Backstage with Big Daddy

I was in Naples, Fla., doing a gig when I got the call last Saturday morning about the death of Roddy Pahl.
 
After getting over the shock of the news, and a brief conversation with his wife Wendy, I took some time to reflect on the five-plus years he and I have been friends. When Roddy and I first met, he was tipping 500 pounds, maybe 6 feet 6 inches tall, shaved head – not a little sucker by any stretch. As big as he was, Roddy was equally soft-spoken. In fact, as I write this, I can’t recall anytime EVER that he raised his voice.

OK, so this R & B group I am touring with does either REALLY big gigs,or REALLY small gigs. Pretty much not much in between.

So sometimes the advances are really easy,"PM 5D? Yup, fine! VerTec? Cool dude! See ya Saturday" kinda thing….Then there is the other hand……….

Sorry for the delay, but I have been on tour! Boy do I have some stories! I try really hard not to be that FOH guy we all love to hate… but…

I recently took a job with an R&B band with a string of hits from the '70s thru the late '80s. They still demand good money and travel with FOH, LD & a tour manager. I have done four shows with them so far with a wide range of weird issues along the way.

I just got a call from a friend in New York. He is a systems engineer & shop manager for a medium size sound company there. He and I share a lot of "war story's" so here is one of his……

He just did a 3 day festival, on the third and final night the opener guest engineer blows the high mid's in the P.A. No not just a couple boxes…..ALL OF THEM! As my friend Willy Jay tells me the story, my butt clenches……… The opener shows up with a nice fx rack, a couple EQs and a couple extra compressors for the left/right. Seem's OK right? So Willy Jay figures the guys got some good gear, and has a good rep in the area so doesn't stand over his shoulder as much as he would with someone he doesn't know.

Before I was a sound guy and in between trying to be a rock star, I was a fire fighter. In fact I was a fire fighter in Charleston South Carolina. Yes THAT Charleston South Carolina.

As an owner of a sound company, a front of house mixer and still sometimes musician, it’s real easy to get wrapped up in "ME". I have often made the joke, and been misquoted by THIS magazine, about this biz beats digging a ditch. And it does all day long.  I wouldn't trade what we all get to do for…. Well, maybe I would trade it for  some hot Asian…Uh,wait.

In this one, I would actually like to name,names.

The company I work for buys a lot of distros, mostly  from Motion Labs. Arguably one of the best power distribution manufactures out there. However, we did have a problem with a part in one of their distros. Once we had an R/A # we sent it in, about a month later they called and told us it was ready, and would be several hundred dollars to for the repair. My boss was pissed! We only had this distro a few months when the problem occurred.  He pointed this out to the repair guy, and asked who authorized the repair anyway??? Is there no warranty?? You have had it for a freakin month!!

Every now and then you end up doing a show where the band are pricks out the gate & there is no resolve . . .

We do about 400 shows a year, so I guess we are lucky we don't get it all of the time. The funny thing is, it’s usually the "lower end bands"

We work with this country singer, she was real famous in the late 70s & thru the 80s. She has fallen (not so gracefully) since. From arenas to Indian casino bingo rooms, relentless bitch from start to finish. You know — she won’t show up to sound check, doesn't tell her band to check her guitar or vocal mic, walks on stage and begins threatening the monitor guy for the rest of the night. Making bitchy digs on the mic all night long . . .

I try not to take gigs in Vegas. Long story — but there is a bag of cash, a couple of wiseguys a stripper and a broken down XL4 involved. If I told you they would have to take me out of witness protection, so there you go. Anyway, through a string of dubious events, I found myself working a freelance gig in Vegas. The gig was designed to help bring people in for a much larger event. It seems to me that if you need small events to "spruce up" the larger event then more than likely the main deal needs to be re thought — That's a whole other thing — Anyway, my job was production manager for the live concert portion of this "big event".