Dear Brethren,
Okay, you know how gilded writes too much sometimes?? Well, this is one of those times, so I thought I'd get the Guild content out of the way early :roll: :lol:
My '68 Guild Thunder 1 RVT amplifier, along with Coastie's 2008 Let's Talk Guild T-shirt made it on stage at the 2009 Bedford Labor Day Blues and BBQ Festival around 5:30 (Central time) Sunday evening/afternoon in Tejas!!!
My band, the Cowtown Music Club, plays a lot of 'practically free' gigs for various local governmental and charitable organizations. One such organization contacted us 2 weeks ago and said that the City of Bedford, Texas needed some bands to play 'in-between', or 'filler' sets while the National Acts, such as Buddy Guy, the Fab Thunderbirds, Chris Duarte, & Omar and the Howlers variously set-up and/or tore down their own equipment. The Big Acts would be on the Main Stage and the 'Volunteer Talent' would be on the Second Stage. The idea was, the local bands would be there
There were supposed to be 30 thousand people there over the weekend. We knew it to be a cool little Festival and figured, if we could play in front of a few thousand people, it would surely be good exposure. We emailed 'em and they gave us a choice of times. We chose a late Sunday afternoon slot, right after a celebrated local player (that we like) would be finishing his set on the Main Stage.
So far so good, right? After that, it got hilarious.
The band leader and I showed up Friday afternoon to check out the site only to find out that, while the Staging Company was setting up a second stage, they (doubtless for reasons of economy) were going to COMPLETELY turn it's operation over to that City's Parks Department employees, who 'had Literally Never Run Sound Before'. You should have seen the Stunned Looks on the employees' faces!! "Yeah, Boss, I can run sound....I guess."
The next day, Saturday, drummer, band leader and Your Humble Servant came back to look at the assembled stage. The Stage looked great; 20'x20', 4' high, metal stairs on either side, covered at the top and sides. BUT, it was set up on a heat-reflective, asphalt parking lot in the Brutal Texas Sun! The temperature was maybe 110 Fahrenheit. There was no shade for the audience. Not to mention, the poor 'Parks Department Sound Crew' looked like they'd been working in an Emergency Room all night.
And that was the good part. In mere seconds, Disaster Struck!! We talked to a band leaving the stage, who told us that we would only have 15 minutes to load-in our five-piece band and 30 minutes to play. The Sound Crew said, 'yeah, that's pretty much right'. Gah!! After that, 'we' looked like we'd been working an ER shift!! :shock:
Getting back to the business at hand, I asked the Newbie Sound Guys to tell me about the board and the microphone snakes, where the power was, etc.
They had two snakes and a 24 channel Yamaha board, but were only using 8 out of 24 channels. They also knew that channels 2 and 5 on the front-of-stage snake 'didn't work', but weren't sure about the back-of-stage snake channels. I snuck around the back of the board, took cell phone pics of the channels they were actually using, along with making a note of which snake ends were actually attached to the board channels (6, 7, 8 & 9 from the front-of-stage snake into board channels 1, 2, 3 & 4, then 9, 10, 11 & 12 from the back-of-stage snake into the identically-numbered board channels. The information actually came in handy later).
I asked the Sound Crew to find/add two more channels for me (for Sunday's set) then went home and thought about the whole deal. I wanted to come up with the bestest/fastest plan for loading in a five-piece band that I could.
1) I had already hired 3 guys to help load in the 'free gig', mostly because the drummer has COPD and the Keyboard Player is a complete klutz.
2) I drew up a Stage Plot for the band: 3 players in front and 2 in the back. On the drawing, I ran all 4 vocal mics into the front-of-house snake (6, 7, 8 & 9 into 1, 2, 3 & 4 on the board), then ran 2 guitar amp mics, 2 drum mics, 1 keyboard amp direct-box & 1 bass amp direct-box into the back-of-stage snake (6-12 into the same channels on the board!) .
3) I separated all of the band tasks into four different categories;
amps, drums, mics and power/misc.
4) I got everybody (the band and our 'hired' crew) together an hour early for load-up. I gave each a copy of the Stage Plot and told 'em that 'Time Was Of The Essence'; we had 15 minutes to set up at the gig! I then explained that we could 'pre set-up the drums' off stage before-hand, line-up amps, get cables ready, etc.
