Vale Greg Weaver – by Neale Mace

We were all shocked and saddened to hear of the passing of Greg Weaver at the weekend, for he was surely one of the most popular guys on the touring circuit. Neale Mace, Managing Director at EI Productions, knew Greg for close to 20 years and considered him both a colleague and good friend. Neale penned this fitting tribute:

There are many, many people who knew Greg Weaver in our industry and you can tell how well-known, respected, and liked he was by the outpouring on Facebook as the sad news of his untimely passing spread.

I can’t pretend to know all about Greg, but I have known him both professionally and personally for 19 years.

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I can pinpoint the day I first met Greg – Nov 24th 2000 at Heatwave Festival (Gosford) where he was looking after The Whitlams – on that day we started a professional relationship and friendship that I cherished for all of that time.

Greg Weaver was a no-bullshit Tour Manager, Production Manager, FOH guy, band wrangler, mother hen to bands on tour, computer tech boffin on tour, and an all-round gentleman and great guy.

Always affable and easy to get on with, he was a guy for whom problems were only solutions waiting to happen.

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Sometimes Greg would call with tour / show problems that needed sorting and I can remember lots of times where he’d say “we have 48hrs to solve this – it’s plenty of time, here’s my possible solution”. More often than not, his solution was the best one.

Often touring with acts such as The Whitlams and Paul Kelly, to name a couple of the many local and international acts he’s done as TM/PM/FOH op, he always made it look easy and having him on-board always made touring a pleasure.

Plus he was always into the music of the acts he was mixing, not that many except the core touring crew might notice. He’d be tapping away at a delay time, shutting his eyes while he accented a solo and his left / right finger point as he panned a guitar solo part – these were things I always remember.

His FOH mixing capabilities were exceptional and you always knew that if Greg was behind the desk at any given show or festival that mix quality was not going to be one of the issues.

But it wasn’t just his mixing prowess that made him stand out. Anybody in this business knows the amount of work and mental strain involved in getting a band on the road for a tour – the star, the musicians, the backline, the rehearsals, the transport, the accom, the production, the touring crew, the local crew, the merch, the venues and all the last minute issues – Greg would handle this all with what seemed to me to be a calm sense of control. No issue was too small to be ignored and no issue was too big to handle.

Not only all this, but he’d always be tour mentor to the support acts and their crew and make their experience as good for them as possible, no matter how green they were.

Oh… and his on-tour ISP / computer hardware / software tech support for all the band and crew was the stuff of legend.

The Australian production industry will still roll along, ‘coz we all know “The Show Must Go On” – but there will be a large hole in it left by The Dream Weaver that I doubt will ever be filled.

Wherever you are Greg – I hope you’re having The Best Gig Ever.