Day 1: Seattle
Welcome
Yesterday we met Gabe, our new sound engineer, and we played at the Capitol Hill Block Party.
The first task of the day was to pick up our rental vehicle. We squished all our gear into the back of the hotel shuttle and headed back to Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, large hub for the Pacific Northwest featuring live music and a rail connection to Seattle. On arrival Liz didn’t waste any time finding another pair of unpaid smartecartes® along with an unbranded airport cart to move all our gear to the car rental office.
As we are carrying a fair bit of equipment we were issued the largest vehicle in the parking lot, a 2022 Chevy Tahoe. This vehicle was immediately put through its paces taking us to a Trader Joe’s to pick up some breakfast and then to a nearby park to eat. For my meal I selected a peanut noodle udon salad, a punnet of champagne grapes, and a finger of string cheese.
As we were finishing our meals Gabe was just touching down a few miles away at Sea-Tac International, the recent winner of the the coveted four star airport award from the international air transport rating agency Skytrax. Again we boarded the Tahoe and under the power of the 6.2 litre EcoTec3 V8 engine cruised over the airport pickup area to find a friendly looking man with wavy hair and a slight build waiting alongside a set of large black equipment cases. We hollered at him until he saw us and then introductions were made. With the addition of Gabe’s equipment the storage capacity of the Tahoe was now put to the test and found to be just adequate if we carried a few bags in the cabin. A slight disappointment considering the road footprint, but it does seat five comfortably and you can fit a lot of food in the centre console.
The Tahoe displays its powerful rear ground branding system.
The Tahoe’s main display during the boot up sequence.
Gabe giving some directions en route to the festival.
Our show was at an outdoor music festival in the neighbourhood of Capitol Hill just outside the Seattle CBD. To get there we drove along the i5, an excellent highway which is very broad and well maintained. As is the case with a lot of music festivals Capitol Hill Block Party has a thirty-minute change over between bands. We had a brand-new rig for our in-ear-monitors that we hadn’t trialled – a slightly stressful situation that could easily turn into a bad one. Feeling inspired by the pre-dive briefing William Shatner received before he jumped into a school of sharks, we conducted our own briefing and had the setup sequence rehearsed and contingencies ready to implement.
In the end it all came off without a hitch and our set was easy and fun. Gabe did a swell job with the front-of-house sound mix and the lighting tech blew our socks off with an eruption of dashing, dynamic displays.
The end of the night found us lazing in front of the hotel television enjoying the commercial-rich flavour of American television. The movie we enjoyed was Doom (2005) and I have decided to leave you with a series of clips taken from the famous 1st person camera sequence near the end of the film.
If you’ve made it this far I can only assume you want to be here so I’ll leave you in the capable hands of Tristan Deck who has written a short but brilliant piece that sadly doesn’t fit into my existing narrative of this blog post.
Unfortunately, during a routine customs safety inspection, big red experienced a failure. One of the two restraining buckles on the cymbal portion of the case was snapped when it was chosen as a lifting point.
Luckily, the case was designed specifically with redundancy in mind. There is a center nut able hold the lid closed even in the event that both buckles fail. This could be called into service, but is less than ideal as I am currently carrying some spare drum heads behind the cymbals, through which the center bolt would have to protrude. This makes a repair or replacement a more appealing option than a workaround.
Sadly, replacement buckles are only available from the UK and our slim and efficient packing protocols forbid the traveling of rivet guns and other specialised tools for such repairs. The webbing measures 30mm wide, a common measurement for generic replacement buckles in commonwealth countries but a very atypical 1 1/5th inch size in the United States.
A repair was the only viable solution, and luckily it was facilitated by Steve, the onsite electrician for the Vera stage at the Capitol Hill Block party festival. Well equipped with a range of cable ties in the back of his pick up truck, he helped me repair the buckle into a functional state. After correctly tensioning the cable ties and cutting the tails off, I am pleased to report big red is functioning as good as new. I will update on the state of the repair as we progress through the tour. Thanks Steve!
