Gina Hanlon is a live sound engineer who specializes as a Monitor Engineer. She has worked all over the world for many different sound production companies and bands for over fifteen years. Currently, Gina works for Courtney Barnett, G-Flip, The Veronicas and Sheppard.
What would you normally be doing this time of year?
This time of year if I wasn’t touring in Europe or somewhere in the world, I would be heading to Darwin for a month to do the Darwin Festival. This year, in particular, I would have been coming home from Splendour in the Grass …. in March when everything was cancelled, I was booked solid up till then.
What’s a fairly normal day at the moment for you?
Coffee. Stretching and maybe some exercise. Watch the news to see what’s going on in the world today. Maybe some gardening. Chat with friends. Cook dinner. Watch a movie. Go to sleep. Repeat!
Are you learning anything to improve your skills set?
I haven’t as yet. But now that I see I won’t have any work in my industry for a very long time I’m looking into doing a TAFE course, something to do with electricity maybe, or seeing if I can get a job (paid or volunteer) in some type of social work. A different industry I know but part of my job as a monitor engineer is to listen to and try to understand each individual’s wants and needs and do what I can to help facilitate.
What bad habits have you slipped into?
Drinking too often and not enough self-care.
How are you coping financially?
Well, there’s not a lot to spend money on, so I’m doing ok. I don’t have loans and have cheap rent so that helps. If I wasn’t getting financial assistance from the government it would be a different story. But once that amount begins to drop and then is non-existent, which will no doubt happen before our industry is back up and running, I will be using my life savings to survive, which puts owning a house etc much, much further out of reach.
When do you think live entertainment with return and in what format?
It’s slowly trying to return, in a smaller format, but has taken a few tumbles along the way with drive-in shows being cancelled when the NSW border closure happened. It won’t return to even close to what we knew it to be without a vaccine, as the industry will be ruled by the insurance companies and promoters won’t give guarantees until then. International touring is definitely out of the question until at least 2022 if not longer. Theatre gigs and sit down pub gigs is the way forward for now, but not sure how long that will hold peoples attention though as part of what is great about a gig is the energy from a packed room, the audience feeding off of one another’s energy as well as the band and their music, and the band feeds off that.
Do you have any words of encouragement?
Be kind to yourself, take a deep breath and try to take notice of all the beauty around you.
What makes you happy at the moment?
Ha! Well not much really. The first sip of wine for the day?? I escaped Melbourne before this current lockdown (I was actually heading to Sydney for a gig which ended up being cancelled) and spent two weeks driving country roads in NSW and visited with friends before heading to my family in QLD. That made me really happy. Today I went to the pool to swim laps for the first time in over five months, then lay in the sun for a while. This made me so happy I could cry.
