tour
Today was map day, the upcomming Young the Giant Summer-Fall 2017 North America Home of the Strange tour. Clair is providing PA for the tour, will be my first time on their new Cohesion boxes, and will also be my first time on the new Avid S6L 24D. Brave new gear for the brave new world. Will be happy to be able to use Transient Designer and mpressor again, along with the Sony Oxford live plugins. Trying to figure out the best way to lay things out on 24 faders – custom layouts, spills, bank safes, venue mode, inputs/outputs/VCA’s, lions, tigers and bears oh my! Might end up letting smpte do all the hard work, we shall see. Still going to have an Digigrid MGB along for the ride, I’m told AVB will not do what I need. Looking forward to the adventures ahead!
Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals
Mehr! Theater am Großmarkt – Hamburg, Germany
September 24, 2016
And this would be aproximatley show number five-hundred for me and Ben Harper. I started august of 2007, and 9 years latter, along comes show 500.
A small few of the memorable moments over the years…..
- Getting a call on the clear-com, with someone asking me when might be a good time to set off the fireworks….. and then starting the fireworks show at the begining of Mozos guitar solo on “Serve Your Soul” at the Montreal, Jazz Fest.
- Loosing power on stage in the middle of “Keep It Together” at the Montreaux Jazz Fest in Stravisky Hall, impromptu drum solo, power restored, and right into the ending chorus. You gotta keep it together.
- Paradiso, me barely keeping it together as Ben plays “Lifeline”.
- Paris, Folies Bergeres, love is in the air, barely keeping it together as a string quartet plays Adagio for Strings, and then that same quartet on Please Bleed, in that venue…
- Red Rocks, home.
- Paying Radio City Music Hall thousands of dollars to spray magic fire proofing liquid on our carpets.
- Paying Carnegie Hall thousands of dollars for a recording of the show on a CD, that doesnt play.
- But seriously, we played Radio City and Carnagee Hall, so right on.
- Aspen, with the first time I saw a mixing desk tell me it was too cold.
- 4 nights at Sydney Opera House, night 3, “hey, why dont you do that song you do with just one mic?” turning into, how about we do the first half of the set with just one mic….
- Abbey Road Studios (and a coffee mug to remember it by.)
- Kennys Castaways, NYC
- Byron Bay Bluesfest, and the Lord Byron Resort
- 4 nights at the fillmore, and 2 days to rehearse there before hand, a sort of reunion to the neighborhood I had spent a long portion of my life in, in a most excellent way.
- “Welcome to the Cruel World” – so appropriate the day after my backpack was stolen, but on the flip side, one of those rare moments when “there, I’ve done it, that sounds perfect”. – Tivoli – Utrecht, Netherlands
- Beacon theater with Charlie Musselwhite and the gospell choir.
- Fez
- Brasil
- BHIC / Relentless 7 / Ringo Star / Charlie Musselwhite / The solo shows / Childhood Home
Thank you Ben.
“And the acoustics in Salle Wilfrid-Pelletier – rarely at much more than a C-plus level – were as good as I’ve ever known them to be. While the volume was aggressive at points, it never precluded clarity in the mix or inflicted physical pain. (You see? It can be done! Kudos to whoever got it right.)”
Added 2 sold out shows in Mexico City filling in for Yann, who will be mixing Yann Tiersen on his upcoming US tour. Added Ben and Ellen Harper show in Clairmont, CA.
A good friend has convinced me to move to the other side of the snake! This February and some of March I’ll be hitting the road mixing monitors for Gary Clark Jr. supporting Kings of Leon in arenas, with some headlining club shows thrown in here and there. And looks like I’ll be on the Midas XL-8, which sounds great, and luckily I don’t need scenes for this show, as managing them on the Midas consoles can give you a bit of headache when your used to other stuff out there. Should be great though, fantastic sounding desk, and our input list is small enough I can fit it all on the surface with out having anything hidden. Check out the schedule in “Upcoming Shows“.
