on tour: Leg 2

After a whole 2 days at home in Kentucky I'm headed back out with the Chili Peppers tomorrow. 2 weeks ago we had our final show of leg 1 in Memphis. From there we had about 2 hours of sleep and flew to Indio, CA to work the Coachella festival. Coachella is a music festival with over 150 artists on 6 stages over 3 days. I worked on the outdoor theater stage as a patch guy. The festival this year decided to have the same bands play 2 weekends in a row. So we worked both weekends and had a 4 day break in between. I got to spend some time on the beach and visited Doug in Santa Monica. Good times. It was good coming home especially because I was able to spend my 34th bday with my Lexington friends. Good timing! For leg 2 with the CP I'm sad to say we're losing Chuck and Manny to other shows, but we're gaining Phil and Brett. Here's leg 2 schedule.

Hanging out in the cracker barrel parking lot until our hotel rooms were ready in Memphis. Chuck and Manny are on the left. 2 carpenters on our bus on the right. There are 2 Mannys in the Rat clan, they call them light-skin and dark-skin Manny. Ha. I think you can tell which one he is.

Visiting Beale St. shops on our day off.

We found a great BBQ place called Rendezvous. We didn't know what to order so our waiter just said he would start bringing us dishes. If we didn't like it, we could send it back. Yeah we didn't send any back.

Fleas arsenal

Coachella's backstage highway was lined with hundreds of palm trees each having an led cyc light programed to change colors.

3 of the stages are in huge free span tents.

Monitor world on Outdoor Theater. Billy at the helm.

FOH rocking dual Profiles.

Grace Potter on Outdoor Theater

Every person at Coachella including the audience and all the workers have a wristband that can't come off. They are super serious about security. We had pick up our credentials at a separate site before we got to the grounds. Each band has a letter indicating what access you have. P for Production. They all have a microchip in them that is linked to your information. They use this to scan you in and out everyday. We asked why they scan people out, they said if you don't have a wristband you could get arrested. Kind of crazy!

People create artwork to decorate the festival. Boom lift dressed like a flower. There's a guy in the petals moving it around.

Outdoor theater from afar. 2 sets of delays.

Cool robotic helicopter taking video.

Girl Talk. Not my favorite music, but the crowd loved them.

Florence and the Machine

Bamboo artwork. They said someone tried to climb it and fell.

Main stage after the crowds were gone. This thing is huge! They said the posts holding it up are 70 feet tall.

These are the monitors for Dr. Dre. The grate is the front edge of the stage. In between weekends they wrapped them in saran wrap and dropped them down in case it rained. Not very likely around here.

Main stage sound system. 8 K1SB over 12 K1 over 3 Kara. Don't worry if you don't know the terms.. Lots of speakers!

I rented a car and drove to Santa Monica Tuesday to hang out with my college buddy Doug. He wasn't off work yet so I went to the beach and rented a bike and drove down to Venice. It was fun.

What does it mean if you see your own shadow?

On my way back to Indio I stopped off at Pasadena and decided to go for a 4 mile hike at Eaton Canyon. It was nice but there were a lot of people out.