Life of a roadie

[psychochild28]

Ok so there's not going to be much about motorcycles in this thread...but there will be some.


Well I'm officailly 25 hours out from getting on my first tour bus and Heading to Birmingham AL, Charlotte and Raleigh NC. These are the first three dates of my first gig with Toby Keith.


I'm so nervous!!!! And drewp left for Knoxville with his job today so I'm stuck being nervous by myself at home...

I'm still really excited. We had our last night of rehearsals last night and toby was there along with all the big wig's from his record label, band members and their families, his manager, and many others.

[psychochild28]

And It is time...I'm really nervous.


Packing up the computer and getting ready to head to my Bus call which is 20-30 mins away.

Will keep updates when I have spare time. My first show is in Birmingham AL and my start is 7am... unless I want breakfast and then it's sooner.

On a side note Montgomery Gentry open for Toby the entire time.

This is one step closer to affording my SV.

[psychochild28]

OMG I LOVE the road! The people have been awesome and I'm loving my work. Basically I get up somewhere between 5:30am and 7:30am, depending on the place we go, and we load everything in and get all our lights up and make sure they're working properly. Then we sit around and either fix broken lights from the day before or just hang out. We played pool at one place and NFL blitz arcade style at another. Once the show starts we sit on stage and listen on headsets to the lighting board operater and see if he needs us to reset lights or move the smoke machines.
The first night Toby totally fell on his face. He tripped over pyro's stuff and face first into the ground when going back out for his encore. He was fine, we were all laughing though.
Then we tear everything down and typically get done w/ everything, including showers around 2-2:30am. Then it's get back on the bus and head to the next place.
The last night we got "corn whisky." So along w/ the free beer and whisky we normally get we had a great last night.
What I do is help set everything up and fix lights. I'm also running the lighting board for one of the opening acts! They're slowly teaching me the lighting boards so eventually I will be able to program and run the board for bigger acts.


Where we set up. 1st is shitville 2nd is NC.



What I set up


What it looks like after everything's up. These pics are from our rehearsals because we've been too busy yet to get pics during the show. Those will have to wait till a little later.

[psychochild28]

So we were on the bus all day wed traveling to West Palm. We're watching movies and one of the guys across from me says look out the window at that motorcop. He's texting and in the fast carpool lane.
**Oh forgot to mention we were in the begining of rush hour in Atlanta.**
He had his cruse set (i'm guessing) slower than the speed limit and was texting for aprox 2 miles.


Seriously we can't talk on phones and texing in a car is bad but you can do it on a bike

But anyway things are getting better and i'm having more time to do things. The lighting guys from montgomery gentry said they'd see if they could make room for my bike when we head out west. I hope they were serious but w/ my luck that'd be a negative

[psychochild28]

I came SOOO close to buying my next bike over the 4th. I went back to Ohio and there's a Copper/burnt orange colored 03 SV650 for sale only $3900 with brand new pp's that have 2 miles on them. The bike only has 8900 i think.

And I only had $2500 cash on me I almost spent my next paycheck to get the rest but stupid bill's got in the way of that.

But on a side note I'm on the bus heading out to do my west coast run. First stop Phoenix in the 104degree heat w/ 40% humidity...YAY lol Then it's 2 shows in Cali, 1 in OR and 2 in WA, back to cali for 2 then NV for 2.



But I WANT that bike grrr to bills and what not.

[psychochild28]

So July 10th is the new friday the 13th.

Starts out the entire bus wakes up at 5am. Which is 3 hours before we have to be up. GRR stupid time change.

Oh well we goof off till load in.

After load in we test everything and find out we have a bad light. No big deal just put the spare in it's place. WRONG spare doesn't work either. Grrr now we have to be down a light on one of the truss. Oh well just change a few things and go on with the show.

So during Montgomery Gentry it starts raining Yup raining in Phoenix. And i don't mean just a sprinkle, I mean it's coming down sideways we were getting drenched on the stage which had a roof. So we scramble around throwing plastic over everything. I head out to the lighting board to help with that. After that's done I head back up to the stage.

There's about 4-5 inches of water accumulating at the base of the stage. Oh well it's not up to the step that has the power on it and the sub's are still dry.
WRONG about 5 mins after I get on stage there's already a Foot and a half of water covering the step/subs/ and power cable. Not only that but there's about 5-6 rows of ppl standing in that water. We kill power imdediatly because it would have killed about a thousand ppl (no joke) if the cable woulda gotten water in it. So we pull the sub's outta the water (they're ruined) over 20 sub's gone due to water damage. We get the cable up and on stage. And an hour and a half later we start Toby. So it's 10:30pm and he's just getting started for an hour and a half show....

Show ends load out starts......we lose power. It's now 2am and we have to wait on some dumbfuck to bring a generatior down so we can finish pulling lighting an rigging.

4:15am he finally shows up. 5:30 we are pulling out of the venue for a 5 hour drive to San Diego for another load in at 8am. Umm yea we're not going to make it on time.....

10am we arrive (bus driver's are speed demons). Where's the lighting and rigging turck??? Oh come to find out it's been stoped at border patrol and searched, wont be here for at least an hour and a half....GRRRR.

So at noon we start setting up for a 7:30pm show.....We normally load in from 8 am till 4pm. So we're busting butt to get it up and have sound check and all done before the doors open at 6pm.

But it all gets up with no problem other than a bunch of tired pissy crew members.

[psychochild28]

picture time...

The Great Flood of Phoenix

The view from the Venue in San Bernardino

Wyoming

Lake Tahoe- There's no walls it's all scafolding

my 1st bunk

Concert pics

[psychochild28]

Hopefully this works...gotta do it though. This song and Big Vinny (you'll see) crack me up.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIuI2O3n6tA