Wies Baaten graduated in 1982 as a pedagogue. Since his college years he worked at a booking agency in Nijmegen, The Netherlands, which was managed by friends of his. A small company and therefore the perfect location to gain knowledge of all aspects in this business.
After gathering the required experience, he started working at a bigger market player; Mojo Concerts. He accomponied several tours, partly in theater as well. Amongst others, he went on tour with Van Morrison, who had a fear of flying and therefore needed a driver and someone who could accompany him on the road.
During his Mojo years, at the load-in of the renown Dutch Pinkpop festival, he met Hedwig de Meyer, founder and owner of the Belgian stage building company named Stageco N.V. During those days, Hedwig was involved organizing a festival in his home town Werchter (later known as Rock Werchter). He jumped at the chance to fulfill a growing need for bigger and more spectacular stages for artists from all over the world.
Together with his loyal, talented and hard-working team he built Stageco up to what it is today, the biggest staging company in the whole world.
Hedwig immediately saw in Wies a very sociable man of the world, a good accomponist/supervisor with knowledge of the rock ‘n’ roll industry and fluent in many languages.
Wies started working as the only Dutchman in a whole Belgian team. He looked for crews for different tours, soon became crew chief and finally took his own men/crew with him on tour. This was the start of B-Way Productions and has resulted in a 30 years long lasting succesfull cooperation between Stageco and B-Way Productions.
Despite his passion for rock ‘n’ roll, during his Mojo Concerts years, Wies developed an interest for the more delicate productions in theater as well.
This was the perfect combination. Rock ‘n’ roll and outdoor in the summer, theater and indoor in winter time.
Through the stage manager of the famous singer/theaterman, Toon Hermans, he was hired as a lighting assistent and handled the follow spot. Very quickly Toon assigned him as his stage manager, which he remained for the following 12 years. Subsequently he became the stage manager for another famous Dutch artist, Paul van Vliet for a few years as well.
Furthermore he provided crew for singer/comedian and theater legend Herman van Veen and accompanied many productions of Opera-South.
Meanwhile Stageco was growing fast. Because of this growth Wies decided to quit theater in 2004 and focus entirely on Stageco.
In 2010 he considered to hand B-Way over to someone new. Soon it was clear that René Lunenburg was the right man for the job. Someone who Wies had known since the Dire Straits ‘On every street’ tour in 1992. During that time René was driving a promotional truck for tour sponsor Philips.
René is social, technical, reliable, eager to learn and shares the same passion for rock ‘n’ roll and theater.
He started to combine his outdoor Stageco work in summer and his indoor theater work in winter. René started in theater on a tour for singer/comedian Jasperina the Jong. After that Wies and René worked together for a long time at both Toon Hermans and Paul van Vliet where René was a truck driver and follow spotter. In the following 13 years René worked as Herman van Veen’s stage manager.
As of 2013 René left Herman van Veen and started working full-time with Wies for B-Way Productions.
As of 2016, René officially took over and runs B-Way together with his wife, Nieke. Who has a lot of experience as a tour manager for theater productions as Herman van Veen, Claudia de Breij and Peter Pannekoek. René and Nieke combined their expertise and experiences. Together they proceed with
B-Way, making sure that quality, hard work, passion for this great business, flexibility, good service and being personally involved are the most important factors for their company. With a tremendous loyalty towards their clients, suppliers and everyone who works for them. The entire team on the road and in the office consisting of very skilled, passionate, enthusiastic and fun professionals with an ‘we do not quit until the job is fully done’ mentality.
Together we are B-Way Productions and that makes us proud!
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