Dave Rat - Roadies in the Midst

3:30 am - Parked at the venue, on the tour bus, load out continues. Not very happy with my bunk pillow, thin with poking feathers.

I took a full drink onto the Pro Tools pre amp rack tonight. Some kind of sticky solution that I saw coming in a high arc before crashing onto the rack and splashing across the console. Oh, man, just a mess and all I have is an unwashed t-shirt someone gave me that is as absorbent as a rubber mat. Oh well, at least I did not lose any channels. I mix the show with sticky fingers.

Tonight (later this morning), what we call 'the core crew' will ride about four hours to Rocking Rio Festival in Lisbon where we will get dropped and lose the busses and live at the gig till after the show. The main production crew (everyone else) will do a 30 hour drive to Lyon, France.

The core crew are the ones that we really can not do a show without. The backline techs, sound engineers, lighting human, some production humans, some backstage humans, stage manager and usually engineer techs as well.

European driving laws are much more strict than US laws. To do a 30 hour drive it will take 3 drivers per bus as each one is only allowed like 8 hours without a full sleep. They have little paper disks in the speedometers over here that mark the time traveled and speed each professional driver travels and they get in all kinds of trouble if their disks don't match the law.

I have a lot going on on this tour. Mixing main PA, I also mix a recording 2 track mix on headphones that has audience mics mixed in and somewhat different levels. We have VIP fills that fed off that mix as well located on each side of stage. Nick the Fly, my FOH tech is keeping Pro Tools running and after switching to the internal 400 gig, we had not crashes last night.

SoundNerdSpeak

• The Main PA System is 2 hangs per side each consisting of 12 V-Dosc and 3 dV-Dosc.
• The side wrap system is 2 hangs per side each consisting of 9 dV-Dosc
• Plus we have 44 Rat Subs and 6 L'Accoustics self powerd 8" speakers for VIP fills.

The main PA is divided into a stereo inner system and a stereo outer system. The side wraps are divided into near pair (the side wraps closer to me) and far pair. The near pair is sent a signal that is a mono version of the inner system and the far pair is sent a mono version of the outer system.

End SoundNerdSpeak

 Must sleep.

Dave Rat