Infinite Collateral Duties

I am the manager of TapWater. Ordinarily this means that you manage operations and department heads, and keep the whole thing on task. Well, if you are the manager of a young band, this actually means that you manage on top of handling the booking, marketing, promotions, financial planning, bus driving, even gear humping! You gotta do anything and everything that comes up. Most of the time, I take it in stride and even welcome it -- it can be overwhelming at times but its exciting, never boring, and always challenging.

One of the things that causes me alot of stress is that I have to run the band's sound when we play a place without adequate audio. Uhm, let's just say, I am not the most mechanically inclined individual and standing in front of a 36-channel sound board is not really my ideal place on the planet. But, I had no choice, I had to learn. Ravi, who is a professional production guru, and Wes, who is also a professional audio tech, both taught me as much as I was willing or able to learn. I do understand the concept of mixing sound -- layering the levels of the instruments and voices so that they blend together in a way where all the sounds are accented and complement each other. But, dang it, I just don't get how EQing works, no matter how many times they explain it, so I just am not equipped to deal with feedback. And when you are dealing with 5 monitors and 14 mics, let's just say feedback is a familiar friend.

So, its scary. Once TapWater starts playing, Ravi and Wes are on the stage and its just me at the board handling it all. If feedback occurs, I gotta just do my best and sometimes I just can't fix it. Its frustrating for all. In fact, running audio is the most important job at the show. If the sound person isn't skilled, the band sounds awful (no matter how great the music is) and the crowd will not enjoy the show.

Thankfully, we have recently found an amazing audio tech who has been donating his time to us. We call him Golden Graham. He ran our sound at the Aladdin and did a fantastic job. As we gain more traction in Portland, we want to take Graham on full-time. He can't make it to our show this weekend, so I am behind the board at least one more time.

Send me good thoughts!