Well bugger me!

This was an interesting day. Mostly spent trying to figure out how to put together pieces of a jigsaw puzzle where you don’t know what the final result looks like. The set was there, a few pieces missing, a few pieces wrong and some half made. Somehow we managed to put a pretty good gig on. I’d like to say thank you to the Forum crew who were very helpful in getting things done. I think we’re all hopeful that tomorrows gig will flow a little more smooth.

I don’t think there was a real drama today other than the show starting late. Ah well, it’s 3:34 am and we’re due to get the channel tunnel around 4 and I won’t be back in the UK until 21nd Dec so next gig is Paris and let’s see how smooth we can get things. Bye.

So we have completed our first gig it’s 2:14 am and we’re parked up at “The Forum” London ready for our second gig.

Today was really tough, I had to setup 3 guitars and re-wire 2 guitars on top of setting up guitar rigs, keyboards and restringing 5 guitars (2 with floating trems)

I know it may not sound like a lot but this was the first gig and everybody was scratching their heads at some point in the day.

Still everything went great and more importantly we all get on (at the moment ).

Perhaps the biggest news of the day was that one of the venue crew had some steel staging fall on him and he now has a broken ankle in 4 places and is due to have pins put in in the morning! It was an impressive scream though.

We have new concerns with tomorrow because we haven’t seen the set yet never mind see how it’s put together.

Hi people, today I make my great return to blogging from a tour bus. YEY!

I’m really looking forward to keeping my blog up to date on my new Macbook, taking photos with my new Lumix DMC-LX3 all whilst on tour with Cradle first around Europe and then across many waters.

I need to take some photos of our sweet bus before we all trash it Although the bunks seem really small at first, considering there are 16 bunks, a toilet and a lounge up stairs and a lounge with TV, DVD and PS3, kitchen and loads of storage down stairs, things really ain’t bad at all.

First stop, Northampton, this is (for the crew) a production day, i.e. let see if a load of new equipment we’ve just bought works!

Daniel Paine (Front Of House) chose the new DiGiCo SD8 as his spanky new mixing desk, which being a fan of DiGiCo I look forward to seeing what she can do.

When I’ve finished setting up the guitars and guitar world I hope to take some pictures so stick around and you can tag along for the ride.

Next up was 4 gigs with the Rubettes.

The first was near Zürich. All went well, if I remember writely it was an MH3 which (from my Cavern Club days) made the gig easy. The only restriction was the 93db limit made all the more difficult by the fact the audience cheering peaked at 106db!! Heaven help “The Sweet” that were on after us.

The day after was much better as we had a day off and I caught a train in to Zürich and spent the day there.

The following day we had an outside gig which due to the fact there was going to be a lot of kids around we had a limit of 88db!!!! Argh, you’re killing me, we were outside for god’s sake.

Again, all went great but at this point I was really getting fed up with the number of flies in Switzerland, “get off my food”.

2 more gigs followed in Belgium, practically in the same place. The first was on the back of a moving trailer (a float if you prefer) which consisted of me mixing on the trailer with headphones and trying to not inhale carbon monoxide.

The second was a full on gig in the town square which we had previously driven through earlier in the day. It was raining and I was getting blinded by a knob with a laser. FUN!

So, stompboxes. I have finished 2 (of the same) but I have realised that I need an oven to bake the paint on. It scratches too easily and takes ages to dry anyway. They sound great, I will post some audio clips when I set everything up to record it.

Crikey!!

I really need a small laptop (netbook / macbook / air). So it’s been way too long and sooo much stuff has happend since I last blogged. Where do we start.

(BTW I’m having to follow what I’ve been up to by going cronologically through my iPhoto)

So now you can add stompbox making to my list of interests! Tonight I had the joy of making my first stompbox. I used a design from Run Off Groove called “Professor Tweed”. I’m in to crunchy guitar tones rather than heavily distorted ones so I really liked the sound sample of this and thought I’d give it a go.

And here’s the result:


So ok, it’s not in a pretty box yet, but I have the box I just need to drill it, paint it and assemble it. I really like the idea of “boutique” guitar pedals but I don’t like the price. It’s the idea of having equipment that most other people don’t have, yes other people can go build it but you can’t go to your local music store and buy one off the shelf.

I’ll be sure to post a picture of the final box when it’s done.

