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My drummer is playing in a Garth Brooks tribute act and last night was his first gig with them. Actually, they are all very good musicians and they really did a great job at what they do.
Well, the venue they played at was just bought out and the new owners fired the sound man, so my buddy called me and asked me to run sound. Hell, it was 100 bucks, so I figured it would be an easy way to make some cash. "Garth" picked me up (I have never met him before) and we went to the club at 4 o'clock because he wanted to see what they had and so did I.
Good thing we got there that early. The sound system was up in a booth next to the stage, which set up the red flags right off the bat. They had no mics there, but at least I was prepared for that and brought a shitload of mics and cables. The first thing was to try to figure out which of the 4 power amps drove which set of speakers. I also had to figure out how the mixing board and the outboard gear was wired into the system. It was a friggin' mess.
Soon found out that one of the sub speakers was blown and so I tore it apart to see if I could remedy the situation. It seems someone decided to cut the capacitor out of the line, and spliced the lead wires together. Well, capacitors are there for a reason, so the 18" woofer was fried beyond repair.
OK, I figured I would use the one sub woofer in the way you would use one for a surround sound system and that was fine.
Next was the mixer. I was told originally that it was a 12 channel board. That was going to suck, but at least the drummer brought his electronic drums, so that gave me 10 channels to work with. WRONG..... It was a 10 channel board. So let's see.... 2 channels for the drums, 3 vocals, two guitars, piano, fiddle, pedal steel, blues harp and bass. That's 12..
Well, I decided to put the fiddle and piano in one channel, and the steel and harmonica in one channel. That took care of that.
Next was trying to get the sounds thru the mixing board and out to 4 separate sets of speakers. The sound booth was up about 2 feet off the ground, so I would climb up, set a channel, climb back down, run out and check what I had, then repeat that roughly 100 times. I was ready to keel over and we still had two hours before the show.
Next were the lights. Now, I didn't sign up to be a friggin' lightman, but I had to do something. The system was as bad as the sound system, and between the owner of the club not wanting me to burn out his lights, and the band needing some sort of lighting on the stage to set up, I was ready to pop some noses. One side of the lighting box wasn't working, so I had to rig it up so they had something up there. Every single light was some flickering, flashing, rotating, 1970's disco, John Travolta pain in the ass.
OK, this could take forever, but bottom line is....
100 bucks just doesn't seem like much money after that... Oh, and the owner wrote me a check for "cash". I said "uh uh". "Garth" paid me out of the band money and he took the check. I was wiped out by the time I got home.
Today I feel pain in every muscle I own and every joint is squeaking. The sound person is a thankless job and I have learned a lesson last night. From now on, every gig I do, I will treat the person running sound better than I will treat the guys in my band...lol.
OK, I just wanted to whine, thanks for indulging me. :hi:
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