Wow, Im slacking at updating this. The “Ill update this tomorrow” syndrome has plagued me throughout the past few shows. It’s amazing how tired I’ve been traveling so much lately. Between the 5 hour van drives, 6 hour plane flights, jet lag and various hotel rooms, I havent had much time to sit down and relax lately. It’s very hectic as we’ve been traveling. So, since Im stuck on a plane for the next 5.5 hours on my way back to America, I figure Ill update this… So, where did I leave off? Ah, yes. Six Flags.

As the summer continues on we are slowly making are way around to most of the Six Flag’s in the USA. We started with St. Louis, the Atlanta, and now Baltimore. This was the first, and only Six Flags show we were not headlining. It was also close enough that I rode down with my brother, and Roxanne in the car. But, what happens when you do a show that you’re not headlining? Yep. You guessed it. Hurry up and wait. Boys Like Girls(headliner) was about an hour late and put everyone behind the schedule. What a great way to start the day. We rushed to sound check after they finished and I got things roughed in enough.

The PA itself was pretty awesome. We had a d&b rig consisting of 6 Q1 mains flown per side, and six additional Q1’s flown per side for outfills. Subs were 6 d&b B2’s per side. Out front I had the usual Yamaha PM5D. The rig was awesome sounding right out of the gate and really didnt need too much EQ. Just a little cut at 630hz, and another at 120hz. Otherwise, it was just fine. The B2 subs absolutely slammed. They are my new favorite subwoofer. They have LF extension further then any other sub Ive ever worked with. We were in a bit of a clamshell setup with stadium style seating around the stage. The bleachers would rattle like crazy from the bass.

The show was pretty stacked with artists. Katy Perry(I Kissed a Girl) opened the show, Metro Station(Shake it) was 2nd, we were direct support and Boys Like Girls(Great Escape) headlined. Come show time for us, the place was completely packed. I’d guess that there were around 5,000 people there for us. Everything was in place for a good show, except for one thing…. The lead singer was having a bit of an off day. Between being sick and not able to head himself in the monitors, it made for a rough show. The band was also still tired from Warped Tour and played a little sloppy. I also seemed to be having a little bit of an off day. I just couldnt get things to sit the way I’d like in the mix. The combination of all the these things made for a slightly rough show. In the end, things stilled rocked and the kids were happy.

After this show we had one day off, and then we were going to start our great adventure. Baltimore to Boston to London to Boston to New York to Baltimore. Yeah. That’s a lot of flying!

Our first stop on the journey was Massachusetts. We flew out to another stop on the Six Flag’s summer tour. The weather was beautiful, the plane ride was smooth and everything was going great. It looked to be a perfect day for a rock show. When we arrived at Six Flags I looked at the stage and noticed something missing. There was an apparent lack of any PA. Lets see…. It’s 11am when we arrive, and sound check is scheduled to start at 12:30pm. Maybe the sound company was running a little behind schedule and didnt have anything flown yet? So, I walk out and have a look, and to my surprise there was nothing there at all. Just the lighting guys. Well, that cant be good. One of the stage hands tells us the bad news…. The audio semi flipped over on the way to the venue. Now thats a shocker. You dont hear that every day. The audio truck flipped over? From what I was told, the truck’s brakes failed as the truck was getting ready to exit off the highway. The driver couldn’t slow down and ended up in a ditch off the side of the road. All the gear on board was pretty much destroyed. Amp rack’s shot through the roof, console cases were destroyed, speakers were broken and just about everything was lost. Luckily the driver was ok.

After hearing that news, I was wondering how we were going to do the show. The good news is that they had another PA at the shop and were loading another truck to get out to the show. The shop was 2 hours away, so we had another day of hurry up and wait. The original spec’d PA was 16 EAW KF760’s, 12 Meyer 700HP’s a Digidesign D show and more. I was pretty excited to mix on that rig. The rig they were bringing out to replace it was smaller, but it was that or nothing. I had 10 Meyer Milo’s, 8 Meyer 700HP’s and a D-show coming to replace what was destroyed. All we had to do was wait for it to show up…

Come 3:00pm the new truck finally arrives. Doors are supposed to open at 4:30pm. It’s going to be a tight squeeze to get everything done in time. 4:00pm rolls around and everything is up and running. We run some tunes, get the PA sounding good and start sound check. Those Milo’s sound good, but Im running out of sub quick. Oh well, the show must go on. I get a good mix up and we call it quits. They backline the other band, sound check the opener and open the gates. I was standing at FOH as the mob of kids came running down from the back of the field. This was probably the coolest thing Ive ever seen. Thousands of kids just running down the field. A huge stampede. The all fill in and the show starts.

