Ap Tour Shows 6 13

AP Tour-Shows 6-13
03/28/08 | by harfordsound

The past few days have been nuts. We’ve covered all of CA and have moved onto OR. It’s been a while since Ive had time to sit down and write, so this is going to be a fairly long update. Im going to work backwards as well.

Ive been battling a head cold since the start of last week, and it sucks. I wake up not being able to breathe or hear in the morning and that lasts until well past soundcheck. Luckily the past few days my ears have been opening up so I can at least hear come show time.

It’s a cold day today. Low 40’s and it’s been sleeting on and off. It sucks. The venue is cold and Im cold. I am not looking forward to the show. Its a smaller show, with a cap of only 550. The show is completely sold out, which makes it nice. We got done soundcheck a little while ago, and it sucked. No bass at all. Not going to be a good night…

Last night was another small club. The boardwalk in CA. 450 cap. The room had an old, tired PA in there and it needed help. The house dude was also a complete nutjob. He was cool, but man, he was weird. I didnt like working with him. He was a very cocky dude that made sure you knew he’d been doing sound for 26 years. Sadly, his hearing sucks after all these years, and his mixes were painful to listen to… The rig itself lacked any form of get up and go. The mains looked to be from the 70’s, and the subs were JBL MRX528’s. I was running the board into the red trying to hit 98dB @ FOH. Sadly, the crowd overpowered the band most of the night. Oh, and to top it off: 2 songs into the set Alex’s wireless mic died. I had to plow through 400 sweaty, nasty, 14 year old girls to get to the stage. Oh, and on the subject of the crowd, they can be quite rude. I was yelling at them to get out of my way and all the girls were like “no way dude.” If they didnt weigh 20lbs, it would have been a lot harder to push through all of them and get to the stage. After the rush, I swapped out his mic and the rest of the set went pretty well. That club just needs a new system. The currently one is not meant to cover 450 kids…

San Francisco, CA Regency,Grand Ballroom:
This show was awesome. For the first time ever, I had all of my favorite gear crammed into one room. Take a look:

pm5d.jpg

6 L’Acoustic V dosc mains per side
4 V Dosc subs
Pair of Yamaha PM5D’s
Crown MA5000’s
and more!

The show was completely sold out, 1574 kids. But, with all this greatness comes the bad news. They had a lame policy that basically said no noise until 5pm. Normally the headliner has about an hour and a half to soundcheck, and direct support has 40min. Then, the opener gets about 30min to sound check. So, the noise policy meant we had 1 hour to do about 2 hours of checking. That time frame doesnt include the time it takes to set everything up too. The Rocket Summer needs another 30min to setup all their gear, and then we need about 15min to backline everyone. Basically, it was the most rushed setup of the tour. But, somehow we made it!

Also, The room was terrible. During sound check it sounded like we were playing in the grand canyon. Solid plaster walls all around and nothing to dampen the sound. It was terrible, and loud. If the show didnt sell it, the whole night would have sucked. But, once the room filled up, it wasnt too bad. I had a pretty rocking set.

But, I was still not on easy street. During Alex’s solo in Shameless, everything shut down! What happened? Well, the sound guy’s ipod slowly slid down the board because of the bass and during the solo, it hit a button that reset the board to zero. And I lost all of my settings. I was flipping out! But, luckily we acted fast and recalled my scene from soundcheck and I had rough settings to get me through the rest of the night. If we didnt sound check, I would have been screwed! Most of the crowd didnt notice, but man, that sucked. After that, the rest of the show went pretty well…

Crowd shot:

atlCA.jpg

Los Angeles, CA Henry Fonda:
This was a cool theatre. EAW SB1000z’s, Martin W8’s and a Soundcraft series FOUR @ FOH. This show went pretty well, and was a high scale show. Lots of reps from many record companies were at this show. The pressure was on to make it sound good. During sound check, life was not well. There was no bass at all. Now, I know 8 SB1k’s can slam, so something was up. I just blew it off for the time being and kept going. I later found out that only 3 subs were working during sound check and I blew 1 of them up. Sweet… Thankfully, come show time 7 out of 8 were working and it was pretty rocking. FOH was up in the balcony, so I ended up running up and down a flight of stairs about 20 times during the show. It sounded completely different upstairs then it did down on the floor where everyone was… Oh well. The show was pretty un eventful otherwise…

Crowd shot:

atlford.jpg

Pomona, CA Glasshouse:
Another smaller club. 800 cap, sold out. This place reminded me of Recher Theatre(for you Maryland folk.) Cool little club with a RAT trap system. It sounded good, but lacked the get up and go needed. I ended up mixing around 100dB. Very smooth show. Nothing to really talk about… No pix either, sorry…

Bakersfield, CA Golden State Hall:
One of the lamest shows of the tour thus far. The “venue” was in a shopping mall in a very sketchy area. Smallest crowd of the tour, and not a fun show. To sum it up: Ohmbru mains, dead subs, Midas Venice and a boring crowd. I could have fallen asleep at FOH because of the lack of PA and excitement…

San Diego, CA Soma:
This has been the largest show of the tour thus far. The room holds 2300 people, and we sold 1874 tickets. I’d have to say that it was my favorite show of the tour too. They had plenty of PA for the room, and smart guys working too. The room was basically an old movie theatre that was completely gutted. The room was huge. The PA was all EV, and it pounded. 16 subs per side, and 9 mains per side. Soundcraft MH3 @ FOH, and all the processing you could ever want. I was running the board around 0 and it was plenty. It was just an awesome show all around.

I tried to get a crowdshot, but failed… I couldnt get everyone in the shot. This is the best I could do:

crowd1.jpg

And that about sums up the past few weeks of my life. Next episode will include our fish, more shows and more excitement.

Back to the work of rock and roll…

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