on tour: A little bit of this. A little bit of that....

After Tiesto I took a little break and spent some time in Lexington and Los Angeles hanging with MC. We even went on a short little vacation. What?? Neither of us has had a proper vacation in an untold amount of years. We weren't quite sure what to do. From there we headed to Indio, CA for the Coachella festival. Of course I was working for Rat, but MC managed to pick up a job with artist relations. We were on the same stage but had really busy schedules so we didn't see each other all that often. This year's line up was not as impressive as previous years, but still really good. I'd say my favorite was the Violent Femmes who celebrated their 30th anniversary of the first album by playing the album front to back for the first time in a very long time, maybe ever. Not extremely polished but the casual nature of their appearance and interaction with the audience made the show more inviting for me to enjoy. Interestingly some of the groups that sounded fantastic and were technically perfect front to back were less enjoyable for me. I would include Vampire Weekend in this group; of which I normally enjoy their music. The experience was little more than turning on one of their CD's and watching a light show. Anyway, my 2 cents. 2 weekends of Coachella led straight into a festival called Stagecoach. The location remained the same but most everything else changed. The main stage had to be completely dismantled and moved 300 feet to the new location. We had to load out entirely and load in once the stage was reconstructed. Mellow indie fans turned into raucous rednecks, hipster artwork turned into beer gardens, etc... For both festivals I was stationed at FOH, a position I'm learning I enjoy a lot. I even got to mix a band for Coachella. Mostly the job requires setting up the main and delay systems and monitoring them. Also interacting with the artist engineers and accommodating them. Our plan after Stagecoach was to head back to KY and relax since neither of us had work until the end of the month. Not so fast. I got asked to work a show in Los Angeles called Wango Tango (Bruno Mars, Maroon 5...) so I've decided to stay here. In the meanwhile I picked up another gig over the weekend. A corporate show at the Anaheim convention center. Later I got called to work 6 Bjork shows in late May and June in San Fran and LA. Uh oh, what's happening?? Ok, enough talking, pictures please...

Tiesto played to a full house at the Staples Center in LA.

FOH at Staples

FOH for Tiesto includes only 2 channels of course so there is no mixer, just a series of processing and backups.

Small club in Boise where half of our equipment barely fit.

Our last show was at the Great Saltaire in Salt Lake City. Beautiful scenery..

Who do I remind you of? Hint: walks on water

Some of our Tiesto crew. Sort of looks like the Edward Sharpe album cover.

Our last show was actually a location for an Acer commercial. First day was the concert, second day was filming the drama. They had to use a bunch of black stickers to cover up all the Mac logos. Haha.

Here's the link to the 3 minute commercial. Tiesto commercial

When I got home I decided to become a proper hipster and start listening to records. $80 on craigslist.

Not home for long I headed back to LA for a week before Coachella to hang with MC. "Beach Day!!" The beautiful El Matador beach in Malibu. So beautiful that most people were not sunbathing or relaxing, they were doing professional photo shoots.

We had to take a few pictures.

We ended up going to the LA art museum's exhibit of Stanley Kubrick. This was really cool. Lot's of artifacts and scripts where you could see the notes and changes he made.

Typewriter from the shining.

MC's brother's band 'The Record Company' played a show at the local record store. These guys are awesome. Shouldn't take long before they're really popular. Among a bunch of other festivals and shows this summer they booked a gig at Summerfest in Milwaukee at the end of June.

For our vacation we decided to spend the weekend on Catalina Island, just off the coast of Long Beach. This place is cool. Lots of things to do and everyone, even the locals, gets around on golf carts. Very relaxing.

Breakfast!

Tada!

This guy came one morning to say hello. MC has a video of him talking to her.

Lots of stairs.

Coachella main stage

Couldn't fit much more in FOH. This day Vampire Weekend, Nick Cave, Chili Peppers and Violent Femmes.

Our stage had three rows of delay speakers three wide, 6 vdosc each.

Coachella is also well known for their elaborate artwork. The oversized JLG lift operated the tentacles of the super snail.

The snail actually drove around while the shows were going on.

Never really figured out what this was. Men dressed as Walrus acted like they were trying to operate this power station. Doing a terrible job at that. There were Tesla coils outside reacting to them inside. They had live video of each of the stages on the screens behind them.

Another insect decorated from a huge personnel lift.

Violent Femmes

Chili Peppers

Coachella's Saraha tent had dance music all weekend. Very impressive light and laser show. See the video. Saraha Tent link

In between Coachella and Stagecoach we had a lot of equipment to move around. Here Mike's working smarter not harder.

Golf Cart world

Stagecoach. Rednecks don't even know how to spell main stage. Haha

FOH, todays bands: Toby Keith, Hank Williams Jr., Joe Nickels, Trace Adkins, and Maggie Rose

It was a hot weekend. The roof company, Brown United, sends weather data to the Weatherlink network, so these figures are accurate for our stage. We actually saw 109 for a moment later in the day.