Come 8pm, we get ready to roll. Around 6,000 kids are in attendance. ATL hits the stage and the crowd goes nuts. The PA is just about out of gas, but it’s pulling through. Everything sounds good, and the band is playing very well. Yup, it’s going to be a good night. I was hovering just below limit on the whole rig all night, but everything survived. The sound company did an amazing job getting everything up and running and my hat goes off to them. Losing that much gear would put smaller companies out of business. These guys held their heads up high and pulled off a great show.

After the show we crashed at the hotel for the night. The following day, we started our 2 hour van drive to Boston’s airport. Got through security, and headed off to London. We arrived around 6am in London to start a very busy day. Our buddies Phil and Ben from the UK were nice enough to drive us around in their van. We were supposed to have a bus for the trip, but thanks to Matt’s awesome planning, we ended up with a van. Come 8am we’re sitting in the parking lot trying to hunt down a trailer to haul the gear. It took a solid hour to find one, again, thanks to Matt’s awesome planning. So, once we got everything together, we packed 10 people into a 9 passenger van and started our 3 hour drive to Reading Festival. This is one of the countries largest music festivals. With over 6 stages of music and over 120 bands playing, it was quite an impressive site. Over 100,000 kids were in attendance at this festival. We played one of the smaller stages, with about a 5000 cap. We arrived around 11am, and we didnt have anything to do until 6pm. Since I hadn’t slept in almost 24 hours, I decided to catch some sleep in the van.

Our set finally rolled around at 8pm, and we took the stage. I made my way to FOH to find that I was stuck with a 98dBA limit at FOH. SWEEET! Rian’s cymbals from the drums were louder then 98dB at FOH, so it was pretty rough. My mix consisted of kick, toms, bass, a little guitar and vocals. Not a good night for me. I survived the set, even though the crowd singing was louder then the band at some points. The crowd was pretty cool. Over 2000 people were watching the band.

After the show we went right to the hotel and collapsed. It was a long day, and I had no energy left. We woke up around 10am the next day to head out to the next gig. A short 5 hour drive got us to Leeds Festival. Same deal as Reading, just in a different town. No dB limit this time though. We had a TurboSound Aspect rig both nights, and a Yamaha PM5D out front. Good gear all around. Things went much smoother at this show, and I pulled off a pretty good mix. The only let down was that the headliner the previous night blew up half the subs, so I didnt have a ton of bass.

Day 3 in the UK consisted of yet another 4 hour drive to the next venue. This was very well planned out. No drives were less then 2 hours long. It was awesome. We arrived at the venue around 2pm to load in. This was the Scala in London. Right in the heart of the city. An 800 cap room with another Turbo rig. Very good sounding! The only downside was that the room was very live. There was no acoustical treatment, and the room was all hard wood, so it was very live sounding. Sound check was 106dBA without the PA on. When I kicked it in, I was averaging 112dBA to get a balanced mix. It was not ideal. Come show time with 600 bodies in there, it was much better. I was only averaging 106dBA with the kids in the room, which was much better then 112dBA. The show ran very smoothly.

Our final gig in the UK was in a venue called Rescue Rooms. This was a much smaller room. At a capacity just over 400, it made for a “in your face” show. The PA consisted of 3 Nexo PS15’s flown per side and 4 unknown 18″ subs under the stage. The rig was limited way to early, so I was struggling to get a good mix. The limiter started to clamp down around 90dB at FOH, so it was tough to get it loud enough. My mix consisted of vocals, guitar, a little bass, some kick and toms. Every time I got the kick loud enough, it would suck the rest of the mix down and make a nice pumping sound. I opted to keep the kick low in the mix. It was a pretty rough night on my end. The 400 kids in the room over powered the PA a few times. I just ended up riding the rig right under limit all night.

But, thats enough sound stuff. How about some London stuff…

Americans have it rough when the come to the UK. The US $1 is only worth about $.50 here in Europe. Everything is super expensive. Also, there is almost no free wifi. An hour of internet costs $10+. It’s not cheap at all. Also, fuel is quite expensive.

When I was here, I also learned to speak “English.” Phil taught me how to speak “properly” and fit it. I gathered that the letter “t” is not pronounced. Rather, it’s replaced with an “uh” sound. So, “butter” becomes “buher.” BUT, the word “butt” does not become buuh, because it would make people sound stupid. So their word for “butt” is “bum.”

Some other translations:
Trunk = Boot
Electrical wiring = Electrics
Road work = Works
Drinking & Driving = Drink Drive

Food is also very different here. They sell sandwiches in prepackaged cartons at the stores. Nothing is really fresh made in front of you. Cookies are rare, as are other common American snacks. Breakfast foods are also very different. A normal american breakfast cannot be found. They serve mushrooms, ham, steak, tomatoes, and more. I passed on their stuff and went with cereal each morning

And thats it. We’re off to New York next to do a college show, and then we’re home for a day.

More pictures:

Back to the world of rock and roll….