Jason with one of his stable of motorcycles
Jason Danter
such a daunting challenge, would react in any number of ways, but Jason just rolled up his sleeves, brought together a great team and working with everyone, figured it all out.” Tres Thomas senior vice-president of global operations at Live Nation is another fan. He says, “I’ve had the good fortune to be in this business for 30 years and I’ve worked with some of the best production managers in the world. I now count Jason in that circle. I guess his experience of working in the military explains why he doesn’t get flustered by anything. Jason is a 24/7 man when you are touring, but as soon as there’s a break in the schedule he manages to gets lost in some godforsaken place that still has snow in the middle of July.” Jason Kirschnick of audio specialists Eighth Day Sound
observes, “The logistics for this Gaga tour were challenging because nothing of this scale had done an Asian tour before. Pretty much every night we had to get the gear flown to the next country, so there was a lot of work getting audio equipment into air freight packs, scheduling and fitting all that into the budget. I’d also advance and coordinate all RF frequencies in each country, so I’d interface with Jason on those kind of aspects as well and I have to say he’s fantastic to work with.” Tait Towers president and CEO, James “Winky” Fairorth, says of Danter, “He’s one of my favourite people. Jason has become a bit more independent on this Gaga tour – he’s really become the captain of the ship and it’s the fucking Titanic.” And applauding Danter for his attention to detail, Winky adds, “He’s really geared toward the technical side and logistics seem to come naturally to him. Right now the Gaga tour is just on autopilot because of the team that Jason has put together.” With such universal popularity Jason Danter is, indeed, a worthy recipient of The Gaffer. But while other production managers look with envy upon the tours he is involved in, Danter concludes, “I’m doing ok. The work keeps me in snowboarding trips and motorcycles – I have bikes all over the place: Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Texas and a bunch in the UK and I ride them whenever I get the chance. And I’ll be flying straight to Whistler when this leg of the Gaga tour is finished.” But work is never far from his mind. “When I’m not boarding, I’ll be spending the evenings planning the North American leg of the tour, which starts in January.”