Rolling Stone Menu Music’s Road Crews Are Overwhelmingly White and Male. Meet the People Trying to Change That
Artists and roadies alike are stepping up to address a long-standing industry problem
By Batuhan Toker/Adobe Stock
By the time he signed on for Justin Bieber’s
Believe tour in 2012, Lance “K.C.” Jackson had more than 30 years under his belt as a stage manager and touring pro; he’d worked with Prince, Destiny’s Child, Luther Vandross, and Earth, Wind, and Fire, among others. Now, on a tour headlined by a white artist, he drew quizzical looks backstage whenever he went to help Bieber with a harness that allowed him to descend onto the stage sporting wings. “There aren’t a lot of black props workers out there, so people were looking at me like, ‘Who is this guy? Can he make it happen?’” Jackson recalls. “It was a prejudgment.”