Voices Of Live: David ‘5-1’ Norman Of Tour Forensics

David ‘5-1’ Norman: I was on a tour where we had 16 Davids, eight of whom were on the production channel. About the second or third day, the artist pulled me aside and said, “Hey, what kind of things are you interested in so I can come up with a radio code name for you?” And I said, “Well, I’ve always been a practicing Buddhist, interested in conspiracy theories, the Loch Ness Monster, Area 51 …” Every tour I’ve ever been on there’s usually another David or two or three, so I just tell people to call me ‘5-1.’

I was a frustrated drummer. I played in top 40 bands and a Rush cover band. We played Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee and did a little Southeast tour. 

I had an old Simmons kit and a gong and a double bass kit. We played biker bars.

It was hilarious, a black guy in a Rush cover band. But when I was 18 my phone rang in my hotel room at like 5:30 a.m, and it was the neighbors who lived across the street from my parents and they said, “You’ve got to come home. Your parents were in a car accident.” I said, “Well, are they okay?” They said, “You just need to come home.” And when we got back, I got the bad news that my parents were gone.

I was in a daze. My parents left some money to my sister and myself. I lost the love for drumming but still wanted to be involved with music so I bought studio equipment. A friend helped me build walls and insulate and taught me how to engineer and mix. One of the groups at my studio got signed to Motown Records and when they went on the road they asked if I would come out and mix, set up the gear, drive the van, book hotels and flights and more. That’s how I learned. They were opening for a major band and the tour manager of that band was leaving, funny enough, to go work with Prince.

AC Black. They were from Macon, Ga. When she left to go work with Prince I got called up to work with the headlining band The SOS Band. Then I went on to Peabo Bryson where I did mix production and tour managed him for a few years. 

In some cities they were. It was embarrassing.

Arrested Development for a few years. They were hip-hop alternative and won a couple of Grammys and opened up the doors to groups like the Fugees, Black Sheep and Diggable Planets.

I was tour managing, production managing and settling shows, I was doing everything and I was mixing.

One-person salary. But I was just starting out, I didn’t know any better and I wanted to prove myself. And I enjoyed it.

It’s still the way independent artists start out. The tour manager does everything a lot of times. It’s still difficult to this day cutting your teeth and to learn how to do this stuff. 

I had three great mentors and I still call them from time to time to get their advice. Tom Barfield, he worked with everyone from Mötley Crüe to Luther Vandross to Rick James, and the best advice he ever gave me, he said, “Dave, as you’re coming up you need to learn everything – tour managing, production management, accounting. If you can, be a promoter rep so you could learn stuff from the other side of the table. Take that and run with it because your phone will ring four times more for possible gigs than just ringing for one gig.” That was some of the best advice anyone ever gave me.

The lady who noticed me with AC Black on tour, Karen Krattinger, who went on tour with Prince and the Dixie Chicks. She lives in Nashville, we still talk every month or two. She shoots right from the hip. She’ll tell you straight out, “You’re fucking up. You shouldn’t do that. This is my advice, but you’re a grown man …” 

A guy named Bob Ward, who’s over in England at Sanctuary Management and had Iron Maiden, Morrissey and Joss Stone, who I tour managed. He’s worked with Beyoncé. He’s retired now, but man, what a wealth of information. We just spoke a couple of days ago, just an amazing man. 

Who came after Arrested Development?

I’ve worked with Toto, Dream Theater, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Fall Out Boy, Panic! At The Disco, John Legend, Alicia Keys, Earth, Wind & Fire and Prince.

I was either tour manager and accountant or production manager and accountant or tour director and accountant. It was a hodgepodge. I took the advice of Tom Barfield, my mentor, “Learn everything you can, because your phone will ring.” 

Here’s what I tell people: If I’m the production manager and I’m the accountant, I have to see all the bills anyway and I prefer to do both jobs. So, pay me a little extra because the artist is going to save money. If you hire one person to do two jobs, you’re saving an extra hotel, flight, salary, per diem, etc. – it’s well worth it. 

Usually loading in at 7 or 8 o’clock in the morning and then I get back on the bus like maybe 1 or 2 o’clock in the morning. But you figure out how to budget your time. 

Four or five, yeah. 

I just started my own last year called Tour Forensics, but it’s more of a tour consultancy thing. But as far as touring with artists, I’m an independent contractor. 

Working with Prince, he pushed me to be a better production manager and an overseer because he was a perfectionist. He was very difficult but when you’re a perfectionist, you have such high standards that you expect other people to have the same standards. He really, really pushed me. 

I got a call, it was his last tour with 3rdeyegirl, his all-girl band, nine days before the tour started. They said, “Hey, we’re looking for a production manager for Prince,” and I said, “Absolutely.” And I said, “Can you start sending me information?” And they said, “What do you mean? What do you need? We can send you the tour dates.” I said, “Okay, can you tell me who the vendors are?” They said, “We don’t have any of that in place. We need you to put everything together.” So in nine days, I put together the entire European tour. I hired all the vendors, staffed it, did flights, hotels, a preliminary budget, helped put together the touring itinerary, I did it all in nine days. I didn’t sleep for four days putting it together with the time difference in Europe being six hours ahead. That was a highlight because I pushed myself and I wanted to make a good impression on him.

