Day 13: San Francisco
Welcome
Yesterday we drove to San Francisco to play at Outside Lands Festival.
Lobby call was 7am so I hit the complimentary hotel buffet at 6.45 to fuel up for the drive. My chosen substance was oatmeal, and it was topped with berry yoghurt, roasted nuts, and dried fruit.
We took Route 101 which carried us north out of San Luis Obispo and soon turned northwest heading up the Salinas Valley, passing through miles of California’s most productive agricultural land. By 11am we were in San Francisco crawling along 19th Avenue and twenty minutes later we were in Golden Gate Park pulling up behind the Twin Peaks stage. There was a clear stage waiting for us, the first act of the day, so we took our time and had a stress-free soundcheck while enjoying the sprawling green expanse of the Hellman Hollow Picnic Area.
Jon talking to the in-ear monitor rig.
Our set was well received by what began as a small crowd and grew as more and more people streamed into the festival. It was a beautiful day with clear blue skies and the warmth of the sun was nicely balanced by a persistent wind blowing across the stage.
As our final chord rang out we were already thinking about the next part of our afternoon which involved a rapid transit to the Toyota Den Stage for a secret extra performance. Our equipment was whisked off the stage by a swarm of stagehands and we hurriedly repacked everything before loading it onto a pair of golf carts for the drive to the other end of the festival. These fine vehicles jostled us fiercely for the ten-minute ride and we held tightly onto the gear to keep it from tumbling off.
Things began to come apart slightly at the Toyota stage where we had twenty minutes to be set up and ready to play. The venue technicians had trouble getting their equipment to communicate with ours and an unfortunate number of microphones failed. Gabe then had a stressful thirty minutes of troubleshooting before we all the correct sounds coming out of the PA and we could start. It ended up being a fun and much more intimate set than the previous one though and the setting in the middle of a grove of pine trees was quite beautiful.
By 3.30pm we were back at our green room with no more responsibilities remaining save making it back to the hotel. We stuck around for a few hours and listened to a few of the other acts while making the most of the backstage facilities including the massage/chiropractor tent where all of us had our bones thoroughly cracked.
The final activity of the day happened back at the hotel where we held a viewing of one of the great films set in San Francisco, Michael Bay’s 1996 classic, The Rock.
