Proof we need a bigger stage in 2010? (photo courtesy of Phillip O'Toole)

Look at all that gear!

This year the stage was packed with gear, cases, instrments, lighting equipment, cable…The bands had so much stuff we didn’t have enough room onstage to store it!   I am still amazed that the backline crew was able to stay on top of what went where and when.

Looking at a picture like this, I have even more appreciation for their hard work on coordinating really tight change overs between bands!

Now that our department has caught up on sleep, we all sat down to brainstorm ways to make next year’s Rock the Garden event even smoother.  Although our list of improvements was pretty long, most of it is pretty minor when you consider how much we are doing in such a short amount of time.

The EMP staff unanimously agreed that shifting the stage 90 degrees up the hill not only made for a better experience for the patrons and ticket holders, but also relieved a lot of pressure on our schedule!  We were able to close the street closest to the Walker 5 hours earlier than years past, the placement of the sound mixing position made a lot more sense and the layout of backstage ended up serving us well for all the additional gear we had this year.  Win/Win!

To name a few off our official List of Items We Hope To Improve Next Year ™:  improving communication here and there, working with vendors to avoid grease spilling onto power cables, more monkey butlers, more sparkling soda…the usual suspects and not a surprise really.

Rock the Garden from above (photo courtesy of Emily Taylor)

Sunset behind The Decemberists (photo courtesy of Emily Taylor)

I was so busy getting lame shots of the set up process, that I really didn’t get any good shots of the event altogether…I have to thank both Phil (backline master) and Emily (Mademoiselle of Performing Arts dept at the Walker- no relation to either the Styx song or the fashion magazine) for allowing me to reprint their excellent capture of the scope of the event.  Thanks guys!

I hope everyone had a good time at the show.  I know that I did despite the heat on Sat, the rain on Friday and the hot-wired golf cart!  It was pretty smooth sailing for me (personally) mostly because we had a great team of people in place that excelled at making things happen, were quick draws on troubleshootin’, and were generally fun to work with on a 20 hour day!  Whew!

Now…to start planning 2010!

An interesting side effect of working so many hours in just 2 days to get a show up and down is that after working 21 hours straight you get a little loopy!  For what it’s worth, I took this picture at 3:30am after the show was struck, everything was put away, and the crew was enjoying a quiet moment in the air conditioning of the building:

3:30am (after the strike) Title: Meat and Beer

The only thing I remember about taking this picture is that I thought it was hilarious (go ahead and judge me, I can take it!) and had announced to anyone awake enough to listen that this HAD to go onto the backstage blog.  It made complete sense at the time!  : )

The Decemberists- 9pm on Saturday

Rewind 7.5 hours earlier to 8pm on Saturday night…the EMP crew is changing over into the headliner and almost everyone gets a quick break during The Decemberists set to recharge and get ready for strike.  Its been a good, but long day…and even though everything has gone smoothly, the crew is starting to get a little antsy about starting the strike.

We have a whole new group off crew folks arriving at 10pm, right as the show is ending, to help us take the whole thing down.  The goal is to get the staging, power, cable, cable ramps and everything clear from the street as quickly and safely as possible!

Backline folks pack up the guitars, amps, keyboards and mics.

Audio engineers are packing away the monitor desks, front of house control board and audio snakes.

Strike- 10:45pm Saturday night after the show

MPR and some crew are packing away the gear for the live feed and the recording.

We discover at the start of strike that the rented forklift has a propane leak and we are out of fuel.  Hearts stop.  But luckily Tony is there with his Bobcat to get things started and the head of our department finds a vendor in Golden Valley (on 11pm on a Saturday night!!!) with another propane tank!  45 minutes and a quick ride in the Walker van to Golden Valley later, we are forking on all cylinders!

As soon as we can cut a path through the exiting crowd, we move the Decemberists truck into position and start loading cases and strapping them in.

The bands slowly vacate the air-conditioned band trailers backstage (who wouldn’t want to leave such a fun event!?) so we can clean them out one-by-one.  First to leave:  Calexico.  Last to leave: The Decemberists

EMP takes the left over beer (not much left over this year!) and sends the stuff left behind by the bands.  Left behind this year:  one pair of silver shoes and a pair of ipod headphones.  It takes us a while to clean one of the trailers, though…one of the bands had a real “rock star behavior” day!

The trailers move out of the way so the staging can get broken down and motors bring in the roof.

The RV driving crew (David is back driving “Big Mama”) take a trip down to Shakopee to return clean, empty trailers.

