Our Gigs In Ireland

[Pete Academy]

We have two gigs in Ireland. Friday June 4 in Belfast. Saturday June 5 in Waterford, Southern Ireland. Our keyboards player, Gaz, is also our manager. Check this out:

Gaz, his girlfriend, and their dog, decide to make a bit of a holiday of it. They book a cottage in Waterford, Southern Ireland, the second place we are gigging.

Thursday, June 3. Gaz drives the sound engineer's (Graham) van full of backline and drums to Holyhead, where the ferry will leave. Gaz's girlfriend drives Gaz's van to Holyhead. They board the ferry to Dublin. From Dublin they drive to Waterford, home of the second gig on Saturday.

Friday 5 June. Five band members meet at Graham's house in Northwich, Cheshire. They leave their vehicles at Graham's house and board the lead singer's car en route to Liverpool airport.

The guesting alto sax player, who lives in London, gets a flight from Gatwick to Liverpool.

The tenor sax player makes his way from his home in Manchester to Liverpool.

The trumpet player is already in Ireland and arranges to meet us at Belfast airport.

We all meet at Belfast airport and pick up two pre-booked taxis to take us to our hotel. I leave my jacket behind at the airport.

Gaz drives back up from Waterford with all the backline.

We do the gig in Belfast.

Saturday June 5. At 11am, a hired mini-bus with driver picks us up at the hotel and takes us to Dublin airport.

At Dublin airport we pick up a hired mini-bus which will be driven by a band member to Waterford.

Graham and Gaz drive the van with the backline to Waterford.

Arrive at Waterford.

Do gig in Waterford.

Sunday June 6. Graham drives van full of backline to Dublin, He drops off London sax player, who gets flight back to London. Sax player will then get 6 hours sleep before resuming tour with Brendan Cole dance tour in Scotland. Graham boards ferry to Holyhead.

Graham drives from Holyhead to his home in Northwich, complete with backline.

Band members, except tenor sax player, who incurs an 85 Euro fine for taking his baggage and sax on board the plane, make their way back to Manchester.

Other members travel back to Grahams's house to pick up backline and go back home to Stoke.

All this for 4 hours of actual playing.

This is an abridged version.

Edited June 7, 2010 by Pete Academy

[sjohns]

keh? that seems long winded and possibility to go wrong somewhere...

[Pete Academy]

It all went exactly to plan, by the minute.

[Doddy]

[quote name='sjohns' post='860330' date='Jun 7 2010, 08:50 PM']keh? that seems long winded and possibility to go wrong somewhere...[/quote]

Obviously it did all go wrong....

[quote name='Pete Academy' post='860327' date='Jun 7 2010, 08:48 PM']I leave my jacket behind at the airport.[/quote]

[crez5150]

I hope you charged through the bloody nose for that....

[Pete Academy]

[quote name='crez5150' post='860335' date='Jun 7 2010, 08:54 PM']I hope you charged through the bloody nose for that....[/quote]

Judging by the prices in S. Ireland, especially for pints of Guinness, we will have lost money. Oh well, we love it.

[OldGit]

[quote name='Pete Academy' post='860331' date='Jun 7 2010, 08:52 PM']It all went exactly to plan, by the minute.[/quote]

Ah, Very Steely Dan

[Pete Academy]

The point I'm trying to make is that we play for about 2 hours to the public, but the preparation time before the gig is immense. This is just a case in point.

[Pete Academy]

Would anyone else like to add their gig logistics?

[Sue]

The other extreme....

Last Satuday - Churchover Village Hall.

Bass player and Lead Guitar player load car and drive 100 yards to village hall.
Lead Singer drives 300 yards with kit to village hall.
Drummer carries kit 10 yards across to village hall from the barn next door.
Rhythm guitarists walks 20 yards carrying kit to village hall.

Played for 2 hours then did it all again in reverse - all with no lost items of clothing!

Sue

[Pkomor]

[quote name='Sue' post='868774' date='Jun 16 2010, 09:45 AM']The other extreme....

Last Satuday - Churchover Village Hall.

