Production Chaos!
I had an incredibly busy week. The week for me was prepping for The ZAPP Band and Mikki Howard concert at Delaware State University on Saturday. I also had some prep to do for the Delaware Air National Guard Air Show, that took place on Saturday as well. There was also a Univerity of Delaware event that needed a bit of work, that also happened on Saturday. In addition, I had a few service calls and installs to do.
On Friday, we had to set up for the Air Show. This involved 9 speaker towers and a whole lot of cable, spread out over about a 2-3 acre area. After we got done setting up, I had to go back to the shop, finish prepping for the concert, and then load up a 16-foot truck. By the time I got to loading the truck at about midnight, I realized the 16' foot truck wasn't big enough, and I didn't have any help to flip cases on top of each other. So, I ended up loading the truck and a van. I went home, slept for a few hours, and was back at the shop at 7 AM.
The system consisted of six Clair Brothers' R4-III full range speakers (three per side), 10 Clair Brothers' 12AM monitors, a Soundcraft SM16 console for monitors, a Yamaha PM4000 for front-of-house, a Clair Brothers' ML18 subwolfer for the drummers, 3 monitor amp racks, a house amp rack, and all of the cabling and accessories to make it all work together.
Saturday was crazy too. First of all, I was tired, and exhausted. Andrew and I went down to the theater, and by the time we figured out where the concert was taking place, it was about 9 AM. We were supposed to have a union crew there for load in, of about 4 extra guys. No one was there. In addition, the University was supposed to provide the band with 5 people for stage crew. They provided no one. So, Andrew and I unloaded the truck by ourselves, ans setup mostly everything by ourselves. At around 10:30 AM, I realized we were missing a cable truck… so I had to drive back to the shop to get it. It's a 45 minute drive each way.
I got back to the theater, and finished setting up and everything went pretty smoothly from there. The concert was scheduled to start at 8 PM, with doors at 7 PM. They opened doors on time, but there wasn't much of a crowd… so they waited. Mikki Howard didn't start her set until about 9:15 PM… an hour late! She got done at about 9:45 PM, and we had to strike all of the monitors and cables they didn't use. ZAPP started at 10 PM, and played a rather amazing, 90-minute, non-stop set. I mean non-stop literally… each song transitions into the next.
Both artists were rather awesome and easy to mix monitors for. It's always easy when the musicians know exactly what they want. The Soundcraft SM16 is an incredibly nice monitor console. That's what it was designed to be. It provides 16 mixes, a stereo mix, wedge mix, and four mute groups. It's also super simple to use.
The show finished up, and help had arrived for the loud out. I got back to the shop at 2 AM, got some food with Rod, and crashed at about 4 AM. I woke up today at about 2:30 PM. This blog entry is my about of productiveness for the day.