Greetings from Bushkill, PA--home of no cell phone service...period. The tour has officially begun. Last night was the first show and went pretty smoothly. I arrived in rainy Philadelphia yesterday afternoon and took the slowest cab ride ever over the Ben Franklin Bridge to smoggy New Jersey, more facetiously known as the Garden State.
Upon arriving backstage, I realized that the road crew traveling with Allman Brothers Band is nothing but a bunch of big kids playing with some extremely expensive toys. Those of you who are familiar with Gov't Mule as well as the Allman Bros may know of Brian Farmer. He is Warren Haynes' look-a-like/guitar tech. This stout bearded man is the epitome of someone completely in love with his job.
After watching a little bit of Keller Williams and eating the fabulous catered dinner, it was time to head backstage to prepare for recording. Unfortunately, this meant sitting through the insufferable Bob Weir and Ratdog for nearly two hours. How these guys sells records and concert tickets is beyond me. I just don't understand.
Finally, they wrapped up their less than stellar set with a horrible cover of the Beatles' "Come Together" and it was time for the main attraction. The Allman Bros started strong and ended stronger. One of the best parts of my job is listening to the headphones and hearing the interactions between songs on stage. Even in the thick of it, everyone on stage is joking around, having a great time.
The recording was going very well up until the encore and disaster struck: the CD burner decided it no longer wanted to record. So, after a panicked rearrangement of hard drives, computers, and headphones, we had to remaster the second half of the show on the fly...in less than 10 minutes. All in all, the 225 customers that preordered CDs before the show had the discs in hand within 45 minutes of the last note. All's well that ends well I guess.
The perks of the tour are fantastic, but I will get into that later on along with the unfortunate bus ride times and conditions (though there has only been one thus far). I will do my best to post set lists for every show:
Don't Want You No More / Ain't My Cross to Bear
Statesboro Blues
Midnight Rider
The Weight
Black-Hearted Woman
Dreams
Franklin's Tour feat. Bob Weir
Into The Mystic
Don't Keep Me Wondering
In Memory of Elizabeth Reed
JaBuMa (Drum solo named for Jaimoe, Butch, and Mark)
Encore:
Whipping Post
Until next time...
Saturday, August 18, 2007
On the tour...
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Sounds great, and looks like pretty decent cd sales. How large was the venue/crowd?
225 CDS! that is crazy. didn't you think it would be a lot less? you are gonna be a rich mo-fo! Oh and ps tell keller williams i love him
You act like I'm receiving the funds from the CDs which I am not...either way, 225 was a good number. Looking forward to up it through the extremely active Allman Bros message boards with better and better recordings.
I thought you were getting some from CD sales? And, eh-hem, how large was/are the crowd(s)?
They have been 18000, 10000, and 22000 so far.
Post a Comment