Bass player and Lead Guitar player load car and drive 100 yards to village hall.
Lead Singer drives 300 yards with kit to village hall.
Drummer carries kit 10 yards across to village hall from the barn next door.
Rhythm guitarists walks 20 yards carrying kit to village hall.

Played for 2 hours then did it all again in reverse - all with no lost items of clothing!

Sue[/quote]

I think I can match that!
We did a wedding a few weeks ago:

Me and tenor sax player (girlfriend) walk 15 feet form my house to the venue,
Drummer picks up alto player and drives <1 mile to he venue
Guitarist and bari player walk 200 meters from their houses to the venue.

The drums, and backline all live in my garage anyway, so could be carried the 15 feet to where we were playing!

Perfect gig!

Edited June 16, 2010 by Pkomor

[yorick]

Yep... late '96. Friday night, headline the Farmyard Party, North Yorks.... Saturday night, The Pirate in Falmouth. Sunday, play a night club in Harrogate. Booked by the drummer. D'oh!!!

[wateroftyne]

Weekend before last.

THURSDAY:
Leave Newcastle @ 7pm on a Thursday. Driven to Kinross. Check in to hotel @ 10.30pm. Pub. Bed.

FRIDAY:
Leave Kinross @ 9am. Drive to Keith, Banffshire. Arrive at gig @ 1pm. Two hour soundcheck (don't ask). Check into hotel @ 4pm. Have cuppa, a lie down, a walk by the river and go out for tea.

Play 90-minute set at 9pm. Back to hotel for 10:45pm. Bar. bed.

SATURDAY:

Leave hotel @ 9.30am, home 4pm.

That's a lot of work for one gig... but I love it.

[Gareth Hughes]

Yup, I can match that - and possibly beat it for amount of hours involved relative to hours played. (Not that I'm proud, or that this is any competition with a great winner).

I did roughly the same amount of hours travelled for two gigs as Pete Academy did for his Irish jaunt - except that my two gigs were in Chicago. What should have been a three week tour was all but cancelled at the last minute. Seeing as the visas/flights, etc had been paid for the manager thought the act should still do the two shows that had sold well. Flew from Dublin to Chicago late Friday evening - gig on Saturday, gig on Sunday, early morning flight Monday.

Second time - same act now that I think of it - was worse. I had a different gig in Killarney - a good five hour drive from Dublin at the time, but took it anyway, thinking I'll still get back in time for my 7am flight to Germany. Coming into Killarney there are thousands of punters heading to a gig - but not my gig, I knew from the numbers. Turned out Westlife were playing there too that night. And all those people were leaving the same time I was leaving!!! I left the gig at 1130pm - by 1am I was still in Killarney and panicking as I looked at the map. I finally got home at 5am, packed quickly, said goodbye to my wife (whose birthday it was.......) and left for the airport at 530am.

It gets worse.

The flight is on the Saturday, but the gig is on the Sunday. So why the early travel? There's a 6 hour bus ride from the airport to the gig and as we're playing at some huge conference once it finishes (and it started at 9am), we have to soundcheck the night before. Joy.

At least two hours are wasted once we land because whilst a bus has been booked for 10 people, it does not hold 10 persons luggage and their instruments. Doh. We finally get there late in the evening and all I remember is setting up my gear and then lying down to sleep in front of my rig while a tortuous vocal soundcheck was done . Band soundcheck time - midnight.

The better part is that this was the day of the Germany-Brazil World Cup in 2002, so we had to watch the match on a huge cinema size screen in the same room as the conference and they play immediately afterwards. Fair play to the German punters -when they lost we thought it would be the worst gig ever, but everyone in the room stood up, applauded Brazil and then seemed to enjoy our gig.

So all that for about 90 minutes of music.