5) At the meeting, I assigned:
a) two guys to drums (drummer and his kid),
b) 2 hired gents to the amps/keyboard,
c) myself to the mic/xlr cable snake assignment and
d) the leader and the bass player to the 'Power Category'
strips/corda, misc. guitars/cases/stands, etc.
I showed them what equipment was what ('that's a keyboard amp, that's a bass amp'. The hired guys, even though they were musicians, didn't know), so everybody would be familiar with their assignments. Of course, since they were all musicians, it was about as successful as Herding Cats, but you have to try....
6) When we got to the gig, I went up and shook hands with the sound crew, told them they were 'old hands now' and asked them if they would be interested in seeing a copy of my Stage Plot (I made extras!). They were, so I showed em my Diagram, with mic & direct-box connections and asked them if they could give me two more channels. They loved the Stage Plot (sadly, in a two-day festival, not one of the previous 7 acts brought a Stage Plot to the Second Stage Sound Crew). They gave me two channels right away. I gave them the Stage Plot copy!
Oh, I also brought a roll of Console Tape with me, the white, thin tape that mixing guys will use to ID what information will be on which channel. With their permission, I put a long strip under their mixers channel faders and 'penciled-in' our band's mix. They thought it was the Cat's Meow!
Later, they actually helped us set up microphones! One of the Sound guys walked around with the Stage Plot and made sure everything was plugged in 'right'!
So, did we get set-up in 15 minutes? Heck, no! We burned up a lot of time on the Bass and Keyboard amp locations and getting a monitor to the drummer. But we finally caught a break- the solo 'singer-songwriter' act before us let us pile up stuff on the stage 'before' he went on, so we got set-up and sound checked in 30 minutes total! Then, the Main Stage act ran long, but we still got our actual '30 minute set' in.
How was it? It was great! The parking lot temperature was so hot that there wasn't much of crowd at our end of the festival, but we pulled a few hundred people up to the edge of the parking lot. They were applauding shouting, waving and clapping. They had a good time and so did we.
Song Content? Mostly blues and rock, mostly originals. We got to finish on a new song I wrote called, 'A Good Day for the Blues' (original, ain't I?). Maybe I'll play it for you guys in Arlington at the Mighty Yacht Club!
Your long-winded friend, gilded
Okay, you know how gilded writes too much sometimes?? Well, this is one of those times, so I thought I'd get the Guild content out of the way early :roll: :lol:
My '68 Guild Thunder 1 RVT amplifier, along with Coastie's 2008 Let's Talk Guild T-shirt made it on stage at the 2009 Bedford Labor Day Blues and BBQ Festival around 5:30 (Central time) Sunday evening/afternoon in Tejas!!!
My band, the Cowtown Music Club, plays a lot of 'practically free' gigs for various local governmental and charitable organizations. One such organization contacted us 2 weeks ago and said that the City of Bedford, Texas needed some bands to play 'in-between', or 'filler' sets while the National Acts, such as Buddy Guy, the Fab Thunderbirds, Chris Duarte, & Omar and the Howlers variously set-up and/or tore down their own equipment. The Big Acts would be on the Main Stage and the 'Volunteer Talent' would be on the Second Stage. The idea was, the local bands would be there
There were supposed to be 30 thousand people there over the weekend. We knew it to be a cool little Festival and figured, if we could play in front of a few thousand people, it would surely be good exposure. We emailed 'em and they gave us a choice of times. We chose a late Sunday afternoon slot, right after a celebrated local player (that we like) would be finishing his set on the Main Stage.
So far so good, right? After that, it got hilarious.
The band leader and I showed up Friday afternoon to check out the site only to find out that, while the Staging Company was setting up a second stage, they (doubtless for reasons of economy) were going to COMPLETELY turn it's operation over to that City's Parks Department employees, who 'had Literally Never Run Sound Before'. You should have seen the Stunned Looks on the employees' faces!! "Yeah, Boss, I can run sound....I guess."
The next day, Saturday, drummer, band leader and Your Humble Servant came back to look at the assembled stage. The Stage looked great; 20'x20', 4' high, metal stairs on either side, covered at the top and sides. BUT, it was set up on a heat-reflective, asphalt parking lot in the Brutal Texas Sun! The temperature was maybe 110 Fahrenheit. There was no shade for the audience. Not to mention, the poor 'Parks Department Sound Crew' looked like they'd been working in an Emergency Room all night.
