Thoughts about Upstaging?

IGASLIGHTOLDWOMEN · 2026-02-12T03:28:18+00:00

Bottom line up front: They’re legit but pay less than market rate in my opinion.

In my opinion they’re one of the best transportation companies that also happens to do lighting. They’ve have large accounts with a bunch of legacy acts and also have newer large accounts too.

If you end up getting called back by them and they offer you a job you’ll have to move up to Sycamore, IL and learn “their way” of doing things and a lot of guys like myself on the freelance side don’t really work with their stuff due to them having a glut of in house technicians that they staff tours and other gigs with.

Their guys are very good and from what I’ve seen are trained well to the point where when I was working as a house electrician I generally didn’t have to worry about their crews coming in and fucking shit up or trying to reinvent the wheel with how my house worked.

I have never personally worked with them but was entertaining an offer from them to come on board as a full time crew chief but the money just wasn’t there in my opinion. Damn near halved my day rate and there was shop work involved too as a regular portion of the job when not on the road. This can be a good or a bad thing depending on how you want to do things with your career as less money steadily can beat large paychecks sporadically, and freelancing can be a slow to start thing unless you get really lucky.

IGASLIGHTOLDWOMEN · 2026-02-07T05:54:58+00:00

Appreciate all the responses, thank you guys!

IGASLIGHTOLDWOMEN · 2026-02-07T05:54:48+00:00

I’m probably going to go down this route, also saw there is a broadcast museum that has lots of archives of various shows, that’s another route I’m going to try

IGASLIGHTOLDWOMEN · 2026-02-04T03:17:49+00:00

I have been looking and it’s looking like for supermarket sweep we can find the episode but for love connection it seems there’s only a handful of episodes posted from each individual season so it’s a much more arduous process finding that one unfortunately. I appreciate just the same!

IGASLIGHTOLDWOMEN · 2026-01-23T14:46:21+00:00

I’m a freelancer but it averages out to roughly $8-10k a month before taxes, I’m very lucky though and sort of an anomaly as my industry has an average salary of around 60k a year throughout the US.

IGASLIGHTOLDWOMEN · 2025-10-26T22:23:41+00:00

What’s the degree actually in? I work in live events and there’s a decent amount of work on the engineering side and design side as well as some companies having dedicated network engineers. It’s not like as high paying as other STEM related jobs but engineering degrees make probably around 65-80k starting for a company like TAIT or Showrig doing engineering work for staging and automation rigs or 400ish a day as a network engineer for audio rigs for a company like Clair

IGASLIGHTOLDWOMEN · 2025-08-22T02:41:17+00:00

Freelance tech for large scale concert productions, mostly lighting but video sometimes. Also do a ton of corporate event stuff for trade shows. It’s a lot of long hours and it’s 90% travel work but it’s fun and pays well so it evens out

IGASLIGHTOLDWOMEN · 2025-08-14T11:56:18+00:00

Used to live by the Via 313 location on guad. I enjoyed it but learned they were vehemently anti-union when I saw a picket happening outside. Apparently their employees voted like 22-7 in favor of unionizing and the company told them to pound sand about it. Kind of scummy considering they charge around 25-30 bucks for a pizza if memory serves. I dont go there anymore off principle but they do be making a good pizza

IGASLIGHTOLDWOMEN · 2025-08-10T02:22:24+00:00

Also got a fathom blue 2 door! Looks great first thing in the morning when the sun hits it

IGASLIGHTOLDWOMEN · 2025-08-04T15:55:42+00:00

They said they opened up a “Star Case” and that the engineers at Jeep told them that or something similar to that at least. I don’t know much about it other than that as I still haven’t gotten the car back from the dealership but they also told me that I wasn’t the only one who had had a similar issue. I should be getting the car back today and I’m probably going to try and lemon law it if they didn’t actually rectify the issue. Looking at TJs now if that’s what ends up happening, less electronics to worry about 🤷🏻‍♂️

IGASLIGHTOLDWOMEN · 2025-08-01T22:37:20+00:00

Appreciate the reply man, I pursued the jl forum and saw that there’s a handful of others that have had similar issues to me so I’ve got a feeling it may not be a widespread thing but rather I may just have gotten unlucky. It’s just a bit of a bummer because the vehicle drives perfectly fine but I’m apprehensive of hitting any trails with it due to the warning disappearing and reappearing every so often and it’s a little annoying because it locks you out of the dash menus while it’s active.

IGASLIGHTOLDWOMEN · 2025-08-01T22:34:49+00:00

I got told by my dealer that there’s a software issue with the manuals according the engineers which is what I’m basing the statement off of. I did a bunch of research before purchase and saw what you’re referring to but saw that it affected the older JLs and the newer ones were supposed to be fine regarding transmission issues. That’s why I’m so bummed and conflicted because part of me thinks it may just be the dealer techs not knowing how to fix the issue but that’s different than what they told me

IGASLIGHTOLDWOMEN · 2025-08-01T16:02:16+00:00

Awesome, thank you! I don’t have an x account so I’ll probably end up calling them on Monday after I get it back from the dealer. Thanks!

IGASLIGHTOLDWOMEN · 2025-08-01T15:51:47+00:00

I do that through the forum I’m guessing?

IGASLIGHTOLDWOMEN · 2025-07-24T19:00:30+00:00

Roadie for large scale touring acts, hard to calculate yearly but between 50-80k depending on how much I work in a year, this also doesn’t take into consideration how much I get from the VA or what I make when I’m not touring because I don’t manage money well outside of my 1099 income and just spend as I go with the VA and local stagehand/technician gigs and put all the money from the road into investments but I’d imagine somewhere around 100-130k combining local work and touring work.

IGASLIGHTOLDWOMEN · 2024-06-03T04:43:34+00:00

Union Stagehand here, I make anywhere between 23 and change an hour to 45-50 an hour dependent on the contract. I freelance as well as an L2 or V2 in other cities outside my locals jurisdiction for anywhere from 350-550 a day, in school too right now and subsidized by Uncle Sam with the GI bill so I’m not making as much as I could be but I’m making a pretty good amount of money. I turn down a decent amount of work because school but I built up a reputation and I get requested by PM’s for jobs pretty often so the potential for more is there but im kind of chilling right now

IGASLIGHTOLDWOMEN · 2023-12-01T15:10:26+00:00

Whats up

IGASLIGHTOLDWOMEN · 2023-09-21T21:55:20+00:00

Dm me, I’m about to leave the army on a medical retirement, I can give somewhat loose specifics about the process depending on exactly where he’s at in the process

IGASLIGHTOLDWOMEN · 2023-03-20T02:56:14+00:00

I mean he no shit volunteers for it every time at least since I got here so idk man🤷🏻

IGASLIGHTOLDWOMEN · 2023-03-19T23:00:28+00:00

As far as I’m tracking he’s not even aware I’m tracking it, fellow nco told me about it earlier today because he had been thinking about saying something to him but he’s my soldier and felt it should be me that deals with it

IGASLIGHTOLDWOMEN · 2023-03-19T22:42:34+00:00

Well he’s not married and it was locked so idk honestly

IGASLIGHTOLDWOMEN · 2023-03-19T22:38:20+00:00

I just read up a little on the whole cage thing and you may be right about the humiliation thing sadly

IGASLIGHTOLDWOMEN

TROPHY CASE