(And a HUGE frikking buffet;))

Edited June 16, 2010 by Gareth Hughes

[jakenewmanbass]

once did a 3 month tour in which two of the gigs involved Zurich to Brighton in a van... took 24 hrs

Also did a one off in Taiwan 4 days for a 1 hour set

Once missed a connecting flight to Mumbai and missed the QE2 as a result took 3 days to catch the ship in Oman

Another ship fiasco when sailing across the bay of biscay, bad weather caused us to shelter off the coast of portugal making us a day late for our disembarking in Cape Verde (off the coast of Africa) day late meant no flights as they had left the day before, consequently we spent the following hours frantically trying to get back on the ship... no dice as were no longer their responsibility, luckily the purser was also disembarking there, sorted us with hotels and flights only problem was it involved a flight on a pedal powered plane to another island which had an international airport a stay in a luxury holiday park and the only flight out of there was to New York on a South African Airlines jumbo. We landed at JFK at 6am and our flight to the uk was at 10 that night... you can imagine the fun we had... this was march 2001 (pre twin towers) so we left all our gear in the airport courtesy of a kind steward and went and lived it up in NYC. It sounds like fun but it was a horrible feeling being stuck on the island with no clue as to what to do... I didn't even have a credit card at the time. I got one as soon as I got back.

Edited June 16, 2010 by jakesbass

[ahpook]

there's a venue in islington that i've played at with a few bands i've been in, and it's so close by tube that if i play there now, i soundcheck and pop home for tea, then go back and play the gig.

very civilised.

Edited June 16, 2010 by ahpook

[Musicman20]

I cannot remember the exact logistics of this, but my old band played Aberdeen at some point on our tour. We drove all the way from the Midlands where we had had played the night before, stopped in Newcastle, went on a night out, spent too much money on going out and fuel, then slept, then went to Aberdeen (fairly huge drive). Whisky and using services showers were a highlight.

I loved it, the difference is we virtually never got paid at all as it just doesn't work like that in the scene we were part of. So w actually shelled out a lot to play our own gigs. Classic. Aberdeen was awesome.

Edited June 16, 2010 by Musicman20

[Pete Academy]

[quote name='Gareth Hughes' post='868831' date='Jun 16 2010, 10:54 AM']Yup, I can match that - and possibly beat it for amount of hours involved relative to hours played. (Not that I'm proud, or that this is any competition with a great winner).

I did roughly the same amount of hours travelled for two gigs as Pete Academy did for his Irish jaunt - except that my two gigs were in Chicago. What should have been a three week tour was all but cancelled at the last minute. Seeing as the visas/flights, etc had been paid for the manager thought the act should still do the two shows that had sold well. Flew from Dublin to Chicago late Friday evening - gig on Saturday, gig on Sunday, early morning flight Monday.

Second time - same act now that I think of it - was worse. I had a different gig in Killarney - a good five hour drive from Dublin at the time, but took it anyway, thinking I'll still get back in time for my 7am flight to Germany. Coming into Killarney there are thousands of punters heading to a gig - but not my gig, I knew from the numbers. Turned out Westlife were playing there too that night. And all those people were leaving the same time I was leaving!!! I left the gig at 1130pm - by 1am I was still in Killarney and panicking as I looked at the map. I finally got home at 5am, packed quickly, said goodbye to my wife (whose birthday it was.......) and left for the airport at 530am.

It gets worse.

The flight is on the Saturday, but the gig is on the Sunday. So why the early travel? There's a 6 hour bus ride from the airport to the gig and as we're playing at some huge conference once it finishes (and it started at 9am), we have to soundcheck the night before. Joy.

At least two hours are wasted once we land because whilst a bus has been booked for 10 people, it does not hold 10 persons luggage and their instruments. Doh. We finally get there late in the evening and all I remember is setting up my gear and then lying down to sleep in front of my rig while a tortuous vocal soundcheck was done . Band soundcheck time - midnight.

The better part is that this was the day of the Germany-Brazil World Cup in 2002, so we had to watch the match on a huge cinema size screen in the same room as the conference and they play immediately afterwards. Fair play to the German punters -when they lost we thought it would be the worst gig ever, but everyone in the room stood up, applauded Brazil and then seemed to enjoy our gig.

So all that for about 90 minutes of music.

(And a HUGE frikking buffet;))[/quote]

A few years ago we had a gig booked in the South of France at an outdoor venue, a tribute festival. Gig got cancelled, but as we had already booked the flights and hotel anway, we went and had a Nearly Dan mini holiday.