The RV crew in front of "Big Mama", The Decemberists trailer- 1:15am on Sunday morning

By the time we get back, the roof is down and the staging vendor is loading up the truck with all their gear. The vendors are mostly gone and the cable ramps and cable is stacked and ready to be picked up on Monday.
Event golf carts are returned to the loading dock.

Rental radios are returned to master planner, Ashley (minus one antenna, sorry Ashley…we really looked for it!)

The only real casualty of the day was my clipboard.  At some point during the day, it was lost.

And then run over by a couple of trucks.

And found at some point on Monday by some kind woman who found it in the street and returned it to the front desk!

Saturday June 20th!

Finally we get the big pay-off of a year of planning and a big 12 hour day setting up the staging/sound and lighting…it’s the day of the show and its going to be a long one!  Some of the EMP overhire is just on the load in of the headliner.  Others come back after the show to tear it all down.  Then there is the core group of EMP staff and our trusty lackeys cadre of dedicated overhire (one of whom has flown in from NYC to work for us) that are there on Saturday for the long haul:  7am-3am.

Unloading The Decemberists 53 foot semi- 8am on Saturday

Its a glorious start to the day of the show.  The weather is going to be sunny and clear, we are ahead of schedule…so we were totally ready for The Decemberists 53′ semi trailer (everyone, say hey! to Ron The Decemberists truck driver!) to arrive and start unloading a massive amount of stuff:  costumes, loads of guitars, extra lighting equipment, audio snakes, control boards, sets, drops, motors and truss.

Calexico, Yeasayer, and Solid Gold are using lighting and sound from our staging vendor.  But The Decemberists travel with all their own gear, so we work most of the morning to get them set up in time for an 11am sound check with the band.  Until then, the crew is testing mics, firing up the audio gear for the first time (amplified sound permit with the City of Mpls starts on Saturday morning), unpacking the headliner’s gear, setting up The Decemberists lighting, unloading the backline (the instruments and amps the band will be playing during the show), and generally racing around getting things done.  Being sure to swing by the crew/band tent backstage for a cup of coffee and a cinnamon roll as often as they can (wait, maybe that was just me…)

Guitar-world for The Decemberists- 10am on Saturday

Meanwhile, other areas of the event are springing into action.  There is a whole other part of the EMP crew getting all the vendors powered up, inspected by the City of Mpls electrical inspector (for our permit with the City) and all the cable covered with cable ramps so ticket holders don’t trip and spill their beers!

And another part of the crew is working with MPR’s The Current to get them set up with power, ISDN lines for the live feed from onsite and working with their audio engineer to get tied into the audio snake so they can record the show for playing back over the radio later.

All of this happens while the staging crew starts sound checking bands one after the other in reverse order…the goal is to finish checking Solid Gold last so we are already set up for the top of the show.

Backline crew or U2 album cover? 1pm on Saturday

Another part of our department’s crew is assigned to backline/staging.  They basically work with the bands to figure out what goes where, and how it plugs in…every band has a different configuration with different instruments and a variety of needs, so the trick to to lay it all out in a way that is logical and makes sense with a good group of people that can trouble shoot quickly while the bands are working and performing.

Incredibly, we are on schedule through all the sound checks!  Vendors are up and running!  The electrical inspector has given us a valid permit!

(A frantic dance of joy!  Complete with jazz hands!)

Ellie, master planner of all things Rock the Garden comes over radio at 3pm and gives the go:  Doors are OPEN!

It was pretty cool to watch people stream in from the entry tents.  If you have a chance, I encourage you to watch the time-lapse video of the set up and show that Andy, intrepid EMP videographer, took on Fri-Saturday.  It cracks me up everytime.  One minute:  bare expanse of green lawn.  The next minute:  people pour onto the hill (Bleah….)

I guess it would be totally uncool to sit here and unload some saucy gossip about any of the bands shenanigans that may or may not have happened backstage.  But I WILL tell you that my favorite photograph I took on Saturday is the one I like to call “How many technicians does it take to fix a golf cart hotwired by Solid Gold?”

Crew vs. golf cart- Saturday @ 7pm

The biggest worry with loading in an outdoor show or a site specific work is RAIN!

Friday night @ 8pm

Last year, almost every single show or event we did in the Minneapolis Scultpure Garden was plagued by rain!

This year, the weather was kind enough to hold off until after we had the crucial gear in place, tarped, and covered!  I guess the elaborate interpretive rain dance I did last week totally helped!

