Epica TourReport #4

OK, here's another update from my touring the USA with Epica.

Today we're having another day off, we are in Mokena, Ill, just outside of Chicago. Right now I'm sitting in de green room of The Pearl Room, the venue we'll be playing tomorrow.

Monday september 10.

Today we're having an off day, the buss is parking at an hotel in New Jersey. Most of our group are going to see New York City, me and Andy are staying on the bus. I spend half of the day doing laundry, the rest just chilling, watching TV and being online.

Tuesday, september 11

The next three days we are in Canada, today at the Medley in Montreal.

This night we had to cross the border, when we arrived there some kind of accident just happened, a truck was laying on its side and was going up in flames.

Nevertheless all of us had to show up at the immigration officer, answer stupid questions like if i was ever arrested and stuff like that. What a useless bullshit and waste of time and money.

Anyway, at the Medley we did another good show, I had an Midas XLR3 to work with which is still one of the preferred desks.

Wednesday, September 12

Today's show is in the Imperial Theater, Quebec City.

A very beautiful venue, very nice PA (EV linearray, very competent monitor engineer, very good catering, 5! showers, so a very nice day it was indeed.

The only negative thing that happened was an argument I had with the house FOH engineer, Jones(?). At the end of the Epica show I like to push the faders to make a big finale. Some red clipping lights went on, he was asking me to turn down the volume. I refused, and he turned down the volume himself. That got me very upset. After the show I complained to the promoter, who was very nice and promised to talk to his boss about it.

Mariska at the merchandise stand

Thursday, September 13

Today is our last Canadian show, in the Funhouse, Toronto

First we stopped at the city center plaza, in front of the municipal building. Very beautiful plaza, with water, a fountain, and nice sunshine. Erwin, Coen an me found a Starbuck on the corner, and we sat there for a while watching the people go by.

Then we drove a mile or so to the Funhouse. Rich, the local sound guy, was very nice and helpful but for the rest it was a real shitty place. I had a 24 input Midas Verona, and I seemed to be the first one to utilize all 24 inputs ;-) Also Rich had to go out and buy a bunch of XLR cables, because he didn't have enough. One good thing was the Thai restaurant next door, where I had a nice dinner.

That's it for now, more photo's as allways at:

http://picasaweb.jstekelenburg.com

Epica Tourreport #3

Today we're having a day off in New York City. Right now I'm in the tourbus which is standing at a hotel just outside Lincoln Tunnel in New Jersey. I'll be going into the city in about an hour or so, but first here's tourreport #3.

Friday 7 september

We are at The Chance, Poughkeepsie NY. A kind of old ex movie theater with a very big balcony. Unfortunately the balcony stays closed because of lack of audience. The only one sitting there is Erwin, our LD :-)

Of course our Austrian friends are here as well :-)

At getin I had a bit of trouble with the local soundperson, Rob, but after a while he got warmed up :-) and was very nice and helpfull

Mariska and Willem are having fun ...

Saturday september 08: Mark's Place, Bedford NH

Kind of a bizar place to do a show. We're playing in a room with a very low clearance (on stage you can touch the ceiling).

Next door there is a titty bar, good thing is we're having free entrance!

There's a whole bunch of pool table's, some of them are doubling as merchandise stand. During the show people are still playing pool ...

It was a good concert, I got some great help from the local soundguy Jim, enough beer afterwards on the bus, and after everything was done we drove to New York City, yeah!

Sunday september 9, Highline Ballroom, New York City

We drove to a hotel just outside the city in Jersey, to shower, and also to pickup the guys from Visions of Atlantis, who would join us on the bus for the trip in and out of NYC.

Here's Shane, our busdriver from Arkansas.

The hotel had some nice views:

We went through the Lincoln Tunnel to get into NYC.

The Highline Ballroom is a new place, it opened in May this year. Inside it's very nice and clean, great audio gear (JBL line arry, PM5D on FOH and and M7CL for monitors). The audio persons were nice and helpfull (thanks Jones and Jim) although they took their time getting all the lines to work. Erwin wasn't having a good time, because the lightperson was not familiar with his own lighting board, so although they had plenty of moving heads Erwin wasn't able to make full use of the equipment.

All in all it was a great show again, I finally succeeded in getting my recording gear to work so a got a good recording of the board as well.

Loadout in the middle of street in the stink of the fish market ;-)

OK that's it, more pictures as allways at:

http://picasaweb.google.com/jstekelenburg

Epica TourReport #2

Finally got some network here at Mark's Place, so here is another update.

First stop this tour: Jaxx, Springfield VA.

Our support for this tour, Visions of Atlantis, were waiting for us at the venue. They are travelling with a nice RV:

I was a bit nervous because it was my first show mixing for Epica, but everything went really well I think, and it sounded pretty good:-)

After load out we got in the bus and travelled to the Webster Theater in Hartfort, CT:

Really quite a horrible place soundwise, especially since there were only a handfull of people, but there were no real problems otherwise, thanks to the very good assistance from the local soundpersons, thanks Jay!

This is Willem, he takes care of our backline, together with our American friend Andy.

There were some nice girls also :-)

OK, that's it for now

Epica Tourreport #1

Monday September 30 2007

Arrived Schiphol 09:15. After a lot of work to get the backline on the plane and waiting we managed to get to the plane with just 30 minutes boarding remaining. Nobody payed any attention to my 15 kg FOH rockbag that I took as hand luggage.

The flight was really uneventful, nice crew, great entertainment system, free drinks, I hate flying but it wasn’t really all that bad.

After landing all went really smooth as well. At Dulles they have these funny shuttle busses that take you from the gate to the main building:

We got all our stuff back at the caroussel and got out without any problems.

Then we had to wait a while for our tourbus to arrive.
Here it is:

We got all our stuff onboard and headed out to go to visit Marie D.C. She made some really nice dinner for us, and we sat on her porch and had some good beers and made fun of her cat Oscar.

The plan was to get our merchandise at Marie’s but something went wrong and it wasn’t there. So we decided after the dinner to drive to Philadelphia to pickup the backline.

Tuesday September 4, 2007

During driving Shane the busdriver told us his battery charger broke down. So we stopped at a shop to get the bus fixed.





It turned out the generator had died and we ended up waiting at the repair shop the whole day to get it fixed.


Jeroen arranged for a rental van to pickup the backline, since the bus couldn’t move. Me, Jeroen and Andy went to pick it up.

... more to follow