Of Riggers and Roadies

I recall a fun story about interactions of the road crew when DeGarmo & Key were out for sixty cities, opening for Petra.  The show was big enough that we carried our own union rigger to help with getting the 26 rigging motors attached to the coliseum superstructure.  

A quick tutorial on rigging follows: a rigging motor is a type of motorized hoist, that hangs from the bottom of a long, high-strength chain.  Our rigging motors could lift up to 2 tons of weight per motor.  Lights, speakers, rigging and other implements were 'flown' with these motors.  Each rigging motor came with its own seventy-foot chain, which had to be attached to the steel infrastructure of the ceiling of a venue.  A rigger would make his way up to the high steel structure of the auditorium and might even proceed to use trigonometry so as to triangulate and position the motor over a point marked on the stage  The challenge was to use one, two or even three cables of varying lengths and loop them over the steel I-beams, attaching them to a shackle at top of the rigging chain such that the motor would hang directly above its prescribed location on the stage.  The large, heavy motor would then be cabled to power (from the stage side), and when turned on with a remote, would climb the chain toward the roof.  A large hook on the bottom of the motor was attached to the equipment to be hauled up.  With a large lighting show, it’s even possible to build the lighting trusses in a manner such that they were articulating and could be manipulated during the show by raising or lowering the rigging motors (the astute reader might note this effect at the beginning my lightshow during "Rock Solid" in the D&K Rockumentary).

In good jest, our rigger was one of the most hated members of our crew!  Despite the dangerous job he had to perform, he had one of the easiest and best-paying positions on the road; although he was one of the first on the stage, he was already done by the time we were still in the morning of setup.  Our rigger was also the first off the stage and into his bunk at night.  It was nice to have him along on the tour, but we harbored a fair amount of resentment toward him for his “easy” job.  One day, the Petra stage manager decided to take out his hidden aggression on the poor rigger.  Grabbing onto a large curtain clamp (normally used to keep rolled-up stage curtains in the air and thus prevent damage to them), he began his diabolical plot.  It so happened that the joyful rigger was on his way offstage to a day of leisure when the rest of us were just getting started on our day’s work.  As he passed by the stage manager, the curtain clamp, which so happened to be right in hand, was quickly attached to the back side of the rigger.  Although outraged, the good rigger just threw the clamp on the stage and left.  We all looked at each other and marveled at his non-vindictive self-control.

By the end of the day, we had all forgotten about the incident.  The rigger did the disconnect and headed off to the bus, early to bed, as usual.  When we walked onto the bus at 1AM, we discovered him cheerfully sitting up in the lounge, still watching a movie.  Once we were on the road again, the stage manager headed off to his bunk to retire for the night.  The rigger waited a few minutes, then arose, and grabbed a case of the best gaffer’s tape available from a storage compartment.  He grinned ear-to-ear and headed back to the bunk area.  After discerning no movement from the stage manager, he began to basket-weave the tape across the opening to the bunk, effectively taping the poor man into his bunk like a coffin.  The velvet curtain over the bunk was securely held in between the tape and the stage manager.  Our fearless rigger then walked up to the thermostat and cranked it up to high.  We all stood watching and laughing, while the stage manager woke up and began to pound on the drapes to open them.  As we roared in laughter, the point of a knife stuck through the curtain and tape and sawed a hole.  Out popped a hand.  As the hand grabbed furtively at the tape, it was greeted by … a friendly curtain clamp!  The stage manager howled, shaking off the clamp and a large body burst through both curtain and tape, tumbling out onto the floor.  When the fireworks died down, we ended another fine day on the road; business as usual.

My Early Road Days

~ The Early Days ~

To this day, many people ask me, “so just how did you end up out on the road?”  That’s an interesting story in and of itself; so improbable that I never saw it coming.  There are days when I now sit at a conference table taking meetings for my employer and I find myself pining for those days on the road.  Someone once said that it’s easy to look backward and connect the dots, but you can never connect the dots going forward.  I would not have predicted that I would spend time in the music business, nor could I have then predicted that I would now spend time in my current occupation.  My youth was a pretty unassuming time of life in a small town at the edge of nothing in particular.  I never had stars in my eyes, nor was I even involved in music, other than the early trombone lessons, which I hated.  I was not a musician, never really could play, and hated the discipline of practice – after all, there was a great, vast world outdoors that was just going to waste while I sat and did oompah lessons.

