Thursday, July 7

Y! Festival (Oshkosk, WI)

So i'm not so sure i put my best foot forward today. I get pretty unpleasant with the production company staff today during our soundcheck. Let me start with why...

When we showed up today we where suppose to start our soundcheck. Since there was a "headliner" after us they get their soundcheck before ours. They decided that they could show up about an hour late and still take more then they were suppose to. So they drug on and on going way over their alotted time. To be honest they were a bit snooty about it too. We couldn't start our soundcheck until they were finished. It was about 45min into the time for us to check and the venue was wanting us to hurry up.
I was using a digital console that I had only used once before and for only a short time. So before the show i asked the tech to give me a quick lesson. He told me the basics that i needed to know. So when it finally came time for our soundcheck they saved the page information of the headliner and cleared the console. I stepped up to run our soundcheck like we always do. We try very hard to run a well timed and quick check. Unlike most of the people we run into.
As i began to gain up each of the channels I noticed that none of the signal was making it to the AUX outputs (the outputs that run each set of in-ear monitors for the guys) Well no signal to the ears, no soundcheck. So i'm at a dead stop until we can figure this thing out. So I ask the tech what might be wrong. He can't give me a straight answer. He doesn't know, the other guy doesn't know. They said, "Oh yeah the guy before had the same problem. What did he do to fix it? I don't remember." Well these are not words i want to hear.
So due to the time crunch the people before us left us in and the fact the crowds were starting to pour into the seats, I had to get this fixed quickly. I ask the tech, "Who do we need to ask to get this figured out." He said a name then walked away to work on something else. Well in a few minutes I tell him that i still can't get the Aux's to work. He says i need to talk to ________. I still don't know who this is. I asked him where this gentleman is. He says,"Oh he's up in the light truss focusing lights for ******** (The unamed headliner that messed us up) So again they are busy with their own thing and prohibiting us from doing what we need to do.
After several attempts to get him down, he finally just yells down what needs to be done. So the tech and I figure it out and begin sound check.

The problem is here that during this process I yelled rather forcefully at the tech to either give me a straight answer on how to fix it or find someone that can. Mistake1. Later on the Front of House tech came back and had to do something on my console. Well i'm still doing soundcheck and he came over and started pushing buttons.(Which on a digital console is going to affect what i'm hearing and where the faders are) With my in-ears in i can't hear anything else around me. From my perspective i was working very quickly and this set up hands just shows up and starts monkeying with things. I didn't even look to see what was going on. I yelled, "Hey cut it out, i'm not finished yet." I think do the time crunch and the frustration of not fully understanding the console the grabing hands thing pushed me over.

Well stan brought it to my attetion that the house guy complained about me. My worse nightmare. I DO NOT want to be looked at as the guy that can't keep his cool in high stress situations. Stan was extreamly frustated the whole day too, but he managed to never show it. I'm glad Stan brought it up so i can learn from it. After the show I found the FOH guy and apologized.

Some day I hope to hold the reputaion of the guy that can perform calmly during all types of stress.

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