggs-live
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/giggs-llc/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@giggs.live

Host: Nikki Sanz

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, production manager, merch, van driver. He ran pre-show carpentry and automation for Tim McGraw, then spent nearly seven years as Kip Moore's tour manager. These days, Ryan oversees budgets, vendors, staffing, advancing, and routing for a roster of artists at Red Light: anything and everything touring runs through him.
What you'll learn:
Why he budgets roughly $1,250 to $1,500 a day per truck, and $2,000 to $3,000 a day for a tour bus, when building a preliminary budget
The Winnipeg scramble: a commercial flight delay, a police escort, and getting the band on stage with 15 minutes to spare
Why he'd rather sell out a 900-seat room for three nights than fill 80 percent of a 3,000-seat room once
How six days a week mixing front of house at Nashville's Wildhorse Saloon became the foundation for everything that came after
His rule for handling a crew member who quits or gets let go mid-tour, and why doing business properly matters more than convenience
Why he thinks of his job as being a chameleon, adapting to each artist camp's spirit instead of bringing his own energy to it
Sponsor:
MOC is looking for new volunteers to help share the joys of live music. Volunteer Guides are the friendly faces who host the programs as volunteer musicians perform hopeful songs to put a smile on the faces of hospital patients, families, and caregivers. To learn more about becoming a Musicians On Call volunteer, visit https://www.musiciansoncall.org.
Join the #1 community and career platform for the live event industry: https://www.giggs.live/

Stay up to date:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/giggs.live
Youtube: https://youtube.com/@giggs-live
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/giggs-llc/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@giggs.live

Host: Nikki Sanz

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 the last several years capturing the touring world from the inside. His work has appeared in CMT and People, and he's traveled the road with artists including Snoop Dogg, Darius Rucker, Chase Matthew, Cole Swindell, and Austin Williams. 
On this episode, he talks with Nikki Sanz about the cold DM that got him hired within 24 hours, the year and a half he spent living and touring with Chase Matthew, and the week he came home from that Snoop Dogg tour and had to call his dad for rent money.
What you'll learn:
How a cold DM to Chase Matthew turned into moving in with him and touring for a year and a half
What separates being a fly-on-the-wall on stage from directing the shot
Why he had to call his dad for rent money after coming home from a Snoop Dogg tour
How getting double-booked for Snoop Dogg's opener turned into shooting Snoop Dogg too
Why he didn't know what a retainer client was until it cost him
How Chris uses AI tools like Higgsfield, Nano Banana Pro, and Seedance to solve problems he can't fix on-site
Why a nine-second video of his own hand became his most-viewed post ever, at 14 million views and counting
Chris Rippy Bio:
Chris Rippy is a Nashville-born creative director, videographer, and photographer who has spent the last several years capturing the touring world from the inside — his work has appeared in CMT and People magazine, and he's traveled the world, on the road with artists including Snoop Dogg, Darius Rucker, Chase Matthew, Cole Swindell, Austin Williams, and more. He also helps other freelance visual creators with different courses and education content on social media.
Sponsor:
MOC is looking for new volunteers to help share the joys of live music. Volunteer Guides are the friendly faces who host the programs as volunteer musicians perform hopeful songs to put a smile on the faces of hospital patients, families, and caregivers. To learn more about becoming a Musicians On Call volunteer, visit https://www.musiciansoncall.org.
Join the #1 community and career platform for the live event industry: https://www.giggs.live/

Stay up to date:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/giggs.live
Youtube: https://youtube.com/@giggs-live
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/giggs-llc/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@giggs.live

Host: Nikki Sanz

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 development at Warner Bros. and Atlantic for Van Halen, Fleetwood Mac, Prince, Talking Heads, The Who, and The Pretenders, then negotiating Warner's digital deals with EMI, iTunes, Napster, and Rhapsody as SVP of Digital Development.
What you'll learn:
How Ted got hired by Atlantic Records’ president before he’d even left the Led Zeppelin stadium
Why he never gave Prince a single note of direction across years working with him
The stunt that had Van Halen roll into record stores in an armored car and a stagecoach
How he snuck Coca-Cola branding into a venue locked into an exclusive Pepsi contract
Why he calls himself a “forgiveness executive, not a permission executive”
What artist development actually did for touring bands, and why the job doesn’t exist anymore
The bar coaster he still puts on the table before every negotiation
Ted Cohen Bio:
Ted Cohen has spent five decades in nearly every corner of the music industry — from artist development at Warner Bros. with Van Halen, Fleetwood Mac, Prince, Talking Heads, The Who, and The Pretenders, to negotiating the label's digital agreements with EMI, iTunes, Napster, and Rhapsody as SVP of Digital Development, to co-creating the Leadership Music Summit. He's made Billboard's Power 100 list three years running, founded TAG Strategic, and now teaches at the University of Tulsa. He's been in more rooms where the industry got built — and rebuilt — than almost anyone still working.
Sponsor:
MOC is looking for new volunteers to help share the joys of live music. Volunteer Guides are the friendly faces who host the programs as volunteer musicians perform hopeful songs to put a smile on the faces of hospital patients, families, and caregivers. To learn more about becoming a Musicians On Call volunteer, visit https://www.musiciansoncall.org.
Join the #1 community and career platform for the live event industry: https://www.giggs.live/

Stay up to date:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/giggs.live
Youtube: https://youtube.com/@giggs-live
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/giggs-llc/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@giggs.live

Host: Nikki Sanz