Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Rehearsal Day in Hartford

I decided to get as much sleep as possible, so I set my alarm for 6:45 this morning. Whoo-Hoo! Three and a half hours!!!! Screw showering. I get up, get dressed, chew my toothbrush for a minute, and try to shake out the cobwebs. Thinking that I should be able to grab a shower at the venue after I get in and get the production office set up, I grab some clean clothes and my toiletries on the way down to the bus at 7:00.

Remember, "Early is on time, on time is late."

Today, we're adding crew folks, an extra bus, 3 extra trucks, and a shitload of new staging, audio gear, video gear and lights. Lots of new faces, some familiar, some not.

We now have a production assistant (Molly), which means I won't have to fuck around with setting up and tearing down production every day.

And I'll finally start doing settlements every night, unlike the previous 3 weeks. For the college tour, the band was paid a flat fee, which was wired directly to CAA, the band's agency.

Our production rehearsals and first show are at the Dodge Music Center here in Hartford. It's your basic, generic music amphitheater, but during the cold months they put up a wall at the back of the "seated" area under the roof to close it off for winter use. Smart. Not cheap to do, either, as it also involves an HVAC system of enormous proportions. Brings the capacity down to 6,620 for shows, which is a great size for "in-between" bands like the All-American Rejects.

I did the very first show at this venue, back in 1995. Cry of Love was on hiatus (pronounced "in-between singers"), so I spent that summer tour managing Dillon Fence, who were on the road opening for Hootie and The Blowfish.

We finally get out around 1:30am and head back to the hotel.

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