Bluesfest, July 12, Live, Nelly Furtado

The Live truck rolled in at 7:30am. Gear was unloaded and they had a full monitor rig of their own, so I went over to offer my assistance to the touring guys.

 

Me: “Hi, I’m Tom, I do monitors here, how can I help?”

Buck: “Hi. Do you have an outlet where I can plug in a couple things?”

Me: “Yup. Here you go.”

Buck: “Thanks, have a nice day.”

 

Now there’s nothing wrong with that whatsoever. When my biggest problem is giving the guy a power outlet, I’m having a good day and he can come back to my stage any day of the week. Live being dealt with, I move on to setup for Nelly Furtado.

 

Nelly’s monitor setup was pretty wild and took a lot of work to get going. They were using all wireless in-ear monitors (see Concert Ed. Pt. 1 blog entry) and finding clean frequencies for them to operate on can take some time. A lot of the frequencies are now used by Hi-Def. tv stations, regular tv stations, radio, walkie-talkies etc… so it’s possible to turn on a pack and hear someone talking about something, or hear very painful squealing and static, etc… It took some work, but it all came together. Her monitor engineer was really happy with my work, and I can imagine he occasionally has some long days trying to put all that together… He touched and twisted every single one of the 2200+ buttons, knobs and faders on the console (and yes, he knew what they all did). That’s intense. It took me over 20 minutes to reset it all after the show was done.

 

Nelly’s show also provided the single greatest moment of the festival so far. At one point in the show, she went into the wings to take a quick break, and while she was doing that, she called out the band members names and they had their solo spots. While this was going on, she called over her makeup artist and had all her makeup touched up. It was hilarious – such a diva moment. Don’t misunderstand that… she in no way acted like one or was bitchy or anything, it was just really funny to see because that doesn’t happen on the rock side of things. It was almost a little surreal. Our guys just have blood, guts and sweat with a couple beers on the side.

 

At the end of the night, we got the paperwork for Etta James tomorrow. I found out that we are providing all the gear for the show and that I will be mixing monitors for her. Now that’s intense.