The Big Event. . . Day 1, Monday, Stage Set-Up

I know I've said it before, but last week's event really was our biggest event EVER so far. I don't mean big as in audience numbers, venue size or big "names" but BIG as in I-can't-believe-we-get-to-be-a-part-of-something-like-this BIG. Click HERE to get the basic information and then I'll do my best to describe, with words and pictures, how it felt to really be there over the next few days.


This show has been in the works for a very long time and we committed to it back in the fall sometime. We have worked with Kevin Kirk several times in the past and it's always been a positive experience. It's hard to describe the music of Onomatopoeia but it's kind of similar to Mannheim Steamroller. Anyway, the guys started prepping for the show a couple of weeks ago by making piles and piles of custom cables that were needed to connect our system to the audio/video equipment that were used in this television broadcast production. Did I mention this is HUGE???

We had also agreed to custom build extensions onto the stage at the Egyptian in order to accommodate this 7 piece band and 8 piece string orchestra. Rob and Kurt built and painted stage decks the week before and left them to dry in the aisles of the theater over the weekend.


Monday was stage installation day!

The existing stage at the theater also received a new paint job and needed to be completely leveled before we could add on the second layer of stage decks.

It was a pretty big job considering each of the additional stage decks had to be individually leveled with custom-sized legs added on site.

Each deck then had to be shimmed and clamped:

Clamping is never a fun job but someone has to do it.

Gloria loves to be at The Egyptian so she didn't complain much at all about doing her schoolwork on the stage all week. . .

The back row of stage decks was the most difficult to clamp. Because of the layering in the theater, the space under the back row was only about 6 inches so no one but Gloria could slide underneath and she couldn't handle a clamp once she squeezed under. The guys still managed to clamp them all, they just had to be creative:

At the end of the day, the stage was ready for our Tuesday load-in and looked great. Kevin came by and said it was exactly what he was hoping for. One day down, five more to go. . .