Red Lights

After two warm-up shows in Michigan, we’re heading to Albany, NY today. We left Ann Arbor at around 11 this morning. It’s 11 at night now and we’re still about an hour away from Albany. I’m thankful this will be the longest drive of this tour. East coast touring seems to be total cake, driving-wise.

The first warm-up show was at Mac’s Bar in Lansing, MI. I knew our night would be interesting as soon as I walked into the club and smelled that all-too-familiar mix of stale sweat, spilled beer and cigarette ash, all covered with a healthy dose of the citrus tang of Lysol.


As with so many of these small shows, we were faced with the unpleasant reality that people often exaggerate. The club had told Mike, our new tour manager, that there would be four separate monitor mixes.

Mike.

As it turned out, they had only two monitor speakers and only one monitor mix on site. Seth, the house sound guy, was very nice about trying to get another pair of monitors, but to no avail. While Seth was on the phone with his “sources,” I searched the club for a possible solution to our silence problem. In so doing, I stumbled on a massive sound-gear graveyard.


Seeing a monitor-shaped object, I thought I had succeeded in solving my problem. Alas, it was missing an important part. Can you tell which one?


As it turned out, we had to make do with only the pair of monitors on a single mix. I am thankful that this band is so easygoing, monitor-wise. There’s a certain freedom that comes with working for a band: after a little while, you come to learn which shit will float and which will not. This shit floated famously.

Later, I managed to find the venue's backup PA system, and was glad we ended up going with the A-rig.



Between loadin and soundcheck, I managed to crack my head pretty badly on the main speakers, which were hung at a perfect height for aiming at my cranium. After I’d rubbed the goose-egg on my scalp, we soundchecked and, in spite of some other important pieces that were missing from this PA, I got things sounding about as well as they were going to. I am really spoiled in Portland. After soundcheck, we struck our drums and pedals and guitars. I hung around a little bit and enjoyed our luxurious green room.

"Not so bad," you might say.

Oh really?

Eventually, Joe and I wandered off to get some dinner. We ate at a truly cavernous internet café and snackbar a few blocks from the club. I had a really good veggie burger and Joe had a veggie sandwich. No, I haven’t gone vegetarian, but I am starting to notice that, like the rest of our touring party, I’ve started to become a little rounder in places I’m not too happy with, so I’m trying to eat a little more healthily.

I know, of course, that no matter how healthfully I eat, if I don’t get exercise (which I most certainly do not do on the road), I won’t be in shape, but I can at least try to minimize the damage. I can’t say that I have any more appreciation for my Portland routines of walking everywhere and working at a physically demanding job, because I already did appreciate them quite a bit. My mood and physique both benefited immensely from the strenuous physical demands I placed on my body. I look forward to reestablishing these routines when I get back in April.

Joe and I made it back from our healthy dinner in time to see both openers. Unfortunately, I didn't get any photos of the first openers, Island View Drive, but they were an instrumentally tight pseudo-Indie rock band. The second openers, Empty Orchestra, were really up my alley: blues-based hard rock. They looked really rockin', too:


Tally Hall's performance went pretty well, though somehow the microphone on Rob’s guitar managed to have its cable severed in half. Seth, our intrepid house sound guy, jumped right in and got things going again, thank goodness. Losing Rob’s guitar for a song or two, however, was the least of my worries. I found rather quickly that the sound board at this club had some serious problems. Frustratingly, the problems were serious as far as operation was concerned, but to repair them would have taken nothing more than a can or two of electrical contact cleaner and an afternoon. Allow me to describe the symptoms of a dirty fader*. When you move the fader along its track, bringing up, say, the lead vocal, you will reach a point where the lead vocal, instead of increasing in volume the way you would expect, drops out completely. As you might imagine, this is immensely frustrating.

Sometimes it is possible to get the fader to fix itself by moving it around, but this action almost always causes audible crackling, not the most desirable sound. At one point, try as I might, I could not get the lead vocal to come back, so I resorted to a delicate technique once explained to me by a dear, dear friend. I’ll call it the “eine cable expert**” technique. Having attempted to use more subtle methods to fix your non-functional sound board channel, you apply rapid, violent down-force to the recalcitrant bits. In short, you pound on the sucker until the channel works again. It is really delightful how reliable this method of sound board persuasion can be. Seth came up to find me pounding away on his mixing board and was a little perturbed, but once I demonstrated how effective it was at making broken things function, he backed off.

The band finished the show in extra-special fashion that day; having been inspired by the kind early-Spring weather, they took their acoustic encore (and the audience) out into the world, sitting in a circle in the parking lot across the street and playing “Here Comes the Sun” as the sun came down. I didn’t stay to see it, preferring instead to begin taking down the stage so we could make it back to Ann Arbor that much earlier.

We loaded out pretty quickly and got all the gear crammed into the Sprinter’s cargo space with a minimum of injury or grunting.

We’re almost at the hotel. We’ve got to make a quick pit stop to get Joe, who flew into Albany an hour or so ago. If I’ve posted this on 4/8, it means that there’s wireless internet at the hotel. If it’s later, it means that there’s wireless internet at some other hotel. If I’ve posted this earlier, it means that the space-time continuum has a rupture in it and the universe is over. Long live the universe.

*For those of you asking, “What’s a fader” (hi, Mom), allow me to explain. In general, the fader on a sound board controls the level of its given instrument in the main mix. Unlike the rotary volume controls on your stereo, a fader is linear in appearance. A less common synonym you may be familiar with is “slider.”

**To be said in a German accent.