Oh my gosh, yes. He would come up to me directly because I was the main person, so if someone had to be fired, he would go, “Hey, that person, get rid of him.” But there would be days he would call me down to the dressing room and talk to me just like a guy, like, “How’s your family? What do you think about basketball? Who’s your favorite football team?” We would talk about religion sometimes.

But other days, it would be, “Why did you do that? That’s unacceptable” or “I didn’t like this portion of the show tonight. We need to change this.” I carried a small notebook in my pocket because he would ramble off a lot of things he would want changed during the show that I would tell the audio, video or lighting departments. “Hey, the boss wants this changed for tomorrow’s show,” and on and on. He taught me a lot and he worked you to death, but the shows were well worth it. I would stand on the side of the stage and watch the show, it was just like I can’t believe I’m a part of this.

It was spontaneous because he could read a crowd so well. He could give the band a look or a hand motion and they would know what to do. He learned a lot of that from James Brown in how he directed the band. But he was an underrated guitar player, an underrated bass player, underrated drummer. He’s one of the greatest musicians of all time. Just to see him walk up, even not on his own gear, pick up a guitar and play it, not knowing the gauge of the strings or the size of the guitar pick and just make it sing or to just sit down at a keyboard or piano and play something classical or jazz or gospel – I would look at him and just go, “This guy is on a whole other planet.” 

Very much so. We were in Brussels and had a “day off.” And on our “day off,” myself, the production coordinator and promoter had to drive around Brussels to find a venue because he wanted to play on our “day off.” We would go to different venues and take pictures and text them to him and he would say, “No. No. Possibility. No.” He decided on the Botanical Gardens, they had a little room in the back that held 300 people or so. We did three shows that night and packed up and rolled into the next city. We were burnt.

2014. 

He did the “Piano & a Microphone Tour,” which was his last tour and some dates in Canada, but I wasn’t a part of those. When we got back from Europe, I was done mentally and physically. I was just worn down. I was doing everything – production manager, pseudo-tour manager because our tour manager never showed up, we didn’t have a tour accountant out there, so I was helping out with those things. I was burnt out, just mentally and physically done. There was a lot of things I wanted to do for him and with him, but the timing wasn’t right. 

It’s top-down from the artist and how they view not only their internal world but their outer world and in general how they treat people. And you see it and feel it as soon as you come on board. All of those artists, even to this day, I’ve taken something from all of them. 

John Legend said something that always stuck with me. He said, “‘5-1,’ if you don’t have your word, what do you have?” And man, I got goosebumps right now even relaying that. Alicia Keys, she’s a very, very smart lady.  The thing I got from her was, I’m very much an introvert, I’m a private person and she would always try to bring me out to be a little bit more outgoing. 

And then Earth, Wind & Fire and how they treat people. Some of the band have been there for 20 or 30 years. So it’s top-down. 

Rob Light, who’s at CAA, has been a huge impact in my life. Because I can call him from time to time just to have a quick chat. Meredith Jones and Brian Hill in the CAA offices in Nashville have been a huge help. Brett Steinberg at CAA has been a huge influence. Mitch [Rose] also in the L.A. office.

A lot of times, the really great managers are visionaries themselves in making the vision of an artist happen. Irving Azoff, Stuart Ross at Red Light Management, John Cutcliffe, Ty Stiklorius, who manages John Legend, she’s an amazing manager, a visionary. A great manager who works with an amazing artist is often the reason why they’re very successful. 

I’ve made a concerted effort in my career to branch out and work in different genres, but I have also felt I haven’t been given a seat at the table to be on those big tours like the Stones, U2, Black Sabbath or Madonna. I haven’t had an opportunity. I’ve applied to be on those tours but have never gotten a call. And it begs the questions, am I not good enough? Do they not know me? Is it a color issue? Which I don’t think it is. I think it’s that people usually hire people they know and they’re comfortable with, that they’ve worked with before. I do the same thing when I’m hiring on my tours. But I make a concerted effort to hire people of color and women because we need more female tour managers, production managers, accountants, front of house engineers, and monitor engineers, and we don’t and they don’t get those same opportunities. 

One of the things I do is when I’m hiring vendors, especially bus and truck companies, I say, “Hey. Do you have any black drivers? Do you have any female drivers?” And that’s for buses and trucks because I not only want to give them an opportunity but by requesting that, it’s also making the industry as a whole a little bit more well-rounded. 

Prince and I had a conversation one night in his dressing room. He said, “You know what? My next tour, I want it to be all women.” And I said, “What do you mean?” He says, “I want everyone to be a woman; the band, the lighting person, stage manager, truck drivers, bus drivers. I want everyone to be female on the tour.” And I said, “I think that’s an amazing idea, do you think that you can make it happen?” He says, “It needs to happen.” 

You can’t because there’s always going to be ignorant people. Especially if you’re in an industry where there aren’t a whole lot of us, you just kind of deal with it and roll with it because you have to. You get frustrated but you move on because I know that I’m better than that. I don’t have to explain to you that I’m the tour manager of a country tour. If you don’t believe me that’s on you. I’m going to keep on doing me. You just keep on doing you. 

There’s something different about this one, for sure, because people are mad. This is a whole different kind of anger and people are really talking about it, more so now than they ever have. I am very hopeful there will be change.