When the first draft of the piece in this issue of FOH on the events surrounding the recent visit by the Pope came across my desk, I freaked out just a little.
Not because the writer had included frickin’ lighting info, but more because there was a crew list attached that was about three-pages long and included everyone who had even thought about working the gigs.
Move forward a week. It is a really busy weekend in Vegas. The Academy of Country Music Awards is in town, which means a plethora of public and private events surrounding the awards show. My friends at H.A.S. Productions had the Fremont Street gig (with multiple stages) for the fourth or fifth year in a row, which meant two stages running both Friday and Saturday. To further complicate things, another festival that has been a long-term client was scheduled for the same weekend. But they switched things up, and instead of running Saturday and Sunday, they moved to a Friday/Saturday schedule. Bottom line was that instead of using one crew to load the ACMs in on Friday, the other festival Saturday a.m., and then load the ACMs out on Saturday night and the other festival Sunday night, they now needed two full crews. Can you say, “labor shortage?”
It was bad enough that I went down to help out and saw at least one local manufacturers rep doing the same thing.
About a week prior to that, I sat down with Cubby Colby to talk about his latest endeavor, and he made absolutely sure that I talked not just to him, but also to his system engineer and monitor guy. “I couldn’t do it without these guys,” he said.
On the other side of the coin, a soundco owner I know was subcontracting at a big festival and was pretty pissed when the owner of the main soundco invited him to dinner, but did not include his two crew guys.
There were a couple of other random events in the past month where I saw people pulling together to get the gig done under less-than-ideal circumstances. (OK, when are they ever ideal…) and I have written before about how it is the people in this business that make up the most important component. Gear is cool, but people make it run.
But what struck me this time was the very literal sense of family. I had people question why I was out humping gear at 1 a.m. in downtown Vegas on the loadout. Did I really need the money that bad? The money is nice, and we are getting ready to move into a new house with all of the unexpected expenses that comes along with that, but the questioners were right — it wasn’t about the money. It was about my production family being in a jam and needing some help.
Even that super long list of people that I referred to at the top of this piece represents that family attitude. People came together on those gigs on short notice and under very difficult circumstances and pulled off something close to a miracle. And we are running the list (except the squints — they have their own damn magazine).
There is a book I read a long time ago that had a definition of family in it that had nothing to do with blood relationships, but with shared experience. In other words, there is a difference between the family we are born into and the family we choose. There is a T-shirt cliché about a friend bailing you out of jail after a bar fight, but a brother being in the cell with you because he had your back when the chairs were flying.
Corny stuff, but there is a grain of truth to it. I know that if I am in a jam, the first folks I call for help will be my production brethren. They are the family I have chosen.
