Concert Planning

Friday evening will be a busy time. Actually, the past several months have been quite hectic. But this is what I truly enjoy: the opportunity to serve.

That said, it is a remarkable amount of work.

The picture is from the Celebrate Christmas event of last year. It was the second Christmas concert for the team and it took a lot of time and effort to produce. Earlier this year, I was asked to help coordinate an event in the fall with my good friend Trevor. Which, of course, I was only too happy to support. The event became a lot more than coordination. It was more like a full production including marketing, promotion, ticket sales, rider fulfillment, sound system and lighting system setup and teardown, media support and finally, making a 25 to 30 minute musical contribution with my own band.

Trevor and his team will do a wonderful job presenting their music. My band will help in that presentation. To get things ready for the musical contribution, I selected a set of songs, prepared charts, developed the media support for the songs, developed enhanced backing tracks to support our presentation, scheduled rehearsals and personal time practicing the material. We are a four-piece team for the event on Friday: vocals, electric guitar, bass and drums. To fill things out, we will be playing to a split-track with a click for the players and a program of ambient pads, percussion, background vocals and keys.

That work, in and of itself, can take a bit of time. My wife was kind enough to help on the marketing, promotion and ticketing of the event. She went to dozens of places around town to get posters up and to communicate the event and she has been working through the logistics of helping to ensure that we have a good turnout.

Our drummer was good enough to help me with the rider. We have a compact line array system with subs coming in to the site which we will install on Thursday evening. We will also have intelligent lighting and audio/visual. We will have to setup the environment to accommodate two bands as well as prepare in-ear and wedge monitors. Trevor travels with his own sound engineer and that engineer will be driving the FOH for the evening. Our plan is to have everything set and ready to go by end of evening on Thursday. Friday will be the setup for Trevor and soundcheck for the two bands.

It has been so busy at work that I have been having some challenges keeping the rest of life in balance. A major event like this one does add to that challenge. Although it would be nice to take a bit of a break after the event on Friday, I will be back at rehearsals on Saturday morning and playing again on Sunday.