When Billie Eilish isn’t onstage, where does she go? Backstage with her crew, whom she introduces and interviews in a new behind-the-scenes video released Tuesday (Oct. 27).
On the latest episode of Backstage With Crew Nation, Eilish steps away from the spotlight while rehearsing for her Where Do We Go? The Livestream concert, which took place Saturday night, and showed off the stagehands who help run the show from start to finish.
“They are literally like my family,” she says while walking the most recent addition to her family, her adopted pit bull Shark. “… See, most of these people I’ve been working with since I was a very young girl, so they’re all OGs. It is really, really important that I think you guys know that people are losing jobs. Obviously, COVID has been a real struggle, and especially my crew, [they] haven’t had enough opportunity because we can’t do shows. So it’s really important that we do this.”
Most of her team members have been working with the “bad guy” singer since she was 15 or 16, including her tour manager Brian Marquis, front-of-house engineer Drew Thornton and drummer Andrew Marshall. When she asked her father Patrick O’Connell what he does as part of her crew, he answered, “I’m a factotum” — which means “a person having many diverse activities or responsibilities,” according to the definition presented in the clip.
The Grammy-winning artist designed two pieces of merch to benefit Crew Nation, a global relief fund for live music crews, that are available for purchase here.
Backstage With Crew Nation is a new video series that spotlights artists’ relationships with their touring crews and how they work together to put on the perfect concert.
Watch her backstage video below.
