whyileftthemusicindustry2024

[whyileftthemusicindustry2024]

Why I left the music industry

By Lia Holland

About the Author The first thirteen years of Lia Holland (they/she)’s career were spent in the music and events industry, founding Bassnectar’s Ambassador Program, Electric Forest Festival’s Plug In Program as an employee at AEG Presents’ Madison House Presents, and Bassnectar’s Be Interactive nonprofit. Lia now works in digital and human rights activism. 

On January 25, I gave an eight hour deposition in a suit against my first employer, Lorin Ashton a.k.a. Bassnectar, for sex trafficking and child pornography. This journey took years. In fact, I’ve spent over a year working to protect my physical safety alone.

I first met Lorin online in 2007, when I was seventeen. He recruited me to put up posters, but I quickly became more. A hardworking superfan, I helped manage his Facebook, then sold merchandise on tour.

From the outset, I confided in Lorin about severe abuse from my overt narcissist mother. And when she gambled away my college fund after my family faced financial ruin in the 2008 crisis, getting on his tour bus in 2009 was my escape.

Out on the road, others spoke of Lorin very differently than as a sensitive-yet-righteous recluse. However, I had my first job, one that I desperately needed. I started crate-digging music blogs for the live show, taking the first ‘family photos’ of Lorin with the crowd, managing record releases, and did wide-ranging executive assistant work for both Lorin and his tour manager, Elliott Dunwody. Over the next two years, I organized support for nonprofits and activists at shows and online, founded the Dollar Per Basshead charity program, and founded the Ambassador fan volunteer program.

From the outside, I had the world’s coolest job. Yet I lived in a state of anxiety and burnout. Even when I quit in early 2012, I couldn't tell where my sense of fear and exhaustion was coming from. I thought that various superiors wanted to get rid of me. And up until Rachel Ramsbottom's recording came out on the Evidence Against Bassnectar Instagram account, I believed that Lorin, too, was a victim of incompetence and malice in turns.

  Now, I know better. Looking back, I believe I was manipulated to think that Lorin was the true victim. Today, it is easy for me to believe the women who have come forward with stories of being abused by Lorin. Articles repeatedly quote Lorin's aggressive legal team threatening individuals and reporters alike with lawsuits. And, if I were them, I would be highly motivated to punish me. To minimize the likelihood of Lorin suing me into bankruptcy and avoid contributing to any dynamic that his publicity team might pretend exonerates him, I must be careful. So, while incredibly painful, I hope that someday my whole story gets out. Giving this deposition was the culmination of over three years of hard personal work, guilt, shame, and ultimately the insight that freed me: I saw that what happened to me was intentional. It was only possible after my childhood of grooming from an overt narcissist, and all I can do now is take my power back.

In order to do so, I recognized that I had to end my career in the music industry. My experience of the industry, from grungy clubs to celebrated stadiums to some of the US’s largest music festivals, is that it is a very small place. You get gigs based on your relationships and your reputation. Everyone’s first job is to protect the musicians, even and especially from themselves—and coming forward would show I wasn’t willing to do that anymore. In a highly competitive industry, that is all you need to lose your livelihood. With few labor rights or other protections for music industry workers, this tyranny of bad behavior and culture of retaliation has no end in sight. Frankly, I’m done with the idea that you have to grin and bear assholes even as they take credit for your work.

Even my independent festival clients who might stand by me also depended on relationships with large monopolies of artist booking and management that are wrapped up with event ticketing giants, media conglomerates, venues, and vendors. And so I helped these festivals return from COVID while, painfully, training my replacement and beginning a new career in human rights advocacy.

Extricating myself from my first career has been profoundly isolating—because the truth is that I never really left Lorin’s orbit after I first quit in 2012. I worked with his collaborators and with the sister company of his booking agency on Electric Forest, a festival he headlined for years. Then, expecting new management would provide a better work environment, I returned to found Bassnectar’s Be Interactive nonprofit as its Executive Director in 2018. I profoundly regret doing so. But at the time, I couldn’t see that what I had been taught was the normal behavior of a genius artist, wasn’t. I broke out of my toxic cage thanks to the profound bravery of others who revealed new lows in Lorin’s conduct—lows that had been unthinkable to me.

Few people felt safe to speak to about any of this, because many of my friends were connected to him or in the industry. I was afraid his aggressive legal team would sue me. I also feared that unstable and violent people among his fan base would harm me. Wracked with shame, I faced threats and harassment myself. The gender-based violence nonprofits that helped me prepare for this day told me my instinct for silent self-preservation was spot-on. Then, I got my incredible attorney, and my plans became privileged even from my handful of confidants. Today, finally, my silence ends.

I’ve never been particularly good at standing up for myself, but I’ve always been a passionate advocate for others. And now I recognize that my advocacy also must rest in who I give my power to: that if they mistreat me, it is likely that such behavior extends beyond me. Today is the ultimate reminder of the importance of choosing my collaborators more wisely, and I encourage all those who remain in the entertainment industry, but are legally or economically forbidden from speaking out, to do the same.

Resources

RAINN and the National Sexual Assault Telephone Hotline: https://www.rainn.org/about-national-sexual-assault-telephone-hotline

Equality Labs’ Anti-Doxing Guide: https://www.equalitylabs.org/research/publications-resources/

Why Does He Do That? Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men, by Lundy Buncroft: https://archive.org/details/LundyWhyDoesHeDoThat

Navigating Narcissism Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i5BFyvPbIUA