What a weekend.
This is a post about last Saturday.
“But Matt,” you say, “it’s Wednesday!”
Well, you are correct. Today is Wednesday (I think?). I was waiting for a few things before I posted this, but neither have happened. 1) I am waiting for pictures from Scott’s camera, so we can add visuals to this, and 2) I was waiting to recover, mentally and physically, from one of the most exhausting days in my last year.
Saturday, the Lone Strangers, and about 8 other members of the Tech crew, went to Decorah, IA to provide lights, sound, staging, and a Rockin time for Hogfest, an outreach event of Grace Community Church.
It was most certainly a day and a half. I now have a taste of what it feels like to be in a touring band.
Friday, after a great Rock in The Great Hall at the Memorial Union, the tech crew struck the setup, loaded the truck, and seven of them headed for Decorah, IA at about midnight, arriving at 4am, in time to catch a few hours of sleep before the 8am setup. The band, on the other hand, decided to stay the night in Ames, wake up at 4:30am and leave at 5am for Decorah, arriving at about 8:30am.
The trip was rather uneventful. I was looking forward to a road trip with the band (plus a few others). What I got, however, was about 2 hours of quiet, which ended up being a good time of prayer and meditation. At about 7am, everyone woke up and we listened to some U2 the rest of the way.
It was a beautiful morning… until we got started with the hard parts of setup (hauling stuff around) then it just got darn right hot.
After we got done with setup (lights, sound, and staging) at noon (4 hours later), the band (plus a few others) went to a local sports bar/grill to watch the ISU v Iowa game. Good times, though we were the ONLY ISU fans in the town. Made for some interesting conversation.
We got back at three, and proceeded to nap until 4 (yay! a whole hour!). Then we helped with sound checks and set up for the acts going on before our band. I was a little worried when there were only about 40 people on hand for the Elvis impersonator before us. We were told that the year before, 800ish people were in and out of the event that day.
Scott, our drummer, had originally told me he was going to show up with his family (including his parents from California) at 6p. At 6:15 I get a call from him. “Hey matt, we’re almost there, some stuff came up, I’ll tell you about it later.”
Turns out his car got totaled on the way to Decorah. Everyone was alright, but they were minus a car.
By the time we actually went on at 7(ish) there were about 20 people around (half of which were event staff). But we decided to have a good time and Rock out anyway. We had a fairly decent secular cover and original song set written up (with a few praise songs hidden in between here and there) but by the end of the night, we realized that the praise songs were hitting much better than anything else. The entire crowd (of 15) was members of the church sponsoring the event, so we decided to be an encouragement to them and finish out the night with some Energetic praise music. By the last song, I was so tired I couldn’t hear/think/feel what the rest of the band was doing.
But we weren’t done yet.
2 and a half hours later (11ish) we had everything torn down and ready to go. We ended up lending Scott and his family one of the three cars that the twelve of us drove down in (1 four door sedan, one conversion van, and one huge box truck). So we crammed nine people into the van, three into the truck, and headed to McDonald’s quick before getting on the road again.
-At 3:00am we pull in Stonebrook’s parking lot to unload some stuff for Sunday morning. -At 3:45am I drop off the van at Tim’s house (he leant it to us for the weekend). -At 4:30am I was back in bed.
A few observations from the weekend:
- Andy Borseth is so much like his brother that I almost called him Tim a few times.
- Setting up and tearing down your entire sound and light system twice in 30 hours really gives you some insights into the shortcomings of your system.
- At 4:30am, the skies look very similar to the opening scene from Passion of the Christ (very, very eerie).
- I am really glad that I am not a touring musician, and that if I ever were to become one, I wouldn’t have to deal with setup and teardown.
The touring musician part would be fun, but that’s because there wouldn’t be nearly as much crap to deal with…
Best case - you’ve got a huge, comfortable tour-bus with someone else to drive it, and a road crew to take care of set-up and what-not. Go to bed late, sleep late, sound-check, hang out, rock-out.
Worst case - you’ve got a van with 5-6 people into it instead of 9, plus a trailer for all your crap. You have to set up and tear down your crap, but no staging or PA, just instruments and amps. Show up, no sound check, rock-out, sell merch, and hit the road, probably the next morning. There are 5-6 people to be drivers, too.
Man, that’d be easy, and I wouldn’t ever have to work 40 hours a week in conjunction. It’d be like a vacation. Where do I sign up?
Next time we do something like this, we should definitely get designated drivers though, not so that we can drink, but so that we won’t be sitting there at 11:30p going “okay, who has enough energy left to drive?”
Just in case, if we ever get a tour bus, I’m claiming my own room. No offense, guys. :)
I could really go for dropping out and touring. granted it wouldn’t be the most profitable thing in the world (at least not right away it wouldn’t). But who needs lots of money, food, and comfort anyways when you’ve got ROCK.
volunteers to acquire a touring bus & drive it
-=Russ=-
sweet! we even got a guy with experience to drive us around.
If you get a bus, make sure it is a comfy one, like the Borseth’s. And if we have a buss, we will probably be towing a trailer. Do you do trailers?
Yeah, don’t forget about the trailers! We wouldn’t want to get ahead of ourselves, here.
maybe i should buy a guitar.