In the middle slot for the night was KT Tunstall. KT has been through our venue before. She’s a talented musician. Playing guitar and singing. She also plays percussion. She’s a looper. Making music by starting different rhythms using percussion and guitar lines, and running them through looping pedals to create soundscapes that form songs. A pretty cool type of music which I happen to like. She also brought along her cute little dog to sound check. 

The opening band tonight I had never heard of before, but they are a pretty rocking band. They’re called Vertical Horizon . Tight with good songs. I enjoyed listening to their set.

All the musicians and their crews were nice people today and the day went better than expected, although it is a long one and we are back tomorrow for 90’s Mixtape Live.

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Nik West turned out to be an unbelievable bass player and has a great band. Super funky with driving beats.

The rest of the band was also incredible. David Collum II, the drummer rocked hard! And adding to the excitement of this great band we’re screaming electronic sounds from Lorenzo Campese on the keys and fantastic guitar riffs and solos by Tomo Fujita. 

Their sound is reminiscent of a funky Prince with a hard edge that just rocks. I guess they fall into the R&B/Soul, Dance and Electronic genres. I’m super impressed by this band and can honestly say I highly recommend them. I will definitely be listening to more of their music. They were also really friendly people. I’m waiting to hear Joss Stone play but I think that I’ve heard my favorite band of the evening.

I can’t say I know much about Joss Stone. She is a Soul and R&B and Reggae singer from England. Watching her show tonight I can say she is definitely talented. Her music is much softer and gentle than the opening band which is more my own speed but I sure couldn’t say anything bad about Joss.

I met her and her dog earlier in the day although we were not formally introduced, but she seemed to be a nice person. Her crew has been nothing but professional and friendly to our own and the day has gone rather smoothly. Both of these acts have been a pleasure to work with and if you see them playing in your area I can recommend buying a ticket to see them. Whether you like your music with a bit of a funky edge or you like it soft and sweet this pairing tonight was a winner.

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We’re working tonight on what is billed as the Latin Rock & R&B Show. Three Latino rock bands on stage together. In the order they played, the bands are:

Thee Midniters

Cannibal and the Headhunters 

Malo

Tonight’s show is hosted by “Shotgun Tom” Kelly of Sirius XM Satalite Radio.

Cannibal and the Headhunters was here once, a year ago, our contact is Robert Zapata, the drummer for Cannibal (and also Thee Midniters). He is a nice guy who has tried to make things flow as simple as possible. It’s the 60th anniversary of his band Cannibal and the Headhunters. They were one of the first Mexican-American groups to have a national hit record, “Land of a Thousand Dances”. Reigning from Los Angeles’ East side Francisco Mario (Frankie Cannibal) Garcia founded the group in 1965, and they helped to usher in LA’s “East Side Sound”.

Thee Midniters were among the first Chicano rock bands to have a major hit in the United States. They were one of the best known acts to come out of East Los Angeles in the 1960s. They were among the first rock acts to openly sing about Chicano themes in songs such as “Chicano Power” and “The Ballad of César Chávez” in the late 1960s.

Malo a San Francisco-based ensemble, was at first led by Arcelio Garcia, and Jorge Santana, the brother of Latin-rock guitarist Carlos Santana. After the release of their first album, many of Malo’s original band members left the group. But the band continues on and still retains their great sound. The horns and excellent percussion really take the show up a notch.

This show turned out to have a lot more audio inputs and videos than we first expected. We were sent a stage plot for Cannibal but not the other two bands. Also, although we knew that Cannibal would have horns, they were not shown on the plot and nobody told us what instruments would show up. So that was a surprise.  We also found out about the horns and percussion (three bongos, a pair of timbales, some cowbells and a cymbal) for Malo at the last minute, also a couple of saxophones, a trumpet and a trombone. Once again this is not that unusual in this business, though we always hope that the performers let us know ahead of time.

 (They never sent a plot or an input list for Malo)

At least all the players and their people are very friendly, which makes going a little out of the way for them easier. And they were good bands.

We were told there would be a video for one band and a still image logo for another, but it turns out each band has a logo and Cannibal has seven videos. They brought a laptop with all the content in PowerPoint but it’s better for us to throw all the videos into PlaybackPro Plus X, our video playback software, mainly because this way a progress bar never accidentally shows up on the screen. 

Some of the other crew members (not on audio today) decided to throw in a helping hand but accidentally plugged in some inputs out of order so Ducky and I had to go through each line and mark both ends for the changeover. So that didn’t really help, it just made more work for the two of us.

The last minor annoyance was that Malo, the closing band, didn’t bring their videos until a few minutes before they hit the stage for the show! No still logo, just three videos  to loop and no instructions. That’s how we roll in the live entertainment business.

At least all of the bands sound great though, and of course the horns help out in that regard.

