Today I had the opportunity to see lots of old friends from the road. The touring electricians and lighting people, the audio team, our backline techs, production and tour managers, musicians, truck and bus drivers, and local production and stage people here in Detroit. Our Rock Hall Free For All tour with Heart, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, and Cheap Trick starts on Thursday the 14th of July.
Here’s the rundown…
We all fly or drive in from our homes to Detroit, the location of the DTE Energy Music Center. The goal is to get the tour all set up, do the organization and gremlin eliminating, the troubleshooting, to get the rearranging and the idea-extending in process so that as many of the challenges of starting a tour can be ironed out as early as possible. We’ll be out on this well into September, so the more we troubleshoot now, the more prepared we’ll be for surprises as we move on down the road.
The semi-trailers pull in (5 of them), and the techs, operators, wardrobe, production managers and stagehands get the day started. This includes riggers, audio and lighting guys getting the huge sound, lighting and led video projection systems plugged in, functioning as desired and flown up into the air. The lighting crew and board operators spend all day getting the super-cool lighting and video projection rigs set up and figured out, straightening out problems and writing lighting cues into their digital consoles. The audio team makes sure every PA speaker is working, the amplifiers that power them are in good shape and their consoles are seeing all of the audio inputs, and that their consoles are receiving and sending signal correctly.
The marley flooring goes in, the Heart rolling risers come out onto the stage covered with amps, keyboard gear, drums, guitars, cables and audio components like DI’s (direct input boxes), audio interfaces, laptops, backup battery systems, microphones, audio snakes, electric quad boxes to plug in power cables, etc. Getting all that gear onto the risers is done by our guitar techs, our drum/keyboard tech, our house and monitor audio guys, and the stagehands who help them get it up and running.
