tour rehearsal

i remember when i was little i watched Mr. Rogers. he died a few years back and i have no idea how long he stayed on the air. so basically i don't know if everybody reading this knows who he is. anyway, every now and then he would have a little segment that showed a montage of how something was made in a factory. i vividly remember the one that showed how crayons were made. i was and still am fascinated by that stuff. sooooooo, for those of you who don't know how a tour is put together, i thought i'd throw a few pictures up to show you our tour rehearsals.

for most tours, there is a full tour rehearsal with full sound and lights before the first show. there are specialized rehearsal spaces for rent that are basically just big warehouses that can accommodate setting up the full sound and lighting rig. and then other times the rehearsal will be held in an actual space. today we held our tour rehearsal at a venue in nashville as you can see above. there's so many kinks to work out and things to get set up that a tour basically needs a dress rehearsal. the idea is to be completely ready to go for the very first show.



Here you see our tour manager at the FOH (front of house) console checking the lines and the lighting tech doing fancy schmancy lighting stuff. that's technical speak for i don't know what he's doing.



The console that you almost always see at the side of the stage is for monitors. some bands use stage monitors and some use personal in-ear monitors. we happen to use the in ear monitors. a good part of the rehearsal is spent getting a good monitor mix. this can be saved on the console and recalled for every show.



Here's our tour manager extraordinaire (@TFKTourMGR) mic'ing and setting up my guitar rig. we have two rolling set carts that we use. it's pretty cool because we just strap our gear in there and it stays there for the whole tour. the cart just rolls on and off the stage. it's very important to minimize the time between bands so being able to get our gear on and off very quickly is a big deal. the other benefit of the set carts is that we can put a scrim with our logo on the front to hide the gear and make for a much cleaner look on the stage.



And then there's the actual rehearsing. we just basically work out the kinks and try to be as tight as possible. here's a thing i've learned. any sort of entertainment that really captures you has probably got a LOT of hard work put into it. whether it's a concert, play, movie or baseball game, there are probably many facets that we could never think of that go on behind the scenes to contribute to the bigger picture.

Anyway, i'm very excited for the tour. we've been flying to shows every weekend since february so it's going to be nice to get on a bus. and i must say that i am totally blessed to be able to do this. i LOVE it. it sucks that i have to be away from my wife for a week or two at a time, but overall i consider myself incredibly lucky. well, i hope to meet a lot of new friends on this tour. if anybody reading wants to come check out a show, we've got the dates posted on our website and myspace

www.myspace.com/thousandfootkrutch
www.ThousandFootKrutch.com