Tour manager pivots to making skateboards
The adjustment to pandemic lockdown last spring was a shock to the system for many people. But for Montreal resident Dan Mckay, it was particularly jarring.
A tour manager for bands like Eagles of Death Metal, Cypress Hill and Metric, he was accustomed to being in constant motion, mounting arena concerts in different cities night after night, directing a 50-person crew. After returning from a European trip with Five Finger Death Punch in time to take his 12-year-old daughter, Daisy-jo, on a March Break trip to Los Angeles, his second home, he arrived back in Montreal last spring just as COVID-19 struck and the city plunged into lockdown.
Overnight, he lost his job — in fact, his entire livelihood collapsed with the cancellation of live events, closure of borders and bans on travel. And he found himself stranded like everyone else, with nothing to do and nowhere to go.
“You take someone who's used to being on the road nine months of the year and lock them up in a house, it gets pretty tough,” Mckay said.
But Mckay was determined not to get depressed. With his kids stuck at home, too, because of school closures, they turned to a favourite hobby to keep busy: building homemade skateboards in their backyard in the Plateau-mont-royal. Nine months later, this family pastime is becoming a family business. They're starting Finless Skateboard Co. to sell handcrafted wooden cruisers and longboards. And they're launching a Kickstarter campaign to raise $20,000 to help finance the venture.
“We were making these skateboards and then I was like `You know what? Let's turn this into something real,' ” Mckay said of the decision he made in May when it became increasingly apparent that the decimated live music industry wasn't going to recover any time soon.
“I just went like `Hey, I'm going to take the plunge. I'm going to go in and do this and start something with the family.' This year sucks, let's make it positive. Let's do something cool.”
The family's first foray into building skateboards dates back to 2015. Mckay returned from a tour in California with AWOLNATION with a skateboard as a souvenir for his son Harley, now 16. Not long after, the board accidentally flew out in front of a car and got crushed. Harley was unhurt but “bummed.” So after watching a Youtube instructional video, Mckay suggested they recreate the lost wooden skateboard from scratch.
It turned out so well, they made another for his daughter. Soon the whole family had their own.
“The kids would also come to Los Angeles and it kind of became a tradition where we would take our homemade skateboards and just cruise the boardwalk in Venice Beach where skateboarding was invented,” he said. “They're really just cruisers. They're not meant to do kick flips and tricks with. They're meant to be a smooth ride and just cruising down the boardwalk in the sunset. And that's how this whole idea started.”
Since deciding to make Finless a reality, Mckay has honed his design to make the skateboards “more bespoke, more handcrafted, more high end.” Instead of the old “hillbilly press,” which was a few clamps and scrounged two-by-fours, he has invested in new equipment. Instead of the backyard, he has prepared a workshop in Mile End.
He has fine-tuned his production methods using water-based glues, clear coats and veneers that are environmentally friendly. He has sourced exotic woods and Canadian hard maple from ethical suppliers.
“We're even looking at crazy eco-friendly recyclable packaging” he said.
But he's looking to achieve a balance between mass production and homemade, so Finless skateboards are still handcrafted. And it's still very much a family operation where Harley and Daisy-jo help with the finishing of the boards, as well as the marketing, promotions and Kickstarter campaign (when they're not back in class at École FACE).
For the moment, Finless skateboards can be purchased by making a pledge through the Kickstarter campaign. Eventually, they will be sold online and in select stores. But interested Montrealers can take advantage of an offer “`for locals only,' to use a term from Venice Beach,” quipped Mckay, and schedule a pickup time at the workshop.
“The whole goal with Kickstarter is to get funding,” Mckay said. “I already funded with my personal money most of the initial investment for the workshop, for the supplies, and the Kickstarter is really to get it out in the open, get our first backers, first reviewers, put it out in the world and finance our growth.”
Mckay is also putting together a team to keep manufacturing Finless skateboards when life does return to normal, postCOVID-19. Despite embracing sudden and unsettling change and trying to make the best of a difficult situation, he does plan to go back on tour again once live concert tours resume. Finless is here to stay, though. “It's not a temporary thing,” he said. “Finless is for the long run, for sure.”
That said, Mckay hopes the enduring legacy of his pandemic pivot is the life lessons it has taught his children.
“Just in the fact that, you know, Dad's out of work and his whole industry is out of work. ... They're seeing this firsthand how `Oh my god, everything just stopped for these people,' ” he said.
“I think showing them that when the going gets tough, turn it around and make it work for you. Look at opportunities in hard times to switch it around. You never know. It's hard. But life is hard.”
They're meant to be a smooth ride and just cruising down the boardwalk in the sunset. And that's how this whole idea started.