Now where's the E man? Get 'em, get 'em, get 'em.
Let's see what's going
on over here on stage.
What up, baby?
How you doing?
What a beautiful place, man.
Wow. Yeah Duddy.
Good morning. Getting
some camera time?
And we're gonna have a big rock show going on in here.
I mean, a freakin'.
My name is Eric Hillman and I'm a guitar tech for the rock
band 311. I run a bass rig for P-Nut, the bass player of
311. I also run Nick Hexum's guitar world.
Lead singer. I run his sounds over here from a side stage
so he can be free up there to move around and not have to
worry about stepping on all this or messing up his elbow or
anything, you know? Aw yeah, man.
Let me see what you got. Guitars, right this way.
Perfect. For me, I wake up in the morning on a tour bus.
Most of the time. Sometimes we'll fly into shows.
That'll be different.
Wake up in a hotel or something, but get out here to stage
and catch cases.
When my stuff comes up, I take it out, take the lids off
and set it all up for the day.
It's my pedal board, man. Well, it's Nick's pedal board.
And a little dusty.
We didn't know you were coming over. Bunch of different
sounds in here and I'll switch it for him during the show.
You know, it's the difference between a...
And a bunch of other different ones.
I also run social media for the band and run things on
their Instagram pages. I have a whole tour page that we do
here for the tour that I'll run exclusively usually and
constantly pulling content for that.
Yeah, I'm going to use that sound.
I'm going to program that one right there.
A4. Yeah, you bet it's gonna be A4 tonight for Philly.
You ready for this Philly?
Man, I'm lucky. I sleep great on the busses.
It's small quarters.
They have these bunks in the buses, which are pretty nice.
We got your little TV, DVD in there.
Whatever you want. DVD.
Like who's watching DVD's, right?
You bring your little case of DVD's.
15 years later, we're best buds.
Bus bros even.
And it's a blast.
And then I've worked for Dirty Heads before.
Pepper is usually my go-to.
Sublime with Rome. Slightly Stoopid and a lot of bands in
this circuit because, you know, we'll meet on tour.
Their guy can't make it or something, they'll call me, you
know. "Hey, dude. What's up?"
I'm a guitarist and I was a guitarist.
Performing guitarist. You know, when I met these guys.
I'd had this guitar tech for a few years.
And right before the tour, he decides, "Ah, I don't really
want to tour anymore. I want to stay home with my girl."
So I was completely in a panic.
And our studio manager, Jason, was like, "You should call
Cousin Eric."
He quickly emerged as one of the greatest, probably the
best roadie we've had.
But I never knew this job existed until I had it.
And then the first show of their 2007 run was when I
joined. If you'd have told me that then, I would have
laughed and been like, "Yeah, right, dude."
So we're just stringing up this puppy, you know.
Putting new strings on every day for the freshy, fresh.
Slappy slap. It makes a big difference to have the...
The slappiness of it. Yes.
This is Nick's main guitar here.
A lot of these gigs pay very well.
My first tour I maybe came in at a beginner's rate and then
was promptly given a raise after my first year of
completion. Making up to $5,000 a week is not super unreal
or unrealistic at all.
It's one gig I would say that you can kind of almost live
wherever you want because as long as there's an airport
somewhat nearby, you can fly to your next gig.
Or at least to your next tour.
I think we're pretty much ready to go get these dudes and
do a soundcheck now and it is right on time.
2:01. Check 1, 2.
Alright. To name
everything that could go wrong in a day, you'd have to be
here with me for a week. Something as simple as them losing
a wheel on the way to the truck.
Tube could blow on an amplifier, a wireless frequency for a
microphone could get interrupted or just completely drop.
Or if you're in a big city or around military bases, their
wireless frequencies are totally jammed up.
Microphones, drums, so many things running wirelessly that
people don't realize that the simple interruption of a
signal could be a drop-out in the show.
And people go, "Hey, that drum's not working."
Well, it's working.
It's just, you don't hear it because the microphone is not
working. So it's all about just diagnosing it quickly and
fixing it so you get back to the show.
This is my work box. Everything from rechargeable batteries
and Q-tips and stamps, in case you want to send a postcard
home. And guitar
strap locks...
That's it.
The hardest part, easily, it has nothing to do with stage
or any of these people that you see here in the room.
It's being away from people you love.
Being away from family. It never gets easier.
It actually gets harder. Hi Daddy.
Hi babe, what are you doing? Where you at?
I'm at work.
Man, I send postcards at home all time.
Kind of old school, but people at home appreciate the
mailbox love.
I'm always in tune
with
the band's doing.
I'm pretty much on the same ear mix as the singer.
Listening to the same parts of the song.
Listen to the cues, to vocals, different parts.
Okay. Here comes a guitar solo. Button, button.
I'm always looking at the set list, looking at a chart,
looking at notes. Or if it's an older song that I happen to
love, I'm not doing any of that.
I'm bobbing my head going, Ah, here comes my part.
Here comes my part. It's right now.
There's the unspoken thing, which is having a good attitude
and being a pleasant person to be around.
If somebody starts to get an attitude, we might call them,
like, a white glove roadie.
Like, I'm not going to do that.
Cousin Eric is the opposite of that.
Man, I just love being around music and being around rock
'n roll. The vibe. Now I've got a gig where I...
That's what I do. You know what I mean? So it's harder to
get tired of than rather, like, you know.
I used to work in movie theaters sweeping popcorn.
It's easy to get tired of that.
Hard to get tired of going...
Alright. Hey, that sounds freakin' great.
That's exactly how I want it to sound, too.
It's definitely a dream job. It's a job I didn't know was a
real thing. But after living it and experiencing it.
Yeah, it's definitely a dream job.