OK,
Here's the scoop.
It rained the whole friken day! Started about noon (I got there around 11:00) Molly Hatchet and road crew showed up at about 12:30 and proceeded to set up all their stuff. They got everythnig on stage and stated hooking up/sound checking and the problems started. For some reason, they couldn't get the right sound out of the kick drum. After about an hour of thump. thump, thump, thump, thump, I ambeled up on stage and asked them what the problem was. They (their roadies and drum tech) said "We can't get the kick to sound right." I went over to the sound guy, Sebastian(I worked with him before on a couple occasions and he knows his stuff) Asked him what's up and he says they can't get a decent sound out of the kick. I told him to have them take the stupid pillow out and he agreed that would help a lot. I don't think they did anything at that point, they were going to check it again later. Next thing I know there's someone complaining about the sound of one of the amps. Looks like it's a blown or failing tube. One of my guys pulls a tube from his amp and sticks it in and viola! Sounds good a gain. But nooooooooooooo, it has to be a Sovtek tube. What a bunch of turkeys. Anyway, by now, it's 3:00. We were supposed to start playing at 1:00 and done by 2:30 and next band up at 2:45. Heck! we don't even have the "lesser" band equipment up there yet. Finally, I get pissed off and go to Molly's Road manager and told him we're going to get the equipment up on stage. "We won't connect anything or try to sound check". He says he has to have a meeting in the tour bus with a couple of "his" people. About 10 minutes later he reappears and says OK, go get set up and play. It took about 15 minutes to get everything on stage, hooked up, sound checked, and we were off. Crossfyre, Wanted By The FBI, and Stampede Brothers all played off that setup with out any further adjustments. Just walk up, plug in and go. OF course, due to the late start, everybody got cut down to to about 40 minutes due to Molly Hatchet contract on start time. I guess it was OK, we got rave reviews from a big bunch of soggy bikers dudes and dudettes. I couldn't believe they were dancing in the rain like that until after we were done and I went out front to hear the FBI guys. They were all pretty much in the bag. I mean, they got there about 1:00 and had been drinking for 2 hours there and who knows when they actually started the drink ceremony before we even started to set up. I met a couple of the Hatchet dudes when they first got there but then they took off for the hotel. I mean, why hang around in the rain for seven hours and listen to "lesser: bands when you can go chill out in the hotel room until 7:00?
That's the last I saw of them. I left at 6:30, I couldn't take the rain any longer and it was cold too. They did provide the tent and it was guarded. There were two big tubs of beer and pop and water. Food was to show up at 1:30 and never did. There were no chairs in the tent and that means a lot of standing there at the back of the stage trying to keep warm and dry. I took a few pictures and had a biker chick take some of Crossfyre while we were playing. I'll download those tonight and get some posted for you.
All in all, it was pretty disaapointing even though we played well and the audience was kind of cool hanging there in the rain all that time. It's just that a big name band like Molly Hatchet you would think would have this down to a science and with the road crew and all could load in and setup pretty quickly and have all contingencies covered. Ends up, they had House of Guitars drive them out some Sovtek tubes. They hadn't shown up by the time I left. If I was sure Molly was going to play in the next hour as scheduled, I would have stayed for them I guess. But I knew it would be 9:00 before they'd even start sound check, something I'm pretty sure was going to take another hour.
I unloaded my car this morning and found that I forgot to put my Wireless mic set-up in the trunk when I was loading everything else. I hope someone found it and turned it in for me. We'll see. That's a $325 mic.! Shite!
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