Professional Sound - October 2020 | Page 31

CITY & COLOUR ONSTAGE DURING THEIR FALL 2019 CANADIAN ARENA TOUR

I ’ ve but when I woke up

woken up on a tour bus too many times to count over the years ,
on the morning of Nov . 16 th , 2019 , on an overnight drive between Regina and Winnipeg amidst City & Colour ’ s Canadian arena tour , I quickly found out that I was in for an extremely challenging day .
I first awoke at around 6:30 a . m ., which was pretty normal , and after securing some socks and pants , I checked in on our bus driver . Right away , his tone was not what I was expecting when he asked me if I had heard about what happened the previous night .
I had not heard yet but he told me that the highway had patches of black ice and one of our tour trucks had been in an accident . It was our audio truck , which had been badly rear-ended by another semi that wasn ’ t part of our four-truck and three-bus tour convoy . Our audio truck driver was okay but shaken up from the impact . The highway had been closed for the accident investigation and dangerous road conditions so the buses had found a way to backtrack and find some side roads to get us moving toward the Bell MTS Place arena in Winnipeg where we were scheduled for a show that night .
It was now going to be a late load-in and we didn ’ t yet know if the audio truck was roadworthy , if we had any other equipment options , or if we would have a show at all .
As the head audio person on the tour and FOH system tech , I got busy on my phone touching base with the production manager and our account manager from PRG Audio Toronto , the audio supplier for the tour . The PM ’ s plan was to get our other three trucks to the venue as soon as possible and begin loadin while we worked on our audio options .
Two of our tour trucks were packed with a large lighting system , including all of the rigging steel . The audio truck was packed with speakers , amps , cabling , power distros , and the audio motors . Our fourth truck carried merchandise , the bands ’ instruments , risers , plus our stage audio package that included the monitor system and FOH console . We needed to start looking for a locally-provided sound system even though there were still thoughts that the tour sound system could arrive at the gig by late morning . The department heads and tour management all got together at the arena production office for a meeting at around 9 a . m .
Our first preference was to use the tour sound system assuming that it was still all in working condition . It had been in an accident so we knew that we couldn ’ t fly the system for safety reasons , but since we were playing a lower bowl configuration , I was able to come up with a workable groundstacked design that would get us through the gig .
I had used a locally-rented sound system from Winnipeg ’ s Sound Art in that same venue earlier in the year so we contacted them to see if there was any possibility of getting a system prepped and delivered in a time frame that would allow us to put on the show . As we were considering the options , we heard from the trucking company that the tour audio trailer was not safe for a sustained drive so it would need to be brought to a local site for a cross-load of the equipment . The trucking company also didn ’ t want to push their driver into a hurried delivery after the accident . It was now clear that we wouldn ’ t be seeing any of the tour ’ s d & b audiotechnik speaker system that day .
A secondary audio team meeting was now underway between me , our monitor tech , Meaghan McEachren , and our stage tech , Sean Currell . The good news was that Sound Art did have a system that was already prepped for an upcoming Daniel Caesar show in the same venue ; the bad news was that our tour trucks were not packed exactly along house audio / stage audio lines , so we needed to figure out exactly what was in the missing audio truck that we still needed for the show .
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