I went through an early phase of life where I wanted to be a forester, and another phase where I just didn’t know what I wanted to do.  At an early age, I began to show an interest in electronics, then in sound.  My pastor taught me to mix and, at age 13, I began mixing sound.  As high school progressed and my oldest brother went off to become an engineer, I became convinced that I wanted to do nothing except being an engineer.  I had a love of all things electrical and when the first precursor to the PC came along, I was completely taken with the creative aspects of programming as well.  I studied hard in college, spending my first two years at a liberal arts school but soaking up all the math and science that they had to offer.  After two years, I transferred to a well-known engineering school and discovered that, while I usually enjoyed the subjects, I really didn’t want to spend my life with other engineers.  It just seemed that there must be more to life than punching numbers, optimizing the head of a pin, and keeping a complete focus on optimizing things that seemed perfectly acceptable already.  “What to do”, I thought … I really had no other plan for anything that I would like better, so I decided to finish my engineering degree and see what would happen after that.  I pressed on with it, even interviewing for engineering jobs during my senior year; I turned down each and every one of those jobs and still had no plan for the future.

Spring Break came along that senior year and I headed off to Richmond, VA to visit my oldest brother.  On Sunday, we picked a church out of the yellow pages and visited for the morning.  Partway through the service, a bunch of long-haired dudes filed in and sat down on the pew beside me.  I was pretty shy and didn’t really strike up conversations too easily in those days, so I was a bit taken aback when the guy next to me introduced himself at the end of the service.  “Heyah, ahm Wahyne”, he drawled.  I introduced myself and we got into conversation.  It turned out that the dudes were a band out of Atlanta and were there to play for a youth service at the church that night.  Wayne explained that they were late that morning as they were in their hotel room, praying that God would send them a sound man since they were about to leave on tour opening for Joe English (former drummer for Paul McCartney & Wings).  I was silent for a moment, then told Wayne that I had mixed sound for years (local acts and church, then working shows and managing the sound systems for the College Union Board).  He said “Wow, dude.  Whatcher doin’ now?”  I explained that I was about to graduate from college with a degree in electrical engineering.  “Wowee, man!  You went to college?  And engineers … can you, like, fix stuff?”  “Yup”, I replied.  After a time of more conversation, Wayne introduced me to the rest of the band, who were way too cool to be bothered with a clean-cut geeky-looking guy, but they encouraged me to come out to the show that night and see what I thought.  I did so, and eventually ended up, after exchanges of phone numbers, with an invitation to go to Florida with them to audition for a job.  Two weeks before graduation saw me on the beach of Panama City, FL, trying to study for my linear algebra exam, but really more interested in hanging out with my strange, new friends.  They were unlike anyone that I had met in my life, and to me it was a whole new culture.  To cut the story a bit shorter, I ended up on the road with Sacred Fire, doing my first gig in Waco Texas, opening for Joe English on the night that my classmates were all walking across the graduation platform.  I got my degree, but never did take those engineering jobs.

Life with Sacred Fire was tough; not so much physically as I was used to hard work, but I was originally the “odd man out” in many more ways that I had anticipated.  I had never lived on my own, had never had a full-time job, knew no one in Atlanta (except the band), and just plain experienced culture shock at having been dropped into the deep south with a bunch of crazy dudes.  They had absolutely no concept of college or the rest of the world from whence I had come.  My humor didn’t mesh with theirs as I had grown up with no television, and just didn’t get most of their references to popular figures, themes or even their quick-wittedness.  I was an outsider, short-haired college kid, with nothing in common with them.  Wayne became a great friend to me and a supporter in whom I was able to confide.  He was kind, sympathetic, and helped me to survive those early days.

There was a whole culture of food that I didn’t even know existed.  My mom was a “health food healthy” and we never ate out except once a year, when we were on vacation and would have the one restaurant meal that week.  I barely even knew what a McDonalds served, and could definitely not have named the endless litany of fast food restaurants.  Couple that with the fact that I didn’t even have two dimes to rub together, had no car, no home and no possessions and I was one lonely, left-out guy.  Wayne taught me the essentials of eating on a budget.  For example, do you put sugar, or butter, salt & pepper on your grits (what is a grit, anyway)?  I was very thankful that my good friend, Tina, had sent me a huge box of home-made granola, else I might have starved in those days.  Wayne taught me important things in life, like the concept of finding a good “all you can eat joint” and eating a huge meal at least once a week.  I can’t recall the name of the place we used to go in that Atlanta suburb, but they lost so much money every time I showed up.  To this day, I’m still thankful for Wayne, my bud!

When the initial Joe English tour ended, I had no place to live in Atlanta, and about the time that we were winging our way back to Atlanta, I began wondering how that would all work out.  I eventually expressed those concerns and got some blank looks from the guys – they hadn’t much thought about it, and while most of them lived in one apartment together, it was already so crowded, not only with them, but with wives and kids, that there was no room for me.  The guitar player had his own place and was also married.  I was eventually invited to live in the back of their equipment truck in the parking lot of the apartment.  I gratefully accepted and while they headed off to the apartment for the night, I pulled up the back door of the truck and climbed in.  It was big enough for me, and I did get a sterno stove to cook on; it was a bit hot in Atlanta that June, but I got used to it.  Most of my meals were purchased from the local “quick rip” gas station, where I could also use the rest room and give myself a quick bath (in the sink).  Wayne came to me one day and said, “dude, you just can’t do this anymore!”  He invited me to move in to the floor of his room in the apartment.  Wayne to the rescue again!