We did have to break for a few minutes to hand out rain gear and ponchos (soon to hit the runways of Paris in 2010!) so the crew could keep plugging along with unloading cases, setting up mic cable and sliding up and down a wet metal ramp to the stage.

Our goal before leaving at the end of our call on Friday:  get the staging in place, audio PA  ready for The Decemberists 53 foot semi truck and their crew to arrive first thing on Saturday morning and to begin to place all the backstage elements…

Band trailers for The Decemberists, Calexico, Yeasayer and Solid Gold

Like BAND TRAILERS!

One of the other challenges of an outdoor event is space backstage for the bands.  No dressing rooms, no permanent bathrooms, no rehearsal space, no green room for the 8oz bag of beef jerky and the brown M&Ms!

So depending on who the bands are (their backstage requirements) and where they are coming from, we will create a backstage area for them to hang out in.  For instance,  The Decemberists usually travel with a bus for the musicians and a bus for the crew, but for Rock the Garden they were flying in straight from Bonnaroo, so wouldn’t have their buses with them.  I headed out to Shakopee (which appears to be the RV capital of MN) to a rental place just across the street from Valleyfair with several of the crew to pick up trailers for the bands and drive them back to the Walker.

Since The Decemberists had so many members, we ended up getting them a bigger (and incidentally, fancier!) RV that I have nicknamed “Big Mama”.  EMP crew member David was pretty excited about driving “Big Mama” and is proud to report that she corners like crazy.

In fact, the number 1 question I got asked on Saturday was “How much would it cost me to rent The Decemberists trailer?”  I struck a deal for the Walker (yes, my soul is for sale…), so you will have to call and find out for yourself!

You try to not jinx it by saying anything out loud, but we were ahead of schedule on Friday when we left!

NEXT UP:  SATURDAY (”It’s the day of the show, ya’ll…”)

Any discussion of setting up the staging elements for Rock the Garden has to start with a shout out to Tony D.   Although the EMP staff worked hard into the night to get the stage up and down in 36 hours, Tony gets my personal “Rock Star of the Day” award.

Tony, on a “normal” day at the Walker, is a building engineer in the Building Operations department. Over this last weekend at Rock the Garden, he went above and beyond the call of duty working with us to set up the gigantic power puzzle for the vendors, staging, sound, lighting, MPR, VIP areas and spent a lot of Friday moving big boxes of cable and cable ramps in the Bobcat he brought up to the Walker (from his house!).

It’s a good thing we had Tony’s Bobcat on site on Saturday. We discovered right at the end of the show (when our department was starting to strike the stage) that the forklift we had rented had a leak in the propane line! So when our forklift operator started it up to start moving cable ramps and crates, the forklift did a drastic sputter and DIED!

Tony D. to the rescue!

Less than an hour later, our forklift had a new propane tank procured from Golden Valley and was up and running, but because Tony was there with his Bobcat we were able to keep striking with barely a hiccup.

We had a lot to accomplish before doors opened on Saturday at 3pm.  The side of the street closest to the Walker  closed at 1pm on Friday for us to put together truss, build the roof and construct the staging.

Approximately 30 Walker technicians along with the staging vendor’s 25 or so technicians worked together on creating the performance area.  By 5pm, we had the roof together and ready to go up!  Our main goal was to get this up before it started to rain.

SUCCESS!!

Until I have a chance to sort through the hundreds of photos (sleep first, then pictures!), I thought I would drop in and give you the before and after:

BEFORE

AFTER

After a year of planning, the big day has finally arrived!  For our department, today is the bigger, tougher day…one that all of our planning, hiring, budgeting, and set up has hopefully prepared us for.  Right now the skies look pretty clear, and the weather service has downgraded the rain forecast to 30% chance between 5pm and 8pm.  Better than our outlook yesterday, but rain rain go away!  Come again June 21 after 4am

In more important Rock the Garden news…Yesterday at “Rock the Garden Labs”(tm) we tested a water balloon launcher ($25.00 at Dicks Sporting Goods!) in place of the ubiquitous sporting event T-Shirt Cannon.

Facts discovered:

1)  Our Chief of Operations can really catch a t-shirt!

Important Rock the Garden testing!

2) The Master of the Rock the Garden Bands, Associate Curator in Performing Arts, is also the master of the 2 t-shirt shot.

Shooting off wadded up pink Rock the Garden t-shirts from a cheap water balloon launcher is as fun as it sounds!  Good luck catching a shirt at the show!

