Mariessa McLeod, Sound Technician at Red Gate and Rain City Recordings (amongst a million and one other venues who rope her in to set up for events and bands), is an absolute champion for women working in the music industry here. She is also a woman who is completely, one hundred percent, unapologetically herself. And although, as she explains, she has never concerned herself with “fitting in”, it took some time and a whole host of incredible influences for her to feel this comfortable with where she’s at.
“I wasn’t really a good student, in fact I was kind of a shit head” Mariessa admits, when I ask her how she got into working in the music industry. “But there was this one teacher who gave me an offer. He said: ‘if you stop lipping off your teachers, and you at least hand in your schoolwork booklets, I’ll send you to this recording studio for your work experience hours.’ And he followed through on that.” At the age of just 16, Mariessa was sent to train at The Hive recording studios in Burnaby.
“I really thank him for being like ‘I don’t think you’re going to be a failure in life, I just think that no-one’s giving you any good options right now.’ As soon as I got to the studio, I felt like I really changed as a person, because I was around adults, and they let this young kid come into the studio. And they were so nice to me – I didn’t know any technical stuff, and they showed me everything I needed. I was hanging out with bands instead of teenagers!”
Mariessa is astonishingly hard-working. She frequently works the night shift at Red Gate and, after a few hours sleep, goes straight to Rain City in the morning. She is very nonchalant about this state of affairs – for her, it has always been this way. “At the Hive, I would work 12-14 hours a day. It was completely unpaid. I would clean the toilets and vacuum and run cable and wrap cable […] but as soon as I started getting it, they started giving me more opportunities. […] It was really cool working at the Hive. when it shut down I was upset. […] I was graduating too so I needed to start making money, so it was really scary.”
But it wasn’t long before people in the industry caught on to the potential that this bright and determined young woman has in spades, and offers came flooding in. Mariessa was asked to join other Technicians from the Hive at their new venture, Rain City Recordings. She was then also approached by another remarkable female Technician, Anju from Co-op Radio (Mariessa describes her, with great affection, as ‘a powerhouse of a woman’), who asked her to be the technical assistant for the station. At 18, she also started working for Red Gate and getting regular gigs at the Biltmore and the Astoria. “I was getting all these offers and I was like, I don’t think I’m right for the job, but if I turn down these offers now I’m not going to get them again. […] I have learned that if you burn out you’re no use to anyone. But that has taken me a lot of years!”
One of the first things that strikes me about Mariessa is that she exudes an air of calm, self-assured professionalism. She’s a person you feel you can innately trust to do a job properly. Despite this, Mariessa explains that she’s experienced discrimination many times; simply because, in an industry dominated by CIS white men of a certain age, she is not what many people may expect when they imagine a Sound Technician. Mariessa is full of stories that exemplify this prejudice at it’s very worse. Like the time she was patronized by a band who repeatedly asked her (and other staff!) to confirm that she was, in fact, their sound tech for the show, and who explained every request in very basic terms, assuming that Mariessa couldn’t possibly understand the technical terminology that she’s spent the past 7 years immersed in. “It doesn’t help that I look, like, 12 years old!” she says, laughing. “There isn’t just a difference between men and women in the industry. It’s also young and old. Like when you tell someone that something isn’t working at their end, and they insist that it must be because you don’t know what you’re doing, and you’re required to prove again and again that the problem is, in fact, their mistake. […] When a booking is questioning something, and the manager says ‘you need to refer to our Technical Director, Mariessa’ […] it helps to have that kind of backup.”
“I’ve gotten in arguments with people like ‘don’t call me honey!’ and when I was younger it used to really upset me […] but now, because I have so much support from other people, they’ve put enough confidence in me so that when people are like ‘where’s my sound man?’, I’m like ‘I’m your sound man, what the fuck do you want?’ […] It doesn’t need to be a boys’ club. The amount of guys who find out I’m a technician and they just spout specs to me, and model numbers of gear – like ‘oh, have you tried the QSCFTLGX with the crossovers at 196 hertz to 256k’ and I’m like ‘you’re just saying words at me.'”
But Mariessa is not just fighting her own battles with the CIS male saturation of music tech, she is also paying it forward by extending the support she’s had to other women and femme-identified people who are interested in taking a role in the field. “When I hire more technical staff or I need a technician, I try to shift the focus from CIS white dudes and offer jobs to female identified or gender variant young people. You have to do something – if you get good opportunities it’s kinda your obligation to try to continue that. You have to help the upcoming generation of people. Because if all the young kids get scared away, there’s not gonna be a scene here in 15 years, so you have to be inclusive, and you have to try and help people who can’t get gigs as easily in other places. […] It’s my dream to have a space and open up workshops for young people who want to get into tech.”
Mariessa is an incredible role-model for young women who want to work in music, and for me, this epitomizes my feminist ideals of women supporting women, but Mariessa does not necessarily see it this way.
“One of my biggest pet peeves is if I’m talking to somebody and I correct them, being like ‘hey, you shouldn’t use the term ‘sound man’, you should use ‘sound tech’ or ‘sound person’ […] and then they’re like ‘oh, sorry, I didn’t realize you were a feminist.’ And the thing is, I don’t even know if I consider myself a feminist, and that’s why it makes me so angry. […] I’m just doing what I want to do, and helping other women or femme people do what they want to do. Why does that have to be a label? Isn’t that just being a decent human? […] Why do I have to be a feminist if I’m a woman working as a technician? Why do I have to be an SJW if I think that you shouldn’t use homophobic slurs? That doesn’t make me anything, it just kinda makes you a shitty person. […] I don’t think it really needs a label, especially from some 50 year old white man trying to tell me what I am.”
Mariessa assures me that the Vancouver music scene is a place where many people are taking steps toward more diversity and representation.
“With all that’s said, I think it’s important to note that there is a sort of change on the horizon. […] I think we’re in a good place. Vancouver especially is trying really hard. The best sound tech in Vancouver, hands down, is Swann Barrat, and that’s known all around the city. If you ask anyone in Vancouver who the best sound tech is, nine times out of ten they will say Swann. She’s definitely someone I aspire to be like. […] But also it’s the men in the scene who need to say ‘I’m not gonna let this happen’, as well. They can unlock the door from the inside instead of us having to smash it in.”
After my conversation with Mariessa, I feel safe in the knowledge that, if there are any doors that still need to be smashed in, she’s the woman for the job!
Women in Music 