Dave Rat - Roadies in the Midst

Argh, morning. Must get passport, bus driver had them for border crossing. Odds are that my trip home tomorrow will go much smoother if I bring it with me.

Always know where your passport is. Passports tend to gain weight on tour, check out how big these ones are getting

Pile o Rat gear and the corresponding human (Daniel)

SoundNerdSpeak

Mics and wires and stuff.

JF's rig has a 57 on the Silver Jubilee Stack, an SM57 and an EV Raven on the Marshal Major Stack and another 57 on Marshal rig 3 three that he plays the White Falcon through.

Kick Drum mics are and Audix D6 in the hole and a Shure Beta98 inside

In Chad's world the snare setup with an SM98 up and an SM57 below:

Toms have a custom clamp I made with a SM98, Chad hits so hard that all the off-the-shelf clamps move too much

And Flea's rig uses yet another SM98 grill mounted plus two DI's.One right off the Bass (clean) and a second after his effects (dirty)

End SoundNerdSpeak

Even though this place is a rough load in and a nightmare to cramp arena production into

it was really cool to do an outdoor show. The 15 minute outro jam with Ekkehard made it special as well. Ooooooh, big sound!

Load out over gravel and the first gig of next run is a festival so the gear needs to be divided up, no fun!

3:30 am, 4 hours till lobby call, phone battery drained, laptop battery near drained, Dave Rat very drained.

Good night

Dave Rat

IFYDAASIWTYBMT!

9am it is all about the repack. This morning will be my last real chance to get my bags prepared for the airline's durability test without unpacking in a parking lot.. I bought a bunch of liquid gifts that will get wrapped in my (clean) clothing for the ride home. One tour I had a bottle of flowery smelling oil explode in my bag and took out everything wearable I owned. The balsamic vinegars and olive oils have that potential.

The call sheet must have been transmitted telepathically today or maybe it is invisible, either way, I am guessing noon will be my call just like every show day has been for while.

And here she is, surprise! An oval shaped room with seats around the sides and a flat area in the middle:

Probably the most stressful and intense part of each show day from a production stand point is the load out. This is where all departments (hopefully) work in harmony sharing local crew, dropping in massive things from the sky and getting it all into trucks, quickly, safely and preferably without tempers flaring. In order to facilitate the smooth smooth flow of this massive orchestration, our stage manager, Tim, creates a highly technical 'load out sheet' for each show. These valuable sheets point out key issues while also highlighting things that happened the night before that need fixing. Here is Tim with Dortmund 2's load out sheet:

And a close up of the sheet. Everything on there has some relevance to our world and the load out sheets have become pretty much the daily tour newspaper:

Here are few shots of the show when all was black except band and video screens. For those of you that have not noticed, the video walls, like the Pods, move throughout the show and I have put up pics of a few different positions.

The songs for the night are not known until AK hand-writes the set list about an hour or less before show time, the lists are then copied and distributed. I usually get one. Then directly after the show, multitudes of fans repeatedly ask me for it. For awhile I was getting extra copies to give out, but the demand was endless and it turned into a feeding frenzy that seemed to cause more unhappiness than it created. Sometimes the persistence of people 'wanting' can be less than pleasant. Scott and I try and make it fun though. Maybe trading it for something of no value like first one to have a rubber band. Scott likes to trade for a joke or funny trick. Trading a set list for a smile seems fair enough!

Dave Rat

IWTHCYTTCATY!