Word from the box office is that the show has sold pretty well too, but it’s hard to tell from under the balcony where the video station is – although when I did get out on stage the crowd looked pretty decent.

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Wednesday is the actual event. First the employees will visit for the corporate meeting where the big wigs of the company will go over the numbers for last year’s sales in the different departments and present new products on stage. And there are testimonials from end customers and dealers. Ducky is working as the A2 today, placing lav mics on presenters and handing out handheld mics to people going on stage- which there are a lot of.

A band of employees plays a set of cover tunes and then everyone will go to the lobby and courtyards to have dinner.

After dinner is the headline entertainer. Tonight the guest band is one sponsored by Yamaha, a performer named Avery Sunshine.

Avery was here in 2019 for another event that Yamaha presented. Back then there were other performers with her, (Sheléa, and Grace Kelly) and a big band full of horns. Tonight should be a great show as Avery is a skilled musician and performer.

Her 2019 performance was incredible. Tonight she is here with her own band to sing and play keyboards.

The show went great, however there was one mishap near the end. The band was playing, and the bass player got a bit over enthusiastic and decided to walk downstage. I was standing next to the monitor desk with Kerry when he suddenly started yelling, “DI, DI, DI!”. I immediately looked over at the bass player and saw that the DI box, which connects the bass guitar to the bass amplifier and the audio desks, had fallen off the top of the amp and was hanging in the air! If it had became unplugged the bass guitar would fail, and it also will make a huge exploding sound through every speaker, and maybe blow them up. I ran out onto stage and held the DI in my hands until the bassist noticed what was going on and came back upstage. Everyone in the band thanked me after the show. Good thing Kerry saw that so quickly! One more disaster mitigated.

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Also two of the people working as A2 ‘s at the load-in will be leaving before the show so lots of notes are getting passed between us for the change over between bands. I’m sure that’s going to make things interesting during the change over. I’m actually the video projectionist tonight but I’m also working with Henry as an A2 as we both have different schedules that list us in each of the two jobs.

I’ll write more later depending on what happens.

At sound check I unexpectedly had a conversation with Jim Messina (I didn’t know it was him when we started our conversation). We spoke about stuff I wrote in my upcoming book,  about performers and how they treat people around them, some being good, kind individuals and others not so much. I pointed out how most people who are in the business and treat others well succeed, but there are some who have so much talent they succeed even though they treat everyone around them badly. He told me how he started working at age 13 assisting in a studio, and how his musical career bloomed out of that. He saw a lot of people partying and doing drugs but he had already started working hard, so he just kept up with that and it ended up paying off. He went from assisting to engineering, to producing and then to performing. All he knew was, “Once I started working in Hollywood there was no way I was going back to San Bernardino!” It didn’t matter what kind of work he was doing.

Obviously he is a down to earth kind of guy. He has friends in all walks of life working regular jobs, carpenters, plumber’s etc. – and it shows in his attitude toward life and the people who surround him. It’s refreshing to meet another performer who falls into the category of good people. I have also enjoyed working with and talking to his monitor engineer Willie too. He is a great guy. We spoke about how much fun it is to meet so many interesting and talented people in our business. So far all the crews and musicians working today have been great.

Sound check is still moving along fine despite the small bits of confusion, mostly because the road crews are all easy to work with (as well as the musicians). Hopefully the change over will go well.

Before the doors open and after dinner the carp crew and audio crew had a little meeting to come up with a plan for the movement of the drum, percussion and keyboard risers and how we will swap all the cables and re-patch everything. Did I mention that all the risers that the gear is on will move? Hmm? Maybe I forgot. So we now have a plan for the move.

Jim Messina and his band are playing right now, they are pretty good. I’m enjoying the show from behind the monitor board. It’s nice to have music I like playing on our stage. Most of my down time I spend listening for things going wrong on stage (so I can run out to fix them) and reading. Tonight I’m actually listening to the music for a while. The sax players are really good. Soon it will be change over time at intermission.

At intermission all the tech crew jumped on stage for the change over. Cables were disconnected and re-patched, risers, wedges and microphones were moved and swapped. I ran out to the video station and started the 7 minute intro for Pablo Cruise as Henry was still working with Johnny B. to tap through all the inputs. Jon was a little surprised when the video started, nobody told him both the band and our supervisor James had asked to start it! Yet he and Henry were able to get everything working except for one audience mic which we had changed over in the break. Other than that we had only to lift the ground switch on the bass during the second song- not an unusual problem. So I went out and flipped it between songs. Now everything is working fine and the audience is enjoying the show. All in all the change over was way more painless then expected- also not so unusual!

Now while Pablo is playing I am going to start putting together the mic kit for tomorrow’s show, Chubby Checker.

Tonight  has been a successful evening working with good people and good music.

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