See you back here next week with photos! and hopefully an interesting story or two…

The trivia question at Dunn Bros Coffee on Loring Park this morning was so appropriate to my life and an easy 10 cents off my caramel latte machiato:

What color M&Ms did the Rolling Stones request be removed from bowls backstage in response to Van Halen?

The band Van Halen is legendary in the music industry as pioneering the idea and evolution of the technical rider.  A tech rider is comprised of a list of elements the band needs to perform:  space size, number of dressing rooms, number of truss motors, brands of audio gear, placement of monitors, styles of mics, instruments the venue needs to provide (not all bands travel with their own), number of crew needed to get the show up and running for an audience,  types of food and liquids available to the band backstage…the list goes on!   Van Halen famously took this list of required items a step further by requesting a bowl of M&Ms backstage (as part of the band’s catering) with all the brown M&Ms removed.  This was their test to see if the venue actually read the contract and was paying attention to all the elements listed in the tech rider.  Their theory was if the bowl had brown M&Ms, then there might be other, more important, technical concerns that had not properly been addressed by the venue in preparation for the Van Halen show!

Although none of the Rock the Garden bands have that type of hard core technical needs (like a 6 truck Van Halen show), their catering requirements DO get pretty specific!  Some of my faves from this year’s 4 bands:

One band requests an 8z bag of beef jerky

Another band requests 4 cans of Red Bull (not a case…but 4 individual cans)

one bottle of Maker’s Mark is pretty popular, but one band specifically requests NO JACK DANIELS (and yes, it is all caps in the tech rider)

In addition to the catering/hospitality set up, the tech rider is our main source of information on what instruments we need to provide the band and how the musicians are configured onstage.  Sometimes this is a hand drawing that someone will scan and email.  Other bands go to a lot of trouble to draft something out in scale with a lot of detail.  My favorite this year even has little people inserted on the drawing representing members of the band…they all appear to be naked and all have incredible 6-pack abs!

My picture doesn’t do the level of detail on those abs justice, but you get the idea!

Another band on this year’s line up doesn’t have catering or hospitality on their tech rider (yet)…so they just emailed us to let us know that they are expecting a trampoline!   Something tells me that those guys are going to be a blast backstage!

Oh, and if you head into the Dunn Bros coffee over at Loring Park today, the answer to the trivia is “green”.  You are welcome…

Prairie Bob in the house!!!

Events and Media Production at the Walker sets up the staging, focuses the lights and mixes the sound for the bands to create the concert experience for the ticket holders.  But one of the big things that my department will do for Rock the Garden (that most people may not realize) is coordinate the power needs for the staging (truss motors to put a roof over the bands’ heads, powering the audio gear, the lighting gear), the band trailers (where we stock the green M&M’s for the musicians!) and the food vendors!

Since the event is bigger this year (more space on the hill=more ticket holders!) we will have more food and beer on site!  So we work with Ziegler/CAT to secure the necessary generators, cable and connectors to tie in all those food vendor tents, corndog deep fryers, lemonade machines  and beer taps.  And our electrical vendor sends out our good friend Prairie Bob (along with several of the Events and Media Production crew) to pound grounding rods into the soil, lay out cable and set up distribution panels throughout the event to get all the food vendors and beer trucks plugged in.

Today Ziegler/CAT, Bob, and several of the key Walker personnel walked out on site with the Rock the Garden site map (version 51 with  layouts of vendors, cable runs and cable ramps) and lists of all the vendors (5 pages!!) and their power needs so we can determine the most efficient way to power everything up for this big event without breaking the bank!

And our vendor visit gave me the opportunity to snap a couple of  BEFORE  shots of the hill and the staging area.  So calm, green and serene right now!  Not so much in 11 more days!

Rock the Garden haiku:

food vendors galore

the Rock the Garden corndog

my personal fave

We are exactly 2 weeks out from load in for Rock the Garden!

For my department, that means testing ISDN lines today…  Minnesota Public Radio will be doing a live broadcast from Rock the Garden just 30 feet from where the Decemberists, Calexico and the rest of the bands are performing live.  We coordinated with the Walker IT department to arrange for MPR to have access for the lines to transfer their data.  To ensure that everything goes smoothly on the day of the show, we test the cables, the line and MPR’s gear onsite.  It doesn’t sound very sexy…but we did get to enjoy about 30 minutes of this beautiful day outside with the MPR audio technician testing the lines.  We do this so those of you without tickets can enjoy the show and share in the excitement on MPR from 12pm-7pm on June 20..

A Rock the Garden haiku:

Whew!  Months of planning
Strewn papers, plans and schedules
Chaos on my desk