The Big Event. . . Day 4, Thursday, The Dress Rehersal

Thursday was pretty exciting with camera crews finalizing their set-up, band members coming throughout the day to sound check their instruments, and last minute details with cabling and lighting to sort out. This is a picture of a jib. It is sitting on a 6-deck platform and has a camera on the end that sticks out into the theater for optimum movement as the cameraman shoots the action on stage (it was really cool to watch!):






Sound checking the percussion instruments:

The truss that is suspended with motors over the auditorium seats had to be lowered in order to switch out the colored gels in the lighting bars:

The back truss was lowered as well:

Cameras were set up around the room in key positions:

The monkey arrived. . . (more about that later):

All of the band members arrived around 4 p.m. for a group sound check:

It's hard enough to do a monitor check on a 5-piece rock band when nothing else is going on so checking monitors for 7 people with a couple of instruments apiece while camera men and producers are giving last minute instructions proved to be very challenging. . .

Thankfully, Kurt was in charge of the monitor board so I mostly just sat back and watched. . .

It was a little chaotic but Kurt had a handle on it. . .

That's Kurt over on the far right making a great effort to get some one's (any one's!) attention:

Kurt stays cool under pressure, though, and managed to get all of the monitors adjusted so everyone could have just what they needed for the show. . .

Meanwhile the camera crews were hard at work finding paths through the instruments and the musicians onstage. . .

. . . The musicians tuned and made last minute adjustments. . .

. . . The 16 piece orchestra arrived. . .

. . . The jib was positioned and re-positioned. . .

When everything was finally, perfectly, completely in place, the concert started. . .

It was amazing.

There were camera operators everywhere, but the band played as if nothing unusual was happening all around them.

All of the crews worked seamlessly together to capture the details of the show. . .

Rob had to give 110% in order to pull the best out of every instrument and musician on stage since every single note needed to be captured for the broadcast. No pressure. . .


I was so impressed with the band. There were no noticeable mistakes and I believe they only had to replay three songs total for recording purposes.

It was amazing. . .

I can't imagine the pressure these young people were under. I don't think I could do much of anything with a camera like this right in my face!!:

After the final song was played, the monkey took his place at the piano. This is probably a "you-had-to-be-there" story but in several of the pre-concert meetings, Kevin seemed to have a bit of an obsession with monkeys. We have this creepy, life-like monkey at our house that Rob loves to scare people with. He and Kurt thought it would be fun to freak Kevin out just a little bit by inserting the monkey into the show somehow. (They originally wanted to fly him on a rope out of the rafters but, thankfully, that didn't happen!!) When Kevin was called off the stage after the last song, Rob and Jeff, the producer, placed the monkey on Kevin's piano bench:

When Kevin walked back on stage. . .

. . . Jeff let him know that he had been replaced. . .

Kevin shrieked and ran off the stage and into the aisle. . . It was really hilarious!

Apparently he has a pretty quirky sense of humor and really did appreciate the effort that was taken to pull this off. . .

I'm sure it will make it's way, somehow, into the final production of the broadcast. . .

The star of the show????:

The hardest part was over after Thursday night's rehearsal but Friday night's concert was sold out and the cameras would still be rolling in front of a live audience. . .

Four days down, two to go. . .

The Big Event. . . Day 3, Wednesday, The Details

Pretty much everyone who had a part in this production was there on Wednesday. Surprisingly enough, it wasn't the least bit chaotic. The crews all worked together really well and everyone seemed willing to help whoever needed it in order to get things done. Gloria and I spent most of our day working on draping the stage. Both tiers of decks needed strips of Velcro in order to hold the drape firmly in place. Gloria was a huge help.

She even spent some time sweeping the stage. . .

Even though Rob's mixer was out front, he was still confined to a pretty small area. . .

The piano was loaded in and set up. . .

John, one of my favorite drummers, set up his very large drum kit and all of the percussion instruments. . .

Kyle, the audio guy who was in charge of recording the sound, set his stuff up next to Rob who tied the stuff together with all of the cables he and Kurt built. . . (This was a very complicated process and I won't even begin to pretend I know how it all worked. . . )

When everyone left for the day, Kurt and Rob had to double check the lines to some of the instruments. You know, just to make sure everything was working right before the big dress rehearsal the next day. . .

By the end of the day on Wednesday, everything was pretty much set and ready for Thursday's dress rehearsal which would also double as the all-important filming and recording day for the television crew. . .

Three days down, three to go. . .

The Big Event. . . Day 2, Tuesday, Load In

One of the hardest things about this event was the early mornings. It's not like we had to get up before 8 a.m. or anything but it's a challenge for 3/4's of my family to be up and functional before 10 a.m. Gloria loves to be at The Egyptian, however, so she drug herself out of bed everyday of the week in order to be in on all the action. She still wasn't really functional before noon though:

Tuesday was load-in day so all of this stuff. . .


. . . had to be loaded into the truck. . .


. . . so it could be loaded into The Egyptian:

This is my Ramsa monitor board:

It's heavy and a pain to haul around but I learned how to run monitors on it so it has a special place in my heart. The guys aren't quite so attached to it since it almost breaks their backs every time we use it. . .

I refuse to run monitors for shows like this for obvious reasons so this was Kurt's little corner for the remainder of the week:

When Rob and Kurt worked on the sound system in the theater a couple of months ago, they made it very possible and very easy for us to tie in to the house system. Less speakers for us to load, unload and hook up. These are already in place so no Genie lifts were required. . .

After everything was loaded into the theater, it was time to set things up. Kurt ran the socapex lighting cables up over the wall and into the balcony for the lighting guys:

This is the view from the balcony down onto the stage that we set up on Monday:

The lighting crew and the television crew loaded in about the same time we did so there were quite a few different things going on. It was interesting to watch and to see everyone working together to get this done:

By early evening, everything was hooked up and working the way it was supposed to. Gloria helped us do a line check on all of the mic channels and then had the stage to herself to sing to her imaginary audience:

Two days down, four to go. . .

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. . .