Ok, so it looks like I can add Drum Technician to my list of skills. Why? ‘Cos it seems I’m now the Cradle Of Filth’s drum tech! An interesting turn of events but a good direction to go in if I want to do more touring. I’m actually looking forward to going with my good friend Daniel who is luckly enough to be doing front-of-house and with make traveling far more fun. One of the most interesting things is that the first gig which is in Latvia which will be a first for me. Sound engineering has so far taken me to Northern Ireland, Belgium, France, Germany & Holland, soon to be added to the list are Switzerland, Latvia, Finland & Spain. Not too bad when I look back at it really.

So anyway, I’m currently away on holiday in a little hideaway in Cornwall called Coverack. It’s great to almost be forced to calm everything down. No internet, 4 TV channels and no shopping other than Lou’s who is well known for being expensive and unless you like weather proofs or dust gathering tat then you aren’t interested anyway. I also get the time to understand the concept of having a pint or 3 before your evening meal which unsurprisingly gets you drunk a whole lot quicker than drinking after a meal.

So I was involved with the recent Hope Street ’08 Parade which I had to rig an outdoor stage and the stage inside the Metropolitan Cathedral in Liverpool. Although it would seem very simple and quick to set up it actually took ages due to long cable runs, 14 vocal mics for the gospel, full band set up including perpex drum screens, 8 Nexos (SP10s, 15s & 2 subs) all in the round and all in a room which unless you were sat 2 metres or less infront of a speaker sounded like a rave in a car park.

Yesterday I got back from doing 3 nights in Northern Ireland with the Cavern Beatles. First we had to catch a 3am ferry from Fleetwood which at the time seemed like an odd time but with having a cabin and an 8 hour journey we slept most the way.


The first gig was in Riverside Theatre, Coleraine which was a nice intimate venue and a good gig. Halfway through setting up some of us decided to take a short trip to Giant’s Causway which is odd when you’re there. Sometimes nature can do things which make you question whether it’s happened by coincidence or been put there.


Although there were moments when it looks like a Marshalls exhibition!

So, with a drummer scaling wet rocks, in the rain, with smooth soled leather boots on, all before we’ve performed one gig we decided maybe we should head back and get down to business.



Accomodation wasn’t sorted until after we arrived in Coleraine and we were given a local B&B to stay in. It felt like we were staying in a friends grandmothers house, especially when you walk through their living room, past the birthday cards to get to the dining room.



After breakfast we headed on down to the Island Arts Centre, Lisburn.

Now that's a place with a great stage delivery entrance, you can practically park your van on the stage! Really nice bunch of people, they're currently in the middle of upgrading their system, new lighting rig, new audio rig including an M7CL.

Nice, new theatre but acoustically crap! Not helped by the even crapier mix position.



Finally we moved on to Braid Arts Centre, Ballymena. Great new and old building conjoined unfortunately this meant compromises were made in design with regards to access. There was a load in bay, but.... we had to move all the equipment on and off 3 separate lifts! The bad design came from the fact that 2 of those lifts were only moving the equipment no more than 4 feet!! Please excuse the exclamations but it's just really bad design.

The actual theatre sounded great, it was nice to hear a reverb tail rather than a slap back delay. However due to there not being a full time technician no one knew where the stage power was so we had to use multiple 13 amp sockets which wasn't ideal (we did try some 16 amp sockets but after we found the lighting guy was able to turn our amps on using his dimmers we quickly disconnected the power).



One nice side story of our visit was blowing people away with my iPhone. Not knowing where we were and looking for sustenance after the 2nd gig I was able to direct us to a Tesco’s just as we were about to give up. The day after at the Braid, Roy (Ringo) was telling me about a clip of him on YouTube which within seconds I had playing on the iPhone (and here is the reaction).



So after the last gig it was finally time for a relax and a bit of a drink, when in Ireland there is only one official drink allowed.


One last thing worth mentioning was the food given both in and out bound on the ferry.


Next, Hope Street Festival.

Tags: Beatles, Gig, Live Engineering, Northern Ireland

Hey there people, thanks for popping by. I’ve updated this website ‘cos my old one felt quite messy and I want to do more!

I hope to add twitter updates on here, post pictures from gigs I’m involved with and have some where I can voice my opinions.

Tags: website, general, update