Ebony Fashion Fair

Friday was a big day. We had two events downtown that were about a half a block from each other. We loaded the truck Thursday night to prepare for a 9 a.m. load-in. We unloaded at the Egyptian Theater first to set up for the Ebony Fashion Fair. First order of business: donuts and chocolate milk (and Diet Pepsi for me, of course):

We hooked in the power. . .

. . . stacked the speakers. . .

. . . and ran all the cabling from the speakers to the racks (to the distro) to the FOH mixer:

THEN, we headed over to the Rose Room just a half block away.

The event at the Rose Room is a benefit for someone in need of a kidney. The set-up was fairly small and easy to put together.

After heading back to the Egyptian to meet with the technicians from N.Y. that would be running the Fashion show and doing a final sound check and run through, we went to lunch. Everything was ready to go except for a spot light switch out. As Dale would say, "Piece of cake."

Back to the Rose Room for a sound check with the musicians. Rob took a turn at the keyboard:

Rob ended up playing a few songs during the evening including Amazing Grace:

During the sound check at the Rose Room, Dale called and said the Fashion Show was in need of another spotlight operator. I was planning to spend most of the evening at the Fashion Show anyway, so I headed back to the Egyptian.

Dale and I were both in the balcony on opposite sides running the spotlights. He (and the director downstairs) gave great directions through the Clearcom headsets.

The Fashion Show was absolutely flawless.

The lights behind the models are coming from a fiber-optic curtain that the show travels with. It was really cool.

This is the largest traveling Fashion Show in the world.

The Ebony Fashion Fair show was really good. It's one of my favorite events so far. Everyone in the show was very professional and easy to work with. We were afraid this would be a really difficult event, but it was probably one of the easiest events we've run.

The event in the Rose Room went very smoothly on our part, too, but the turn-out was really poor. We were all exhausted after we finally took everything down and loaded it into the truck. I must have walked that half block 2 dozen times. On one of my trips back to the Egyptian during the evening, I was almost hit by a car. I screamed and jumped out of the way as my life flashed before my eyes. An SUV was going way too fast around the corner and just wasn't paying attention. She did call a lame, "Sorry!" out her window, but it didn't make me feel any better! In spite of my close call and my exhaustion, it was a good day.