In Memory Of Dee Dimmick

When crew chief Dee Dimmick passed away last October, the Australian music industry lost one of its true champions.

If you’ve seen a concert in Brisbane over the past 30 years, you probably have Dee Dimmick to thank for it. As the owner of All Access Crewing, she made sure the show always went on. It’s because of Dee that Australia produces the best roadies in the world. For a brief period in the 2000s, I was one of her crew.

I first met Dee in 2003, my senior year of high school.

During high school I’d worked on the sound and lighting crew and had developed a strong interest in live production, especially rock music. Also loving classic rock, I naturally wanted to become a roadie and tour the world. If you can’t be a rock star, be a roadie.

But in 2003 there weren’t a lot of legitimate pathways to pursue that goal, especially for a 17 year-old with no real-world concert experience. I was also told it was a dead-end dream. Being a roadie wasn’t glamorous: they were underpaid, treated like shit, and often worked to death. No one cared about them – no one except for Dee, as I soon found out.

In 1995, she had established All Access Crewing, a Brisbane-based company that provides crews of riggers, stagehands and technicians for touring shows. She revolutionised the way roadies are treated and considered by the industry, fiercely advocating for fair pay and safe working conditions. It was unthought of at the time and earned her more than a few enemies among the status quo of the day, but she didn’t care. All she cared about was her family of crew.

I was inducted into that surrogate family in 2003 through a school-based traineeship at ETETC, the Entertainment and Technical Event Training College Dee founded to train the next generation of live production professionals. It was a truly life-changing experience to step into that world, and I was instantly hooked. Trade-qualified in live production, I spent the next seven-odd years working for All Access on concerts, festivals and events all over Brisbane.

The work was hard, and the hours were long, but we were being paid and looked after by someone who actually cared about us. That made it worth every drop of sweat, each truck packed to Tetris-like perfection, and colourful swear word uttered. When you worked for Dee Dimmick and All Access, you weren’t a faceless grunt. She knew everyone by name and never forgot any of her crew-kids, no matter how far they had strayed from the fold.

During the pandemic, years after I had stopped working as a roadie and parlayed my experience into a passable career as a music journalist, I reconnected with Dee. At that time, the Australian live music industry was dead in the water courtesy of restrictions and lockdowns. A $3bn industry ground to a halt overnight.

Wanting to write an article about how the pandemic had impacted Australian live music workers, I turned to the one source who could tell me exactly what was going on. I didn’t expect Dee to remember me. More than a decade had passed since we’d seen each other, yet when I reintroduced myself with the obligatory, ‘you probably don’t remember me, but’, her response was heartwarming: “of course, I remember you, Matty”. Like I had never left.

There are countless tales of the impact Dee had on peoples’ lives, everybody has one.

My favourite personal story comes from my very first day working on a concert site. I along with a fellow ETETC trainee were sent to the Brisbane Entertainment Centre to observe the bump-in for Avril Lavigne, the key word here being ‘observe’. We were told in no uncertain terms by Dee to stand out of the way, simply observe the process and don’t touch anything.

We did our best to comply but within two minutes of Dee leaving our side, Avril’s touring crew chief – to my memory, a burly Canadian man who towered over us – saw us not working and approached. He pointed to a teetering stack of stage stairs strapped to a dolly and uttered a vague command. Greener than a granny smith and under strict instruction to only observe, we stood there dumbfounded, trying to politely explain we’re not part of his crew.

This didn’t sit well with the crew chief. He stormed towards us – a grown man bearing down on two teenagers – pointed angrily at the dolly again and screamed: THAT CASE! UNDER FRONT OF HOUSE TRUSS! NOW!! Eager to please and rightly terrified, we burst into action, forgetting everything Dee had told us not to do. We scampered like scared mice to the dolly, awkwardly handling it through the loading bay and into the main arena, completely confused of what we were doing or where we were meant to go. Somehow, we figured it out, but it was a hard and fast lesson in the volatile dynamics of working on a concert.

This cumbersome scene did not go unnoticed by Dee, justifiably perturbed her two trainees were hauling valuable stage equipment across an active floor, against direct instructions. Rather than give us the dressing-down we expected, Dee calmly asked us what happened. As we timidly explained our predicament, which she understood and later found to be hilarious, the burly Canadian strode towards us to deliver another admonishment for not working.

Before he could finish his sentence, Dee stepped up and stopped him dead in his tracks, standing between him and us like a lioness or mother bear protecting their cubs.

“Did you yell at my trainees?” Dee demanded.

“I’m the crew chief, who the hell are you?” was his unfortunate response as he puffed his chest.

“Yeah? Well, I’m Boss Lady and you don’t ever yell at my crew again.”

I was transfixed. This terrifying, belligerent, six-foot, coke-sweating, hard arse international tour chief was tamed immediately, kowtowing to her authority. I’ll never know what she said to him after that, but that was the end of it. It was the singular moment that imprinted on me the power and influence of Dee’s reputation.

She was a pint-sized powerhouse, inspirational in her many achievements and formidable work ethic.

From working her way up as a floor technician at Brisbane Entertainment Centre in the ‘80s and qualifying as Australia’s first female stage rigger to forming All Access Crewing and legitimising the role of roadies, Dee was never afraid to get the hard work done. She stood side-by-side with her crew until the last truck was securely packed. It wasn’t uncommon to find Dee among her people – the roadies – rolling cables, lifting truss and packing road cases in addition to her duties and responsibilities as crew chief.

Her love and care for roadies expanded well beyond the work site into nearly every aspect of her life. Aside from her commendable advocacy work in helping to legislate fair pay and safe working conditions for roadies, Dee was committed to securing stable futures for them as they approach retirement. Australian roadies experience an alarmingly high rate of suicide that isn’t reflected anywhere else in the world.

To combat this disturbing statistic, Dee founded Roadies Retreat, a not-for-profit organisation that provides essential care and support for Australian roadies as they reach the end of their working lives. Keeping her people alive is just one part of the incredible legacy Dee has left behind.

It was only recently, with a great shock and overwhelming sadness, that I discovered Dee Dimmick passed away last October.

She is rarely, if at all, noted in any publications about Australian live music, which is a criminal omission. Her vital contributions seem lost on, or perhaps deliberately unnoticed, by the mainstream industry. Dee’s exclusion from the written history about the industry and roadies in particular is unsurprising as it is negligent. Nevertheless, she deserves to be memorialised as a true hero of Australian music.

I will be forever grateful to Dee for welcoming me to the extended All Access family and essentially starting me on my lifelong journey through the music industry. Without her, I never would have even set foot behind the scenes of a concert, let alone built a career in music. Like so many in the Australian live music industry, whether they know it or not, I owe a sincere debt of gratitude to Dee Dimmick and all she accomplished for us.

Thank you, Dee. We love you.

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