I’ve also noticed that WordPress.com may now put adds on to my blog and its posts. They do let me use it to create this blog at no cost to me, so I can’t complain, but please know I have not put any adds on this blog, and any adds that do appear are not endorsed by my personally.
No ones or zeros today, was a pleasure to mix on the classic XL-4 and not have to hit a “select” button or change banks. 🙂
Another tour with eX-Girl from Japan on the record books. This time a short trip down the west coast of the US. Seems it’s near impossible to rent a 15 passenger van in San Francisco now. There is Bandago, but the insurance options made that more expensive than renting two mini-vans. So Brendan and I grab a van in SF and head up to Seattle. Next day in Seattle we grab another van, pick up the girls at the airport, and head off to the first show, supporting Quasi at Neumo’s in Seattle. The band surprises me with a last minute request to take care of some video projection for the intro. They have the intro on DVD, but upon closer inspection to the DVD player they brought to play the disc on, we find that it’s really a VCR. DOH! Luckily my mac has a DVD player and an s-video out, so after a quick trip out to buy a cable, we are good to go.
The next day a short drive to Olympia for a show at a small bar called the China Clipper. Not a well attended show, but it was Easter Sunday. None the less they put on a good show and I have some fun projection some screen savers and whatnot during the show.
Another short drive the next day to Portland for a show at Lola’s Room, which is right below the Crystal Ballroom. Here I find a little Midas Venice, and learn that you really need to make sure the projector is high enough to get over everyones head…
Then we had a couple of days to make our way to San Francisco, so on the way we made some stops around Mt. Shasta is the girls could reconnect with the God Mountain.
Right before we finished the trip to San Francisco we made a stop at the Marine Headlands, where they could get a great view of the city, a trip to the beach, and a look at some old WWII bunkers.
An evening off in San Francisco to rest from the past two days drive, and we play yet another show at the Bottom of the Hill where the Allen and Heath is still kicking, though I’m not sure the eq’s actually do anything…
The next day we drive down to Hollywood, and with not too much traffic to deal with we find our way to the in-famous Hollywood Motel 6. Not all that bad really… Next day we make our way to Spaceland for the last show of the tour. Ken Samurai opens the show with his movie inspired comedy act
The next day is off in LA as I hang with fellow Tön Meister, college class mate, and now grammy winner Greg Collins (congrats to him on his work on U2’s “How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb”). Early early early the next morning we take everyone to the airport for their trip back to Japan, return one rental van, and then Brendan and I make our way back to San Francisco, and with little traffic we have a smooth 6 hour trip.
I’m in the process of completely remaking the web site, about 75% there, so please pardon the dust and the pages that aren’t quite finished yet. I bought Freeway Express, as the copy of Go-Live I was using wasn’t legit, and while I was hopping iWeb would be the bomb, it wasn’t quite fitting the bill. So after much research I ended up purchasing Freeway Express for $100, and I’m pretty happy with it. I would definitely recommend it if iWeb or any other WYSIWYG site editor isn’t doing it for ya.
After some research I also figured out how to make an RSS feed as you can see from the button above. So now by subscribing with your fav news reader you can see when I update the web site.
I’ve just purchased (though not yet received) FileMaker Advanced 8. I plan on releasing some stand alone databases, probably starting with a Flyer-Miles database, then my Tour Manager Itinerary database, and I’ve also got an audio calculator in the works, but that will probably not be ready for quite awhile. When all is ready you can find the files in the file section.
eX-Girl tour starts tomorrow with a long drive up to Seattle for our first show. Looking like rain all the way. Hopefully the shows go really well. Nobody rents 15 passenger vans anymore. Or you can’t go out of state, or with the insurance it’s too expensive, or you need a trailer too and they won’t let you do that. Are more bands elsewhere in the states finding they have to own their own van these days to tour with?
Upcoming Tours – eX-Girl US West Coast / Peaches supporting Nine Inch Nails and Bauhaus
Audiosquid 