And that was the good part. In mere seconds, Disaster Struck!! We talked to a band leaving the stage, who told us that we would only have 15 minutes to load-in our five-piece band and 30 minutes to play. The Sound Crew said, 'yeah, that's pretty much right'. Gah!! After that, 'we' looked like we'd been working an ER shift!! :shock:
Getting back to the business at hand, I asked the Newbie Sound Guys to tell me about the board and the microphone snakes, where the power was, etc.
They had two snakes and a 24 channel Yamaha board, but were only using 8 out of 24 channels. They also knew that channels 2 and 5 on the front-of-stage snake 'didn't work', but weren't sure about the back-of-stage snake channels. I snuck around the back of the board, took cell phone pics of the channels they were actually using, along with making a note of which snake ends were actually attached to the board channels (6, 7, 8 & 9 from the front-of-stage snake into board channels 1, 2, 3 & 4, then 9, 10, 11 & 12 from the back-of-stage snake into the identically-numbered board channels. The information actually came in handy later).
I asked the Sound Crew to find/add two more channels for me (for Sunday's set) then went home and thought about the whole deal. I wanted to come up with the bestest/fastest plan for loading in a five-piece band that I could.
1) I had already hired 3 guys to help load in the 'free gig', mostly because the drummer has COPD and the Keyboard Player is a complete klutz.
2) I drew up a Stage Plot for the band: 3 players in front and 2 in the back. On the drawing, I ran all 4 vocal mics into the front-of-house snake (6, 7, 8 & 9 into 1, 2, 3 & 4 on the board), then ran 2 guitar amp mics, 2 drum mics, 1 keyboard amp direct-box & 1 bass amp direct-box into the back-of-stage snake (6-12 into the same channels on the board!) .
3) I separated all of the band tasks into four different categories;
amps, drums, mics and power/misc.
4) I got everybody (the band and our 'hired' crew) together an hour early for load-up. I gave each a copy of the Stage Plot and told 'em that 'Time Was Of The Essence'; we had 15 minutes to set up at the gig! I then explained that we could 'pre set-up the drums' off stage before-hand, line-up amps, get cables ready, etc.
5) At the meeting, I assigned:
a) two guys to drums (drummer and his kid),
b) 2 hired gents to the amps/keyboard,
c) myself to the mic/xlr cable snake assignment and
d) the leader and the bass player to the 'Power Category'
strips/corda, misc. guitars/cases/stands, etc.
I showed them what equipment was what ('that's a keyboard amp, that's a bass amp'. The hired guys, even though they were musicians, didn't know), so everybody would be familiar with their assignments. Of course, since they were all musicians, it was about as successful as Herding Cats, but you have to try....
6) When we got to the gig, I went up and shook hands with the sound crew, told them they were 'old hands now' and asked them if they would be interested in seeing a copy of my Stage Plot (I made extras!). They were, so I showed em my Diagram, with mic & direct-box connections and asked them if they could give me two more channels. They loved the Stage Plot (sadly, in a two-day festival, not one of the previous 7 acts brought a Stage Plot to the Second Stage Sound Crew). They gave me two channels right away. I gave them the Stage Plot copy!
Oh, I also brought a roll of Console Tape with me, the white, thin tape that mixing guys will use to ID what information will be on which channel. With their permission, I put a long strip under their mixers channel faders and 'penciled-in' our band's mix. They thought it was the Cat's Meow!
Later, they actually helped us set up microphones! One of the Sound guys walked around with the Stage Plot and made sure everything was plugged in 'right'!
So, did we get set-up in 15 minutes? Heck, no! We burned up a lot of time on the Bass and Keyboard amp locations and getting a monitor to the drummer. But we finally caught a break- the solo 'singer-songwriter' act before us let us pile up stuff on the stage 'before' he went on, so we got set-up and sound checked in 30 minutes total! Then, the Main Stage act ran long, but we still got our actual '30 minute set' in.
How was it? It was great! The parking lot temperature was so hot that there wasn't much of crowd at our end of the festival, but we pulled a few hundred people up to the edge of the parking lot. They were applauding shouting, waving and clapping. They had a good time and so did we.
Song Content? Mostly blues and rock, mostly originals. We got to finish on a new song I wrote called, 'A Good Day for the Blues' (original, ain't I?). Maybe I'll play it for you guys in Arlington at the Mighty Yacht Club!
Your long-winded friend, gilded
