The last couple of days have been good and tiresome, we’ve had a lot of things that are not normally on the tour out with us this week, for one one of the opener bands that’s normally on the tour wasn’t able to do the dates this week so we had a different opener, it didn’t effect me, but it did effect some of the other crew, they had to listen to the music being played. (haha am I joking?) Second part of the week that was a little different, we had a speaker for a show which did effect me and pretty much the entire crew the one day, it wasn’t bad, he had a lot of staff with him that videoed us working all day, well I say all day, we didn’t start load in till 11am do too a long drive for a 6 o’clock show that day, so more like watched us run literally to get the show up in time which we did, because we’re all awesome! Somebody had to say it. There was a lot of changes to the show that they (the speaker) felt was needed, I really don’t want to go into that, when I talk about that stuff it always comes out pissy, and that’s not the case, I just don’t understand people.

Anyway there was that, and then there’s the reason for the picture above which has to do with Nick, we were in this building yesterday, and during load in the riggers computer with all their cheat programs showing them how to rig a bridal in the air went down, now I’m not a rigger, I don’t pretend to know that much about it, other than knowing which direction the shackle needs to be and knowing when a local rigger is full of it, and I don’t feel safe having him/her down rig the equipment I’m responsible for, so this guy comes to nick and says, “we’re going to need to use several long tape measurements, to measure the bridals because our computer died, what we’ll we’ll do is send up tapes to the up riggers and they’ll measure up there down to here.” So Nick says in all his nerdy ingeniousness “Why? you never heard of A x A squared + B x B Squared = the square root of C x C Triangle” blah blah blah yea I stopped listening to be truthful just like you stopped reading and have now scrolled down to look at more pictures with shorter stories but the point is if your do something for a living do your homework and learn different methods to your job for those moments that you need to have a back up plan like everyday for us. IF you can’t tell I’m proud of what I do and the guys I tour with.

So Nick was the down rigger for the day actually figuring out all the points and putting together the steel.

Ok enough long stories, time for short stories and again most of them have to do with Sam, Sam was waiting for load in to start in IA and down the hall towards the loading docks, is the door for catering and the PO (production office) so Sam being bored not seeing me, not that it would matter but it makes it funnier that he didn’t know I was there, switches the tapes to the doors so people will go into the wrong door. That’s just awesome.

Merch guys, and not like always these merch guys really work hard, and do whatever they can to make the client happy, getting up with the rest of the crew and loading in at 8am, if you don’t know, most merch guys don’t do anything really, and get up around noon, and do a little here and there, but not these guys.

Sam looking at the audio feeder that the electrician ran, and didn’t put in a cable ramp, on a day that we had Teen Challenge hands so… inexperience and brute force is the name of the game with those guys, things like running cases over cables is something that happens… And we try to catch them before they do it and educate them, but if you scroll down you’ll know why it’s dangerous to run cases over cables.

Yea that’s right, a big ol’ cut in it, which if that cable would have had power in it and the dude that pushed the case over the cable that cut it with the sharp medal from the wheel, would be hurtin/dead. Yea I said it.

And now something that I’ve been waiting to see for a long time, a FOH Audio guy (Lampa) finally giving in and acknowledging that it’s too loud!

Just so your not confused, the description of the photo is underneath the picture.

The Room we rehearsed in, I’m still a little confused what it really is meant for, all I know is it was a really big place that had a lot of steal and really old tools, that I would love to buy,  the place was pretty cool, you had to drive through some different area’s of town to get there, but worth it once your there, way better than sound check (haha)

Bush (not sure if he’s related) looming up our video snake, yea that’s right you read right, a video snake, we put the robo controller and all the camera stuff at FOH because the lighting console controls everything, even the oven that cooks the meals for catering I think.

New York City is a post all by it self, and I’ll be getting to that at some point this week, but I thought I would share this picture because it’s just awesome.

Our Truck for the tour?

Did you count how many hands we have for load out?  I like this method, I’ve been on tours where each department has a sticker that’s a color, or a colored shirt that says the tour name, that all helps, but honestly I’ve really enjoyed this one, he hands out the gaffe tape and makes them put it on the front of their shirt, it really is a good idea because it’s cheap for one, and we can keep track of who is where, you wouldn’t think that would be a problem but it can be.

Our loading dock for the New York City show, it was 8th Ave if you really care, and nobody slowed down even a little as we unloaded in the street.

Bush (again) focusing the drum lipstick cam.  From the looks of it, you would think that the only two guys out of the 15-20 crew guys that actually work is Sam and Bush.  And that might be the truth I’m not really sure.