The Salt Shed is buzzing on a Friday night despite the below-freezing temperatures of January. Tonight’s performance from DJ Disco Lines is sold-out, a message that’s helpfully taped to the box office window to deter anyone trying to buy a last-minute ticket. Doors opened at 7 p.m., but people are just starting to arrive at 9 p.m.
DePaul senior Nina Bertuca watches the flurry of people dressed in leather miniskirts and wearing sunglasses at night brace against the cold as they race into the venue. She’s safe inside the temperature-controlled box office, ready for another shift at The Salt Shed.
Bertuca is a performing arts management major, which she describes as similar to a music business major, at DePaul. Outside of classes, she’s a box office supervisor at The Salt Shed.
“I’ve always been interested in working in live music,” Bertuca said. “Any sort of hands-on experience in this industry is huge.”
When she heard the venue would be opening an indoor space in 2023, she began monitoring job boards. She knew the company would need more employees to meet the new venue capacity, and she was looking for a new opportunity. She said she just got lucky landing the job.
Her shift started at 6 p.m., but Bertuca has been answering patron questions all night like clockwork. The line outside her window is flowing steadily and every interaction barely lasts a minute or two to avoid the sidewalk in front from overcrowding.
Bertuca is monitoring the VIP packages that were purchased and are available for pickup at the box office. Two girls ask if Bertuca can hold a ticket at the window for their friend whose Uber is late. Multiple people inquire about reserved tickets, which Bertuca checks off the list from her laptop.
She may not be able to hear the techno beats from outside the venue, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She knows she’ll eventually be scheduled for another house shift where she can watch the concert while working inside. That’s how she saw Suki Waterhouse perform in December.
“This is a job people love to do because they’re really into music, and because of the perks like comp tickets and attending shows for free,” Bertuca said.
Not every show the employees work is sunshine and Suki Waterhouse, though. DePaul junior Darci Michon’s first day on the job as a ticket scanner for a national venue chain in Chicago was a nine-hour heavy metal festival.
“We don’t allow re-entry so people were trying to bribe me to let them back in and when that didn’t work, they’d buy like five tickets just so they could go outside to smoke then go back inside with no issues,” Michon said.
Michon was hired in August, six months after she initially applied for the position on Indeed while looking for a change away from retail jobs. While Michon is a communication and media major, she was interested in live music as a potential career.
When it comes to balancing classes with working concerts, both Bertuca and Michon said that their bosses are relatively accommodating to their college schedules. But same as any job, it’s still their responsibility to advocate for themselves if they need time off or to be cut first.
Sitting on a sinking leather couch in Metro’s green room, internship director Amanda Rabensburg explained how she started at the venue over 10 years ago as an intern herself before moving up the ranks to her current position. She’s been in this position for nine years now, and while she said the music industry as a whole has changed drastically since the beginning of her career, the process to get jobs in the industry really hasn’t.
“It’s a fun industry, but it’s not an easy industry,” Rabensburg said. “It is very exclusive and you have to get into the right circles. So many of these younger people are coming into it and doing small part-time jobs and internships because they want to get in and show they’re serious.”
Rabensburg remembers being 22 years old and wanting to spend as much time working at Metro as possible. She wanted to make herself valuable to the company in the process. It’s the same feeling DePaul junior Ellie Podunovich has now working there.
Podunovich was hired on by Rabensburg as an in-house promotions intern dealing with the online ticketing but was quickly moved into a part-time job working with the venue’s guest list for shows.
“The internship and job are great but when you actually get to see a show at the venue, to see what you’re working toward, it’s so electric,” Podunovich said.
Her passion for the industry began while performing as a musician but she shifted her ambitions toward what happens behind the scenes at venues. Podunovich is a communication and media major and hopes it will help her with a music career that ties together the creativity and analytics she loves about venue operations.
While Bertuca’s goal is to find a full-time job after graduation, she hopes to stay with The Salt Shed. Michon on the other hand said this experience as a ticker scanner made her realize going into the live music industry may not be for her.
“I want to lean into the media jobs as of late, like being a publicist or a booking agent, but I definitely have skewed away from the operations side of things now that I’ve been working here,” Michon said.
Even if the experiences may have swayed her away from the live music industry as an option after graduation, Michon said she still loves it.
“Being in that environment and seeing the excitement people have for their favorite artist, even if it might not be my favorite artist, that joy is really special,” Michon said. “Music is the universal connector, and all of the college students I work with understand and appreciate that space where creativity in a job is encouraged.”
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