"Are we still having fun?" asks the lyric in a song. Well not so much. Miscommunication, lack of clarity and personality clashes have resulted in Jim and I leaving the tour. It happens. I don't regret the brief experience because I met some neat people and had some nice experiences. I wish everyone the best and am putting this in the rearview. Been there, done that, now on to something else. Life goes on as it should.
Thanks for reading.
Peace out.
Nancy
What goes up must come down. It goes up slowly, but comes down very quickly. A typical day progresses like this;
Production and Tour management personnel go in around 530-5:45am. The floor of the arena gets marked for the riggers around 6am, while the riggers load in at 7am. Breakfast is served from 7am to 11am. Each department (Audio, Carpentry, Video, Lighting) starts arriving in 30 minute increments to the venue by their assigned bus or by runner van. We start unloading the gear from the semi trucks at 9am.
Lunch is served from 12pm to 3:30pm. At 2pm the opening act will load in their gear off stage.The main act will do a sound check around 4:30ish. Somewhere between 5pm-6pm the opening acts' gear will be put on stage. Dinner is served from 5pm-8:30pm.
Doors (when patrons can enter the arena) are at 6:30pm. The opening act plays from 7:30pm - 8:15pm. There is a short 30 minute change over and the main act begins at 8:45pm and plays nonstop for 2 hours.
And what took us about 5-6 hours to put up, comes down in 2-3 hours. That includes loading it back on the trucks and sending them on their merry way.
A quick shower at the venue and we're all on our buses and in our bunks by around 2:30am at the latest and on the road to the next venue.
Landing in Las Vegas around eight o'clock on the evening of August 6th, the passengers aboard my Southwest flight were informed that the current temperature was 112 degrees fahrenheit. Okay, Vegas is usually hot, especially in August, but what Vegas is usually not is humid. Around thirty percent humidity to be exact. Great. The shop where we will prep the gear for the tour is reasonably not air conditioned. There is a swamp cooler which usually works well in hot, dry climates, but if it is the least bit humid, a swamp cooler will make it twice as humid.
So the choice is one of two different levels of Hell; 1) over a hundred degrees outside in the direct sun or 2) a few degrees cooler, but double the humidity inside the warehouse. For the most part it was choice number two because that's where the gear was. All of the video crew was trying to stay as cool as possible and as hydrated as possible. We had neck fans, cooling neck cloths, small personal fans and larger turbo fans but we still dripped waterfalls of sweat.
Combining the weather, working conditions and the cross country time change meant that Jim and I fell into bed in a dead heap after the first day about 9:30 pm. Of course we had small travel fans in our hotel room as well because all air conditioning systems have a hard time keeping up in this kind of weather.
A bright spot in our days was lunch time, usually out of the warehouse and into a cool, air conditioned restaurant. We found a great place called Panino and went there at least three times during our week of prep. The proprietor was a lovely man who was born in Argentina but has Italian roots. The focaccia bread was unbelievably light and airy. I immediately wanted to try this place after seeing a picture of the Mufeletta sandwich. It did not disappoint. The portions were overly generous and of great quality. I only ate half my sandwich because the gelato was beckoning me with its' promise of sweet revitalization.
The humidity did ease up a bit as the week wore on, but the high temperatures never dipped below 100 degrees. The truck was loaded and ready to go by Saturday afternoon. A quick trip to a local laundromat on Sunday followed by a crew lunch at Rollin Smoke Barbeque and we are ready to fly to Austin, Texas to begin this adventure!
