on tour: Summerland Tour

Hey guys! I've been out here almost 4 weeks on the Summerland Tour. It's a first year tour headed up by the lead singers of everclear and Sugar Ray. Art Alexakis and Mark McGrath. Definitely a lot of growing pains, but I'm really enjoying the tour a lot. On this one I'm the monitor tech. George is the monitor engineer for all 5 bands. My responsibilities include micing all the bands and making sure things are patched correctly. Each band is preset on rolling risers before they play. That means there are over 100 microphones or DIs on the show! A lot to keep organized. We just past the halfway point so we have about 3 weeks left. Hope you guys are doing well.

I was able to visit my family right before the tour. Loved this pic of my niece Lizzie driving my Element.

Here's our first show in Saratoga, CA. George at the helm.

Lit

Gin Blossoms

Oh yeah. No semis on this one. We have 5 buses with trailers and a Sprinter van with a trailer.

Get 'em to the Greek. This was our second show at the famous Greek Theater just like the one in the movie.

Vegas Baby! Our third show was literally in the pool at Mandalay Bay hotel. This was taken before the roof structure was raised. Really small stage but a lot of fun.

Meet and greet passes allow you to see the artists and take pictures with them before the show.

Austin City Limits

Since my brother and Eric live about an hour away I got to hang out with him on my day off. We found 6th street with this awesome dueling piano bar. The crowd was unusually old but really into it. It made it a lot of fun.

In Fortworth we played Billy Bobs bar. It was mostly what you would expect.

You thought it might be fun having a mechanical bull, this place has live bull riding.

They didn't really have a proper electrician, so yours truly ended up tying in the power.

My good friend Kristin made it to the Columbus show. Got to hang out afterwards.

You may have heard, but that night in Columbus a train derailed and exploded. We were less than 10 miles away and saw it happen. The sky lit up like the sun was rising and then a fireball shot up from the horizon. It must have been a few hundred feet in the air. Crazy!

George plays a mean ax. Here he's jamming with Marcy Playground during soundcheck.

You may recognize George from his stage name. Zack Galifinakis from the Hangover.

Got to play the Roseland in New York City. One block away from David Letterman's studio.

Had to have NY pizza. Lunch and dinner.

Played a show in Bethel, NY. The home of the original Woodstock Festival. Here our 70 year old tour guide Duke took us around to see the sites. A lot of good rock and roll history happened here.