Over the past few months, my band has been looked at by a few management agencies. Well, we got a very big opportunity last night to open for a band that had just been signed. The place was Coyote's. It's a huge Country nightclub in Louisville, KY. It's a really nice place with beer troughs everywhere and about 6 actual bar stations. The stage is huge with a drum riser so tall that I could get on it without a step ladder. The dance floor's big and crowded.
Well, we got there and met the headliners. They were a really nice bunch of guys. The guitar players just drooled over my gear. That was nice... The other nice opportunity was that these guys are on the road with Montgomery Gentry, a major Country act. The band is called "32 Below". They're billed as Country; but they're far from it. I call them "Young Country"; IOW, they're more like '70s Rock. They are being supported by Jim Beam. I guess that's why, after almost every tune, they'd toast they audience with shots...The second in line to the Jim Beam empire was to be there to watch them. We were hoping that this person would catch a glimpse of us as well and maybe be interested. After our set, I hoped they weren't...
They had hired a production company to handle all PA duties. A very large system with 3 mixers and about 20 poweramps. The 3 mixers were for Mains, Monitors, and 32 Below's wireless in-ear monitors.
Here's where it gets crappy. They did a sound check. Okay, that's fine. We do a sound check. 32 Below's drummer tells our drummer that he can use the drum in-ear monitor for his drums. This is very cool. Then the sound guy from the production company comes up and says, "Hey, yoiu can't use those, they're on a different channel." Now that made no sense at all to me; a different channel? Anyway, our sound check went okay. But, they waited so long to actualy let do the sound check that we could only check through the monitors. They had to open the doors and start letting guests in so we couldn't check through the Mains. We went to eat dinner and came back to do our set. We thought, "Let's start the song with some kind of instrumental like "Mystery Train" or something." That way they can get the Mains' levels EQed as well without really running into our real tunes.
Here's where it gets crappier. We started playing and found that we had absolutley NO monitors; nothing. After the first tune, we told the sound guy. He did a little of this and that and got some vocals through the monitors. Our drummer could only hear the lead singer's vocals as could the rest of us. If I waked away, I couldn't hear anything. The bassist's tone, through the monitors when it was finally there, sounded like nothing but a fart with different pitches. After our set, the headliner got up and sounded awesome. That really didn't suprise me though. We're the opening act. Also, the headliners had their own sound tech who travelled with them. That was a lesson learned.
We definitely paid some dues that night. Funny thing is that the headliners though we were really great as did everyone else. Their manager kept complimenting my playing. That was nice. When we talked to one of the wives of the headliners, she said that they went through the very same thing about a week ago...I guess that's one experience for the books...
