This is perfectly normal - bands like working with the same people, and this applies to all touring shows - music, non-music, ballet, opera, pantomime, light entertainment - they ALL need to pick up a phone and talk to people they trust. A few even bankrolled the hir company, and just to ensure their 3 month touring season would be covered. Some might roll along for ten years or so, then stray, but others are the preferred supplier for ever. Covid killed many of these firms and some new ones popped up using, I think, covid grants. They have proven to be from my experience, pretty appalling - using recent graduates and brand new vehicles.
The established hire firms used their lists of crew, and breaking into that was quite hard to do, and it was ALWAYS recommendations from friends. Friends rarely recommend idiots to people who give them work.
I cannot see anything wrong with this. In my entire working life, I did two interviews in my early 20's, one got me a job, one didn't. ever since then I have worked continually by recommendation - Indeed, when I took 15 years out to be a 'real' teacher, I managed to keep the summer contracts - and when I walked away, unemployed, the phone rang - "is it true you're back?" I said ys and went straight into the first contract - that firm have used me now for 18 yrs. best thing is they also use lots of my ex-students, the ones I recommended and some are doing the pop stuff and doing well. The phone would ring and they'd ask if I could suggest people - I did.
So many of the old firms just folded. The ones who remain are doing OK again. This industry is entirely word of mouth. The cost of kit means that chances to stock up and get work are very rare - but that is how it is. Why did you not just stay in with the PA companies who were in with the bands? Surely you must have noticed how clicquey it is? Riding coat tails is how it works - only as good as the last job. There's no way anything other than covid could have made these new companies viable, and one has proven so incompetent they are now in trouble - they went to lots of the producers, undercut the coat tailers by a long way, and damaged many of those too - then proved that they just didn't have it. So many complaints by the venues and the performers. My job now entails keeping the "do not employ" list - a verbal and never shared list of people to avoid. Every year I put newbies on it. The ones with shitty attitudes or claimed abilities and skills they don't have. "What do you think of ABC - you had them this year, didn't you?" The answer is usually - next question? That's enough to make 3 years at uni a possible waste of student loan. Sometimes, the warnings go unheeded and people change, but most times - they are just too much a risk.
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