Summerland for summertime

Well the US run for the Chili Peppers is over for now.  It's a little strange.  The tour has decided to take everyone except the PA techs overseas.  From what I hear there is a Czech company that is filling our shoes.  That would have been a great opportunity.  Oh well, off to bigger and better.. uh maybe just other things.  Speaking of, Rat continues to keep me busy.  Not as glamorous as Chili Peppers, but it's called Summerland Tour.  It's a festival style tour with some totally awesome 90s bands including Everclear, Sugar Ray, Lit, Gin Blossoms, etc..  Ha.  Should be fun.  Also, I've changed jobs.  No more stage right PA for this guy!  I'll be the monitor tech for these bands.  That means that most likely each band will have a monitor engineer and it will be my job to make sure everything is properly hooked up and functioning each day.  My boss did mention it's possible some bands may need an engineer, which would be very cool.  Rat has also put me on FOH tech for Uproar tour after Summerland ends.  I'm really glad to have this opportunity.  It's exactly what I was looking for at this point.  Should be great, but I'll be gone for a while.  Each of the tours is a month and a half, plus after that there are more Chili Peppers.  Could be the end of November before I get a back.  Guess I'll gather nuts for the winter.  

One of first stops on leg 3 was in Chicago.  Had a day off so we hit the town.  There's a sweet little area called Millennium Park.  Part of the park includes the Jay Pritzker Pavilion.  This day there was an orchestra concert going on while people were chillin on the lawn.  

As you can see they have a grid above the audience area that from what I can see is only used to hold hundreds of speakers.  Interestingly the sound system here uses the LARES system.  It's basically a a huge outdoor surround system.  Some of the speakers are used to simulate the acoustics of being indoors.  Funny in the arenas we try to get the acoustics out.  Here they're doing the opposite. 

Kids playing in the Crown Fountain.  Prerecorded video of a guy pressing his lips together and shoots real water.  

 The Bean.

Should be able to find Manny, Brett, Jim and me!

Enjoying nature.. on our phones. 

Sweet sushi in Chi-town.

Ever wonder what holds up all the equipment for our shows. Good shot of the rigging.

Here's how...At the Allstate Arena in Rosemont, IL the steel rigging grid lowers to about 12 feet off the ground.  Makes it much easier than climbing to the ceiling.  Quite unique.

In Detroit we went to a Queen tribute concert cuz our friend Super Dave was on monitors. 

Had to get my pic with the lego Redwing.

Since we're going to do some more Peppers in the fall I took some notes on my cable builds.  Couldn't be clearer right?

Dave Rat occasionally would hang out after the shows and be up to something.  Tonight he had bought a blow dart gun we each took turns. Here's Tommy.

Chris the drum tech has to be on stage for the drummer so he ends up playing keys while he's there.  Just a few songs.

Josh the guitar player is a gear junkie.  He's got tons of guitars and even more pedals.

Josh's rig.

After the Peppers run Pyramid asked me to do a show outside Atlanta called Impulse.  It was an electronic festival at a dirtbike/ATV park.  Our accommodations were this shack barn.  5 of us lived here in bunk beds for a week.  Called the Smoke House, no smoking allowed.

The first morning I was the first one in the shower and found a spider the size of a half dollar.  I'm not really scared so I decided to just take a shower with it.  When it started running around the shower floor and crawling on my feet I changed my mind.

Pyramid provided the stage for the festival.  It rolls up in a semi and sets up in about 2 hours.  We were a little delayed since it had poured the night before and got stuck.  Luckily they had heavy machinery on site to pull us out.

 Me killin it at FOH.

 Random pic of my friends Chad and Sarahs son Ryan.  He's my buddy.