The band were a nice bunch of guys – they were very supportive of me, but I never did understand some of the things they did, like spending the day watching MTV.  I just didn’t click with that life in many ways.  I longed for the serene outdoors with hills, mountains and a long trail to hike or a tent to sleep in.  It was so bizarre for me to end up as I did; a complete misfit in this world of sound, lights, trucks and the music biz.  I worked hard on the road and pulled my load like a team of mules.  I didn’t always know which way pull load in those early days, so it was a good thing that not one of us in the band was making a cent.  We simply used the proceeds to pay for the PA, the truck and our myriads of travel expenses.  There was never any money left over after we got back from a gig, but it just didn’t occur to me to care in those days.  I was young, free, and I didn’t have to open a book.  Life was good!  Money?  Well that did begin to be a bit of a problem.  Eventually I figured out that there was this thing called rent.  And that it was due every month.  And that one really did need a car in old Hotlanta – it was a convenience that was tough to do without.  Wayne again rescued me in this regard.  He was kind enough to help me sign up with “Personnel Pool” when we were off the road.  Skills?  Well, they just didn’t seem to believe me when I said I could design computers and other systems.  There weren’t very many calls for that type of temp work.  Instead, Wayne and I would head over to “the pool” and await our names being called for some crummy piece of work or another.  It was a notch down for me to go from a college degree and a middle-class home to being the guy that someone would call when, for instance, they had a yard full of poison ivy that needed pulling by hand.

Okay, I guess I never quite got a call for poison ivy removal, but Wayne and I did get some pretty interesting gigs.  I recall being sent out as a delivery man for a furniture rental company.  They paired me up with a 300-pound worker that would put the entire couch on his back, tell me to grab the cushions and get the door while he just eased right up the stairs by himself.  I was determined that I would work hard though and never let his size and strength put me to shame.

Other interesting jobs were found for us: we worked at recharging Carrera oil shocks (we would be covered with oil from head to foot by the end of the day), restocking parts in the Kubota warehouse, cleaning out burned houses, carting & dumping thousands of pounds of dried ingredients for DariTech to mix up dried dessert & frozen ice cream mixes, landscaping, and a host of other jobs that I have since forgotten.  Everywhere we went, our hard work made us sought after.  Usually the employers would ask to get us back.  Sometimes they tried to recruit us and were often astounded to hear that we just didn’t want their job since we were on an unpredictable schedule with the band and couldn’t accept full-time employment.  Wayne faithfully offered me the rides to work, helped me to learn how to cash my check at whatever store would do so for us (usually they took a percentage of the check as payment though!)

Money didn’t go very far in those days.  I barely made enough to keep the hunger pangs away.  Despite that, I realized that I would have to find a car.  A Honda, Wayne had taught me, was highly to be prized.  I bought the tired old 1974 Honda Civic from the drummer.  He wasn’t using it anyway, since the engine had blown and was sitting half in the back seat, and half in a local machine shop where he had lacked the money to pay for the repairs.  I bought it for $150, “as-is”.  Another phase of my education began then: auto mechanics.  The guys were all very good with the wrench and taught me much about working on my little Honda.  I was so excited on the day when I finally got that baby to crank up and run!  I drove it around the block with great glee, and then pulled back into the parking lot, somewhat disappointed at the strange sounds it made.  When I pulled up at the curb, one of the guys pointed out that there was a large amount of wet stuff coming out from under my car.  Oil, as it turned out.  I had made a pretty bad mistake: I had drained out the transmission fluid, and added another 3.7 qts of oil to the engine.  No wonder that little dip stick was so wet!  I was soon to discover that I had put in so much oil that I had blown the head gasket from my newly-rebuilt engine.  Oh well, back to the wrench.  Working on that little car was quite the job.  At least I now had something to keep me outdoors (and I was out there pretty much every day that it wasn’t raining).  I can still recall one of those days when I was working on the exhaust manifold.  On that model, the tail pipe joins the manifold just behind the small radiator in front of the engine.  I was working on trying to get it tightened up enough to not make such racket (for the twentieth time), when my hand slipped off the wrench (this was one-of-N times that day alone).  Upon bashing my knuckles on the back side of the radiator fins, I howled in pain and picked up that socket wrench and neatly bashed out the head lights in the car.  Boy did that feel good!  Oh well, now I had headlights to buy too.  Back to the Personnel Pool for another gig.

The summer dragged on that year, through many the temp job, the heat of gigs played all around the country, and the crowded life in the old apartment.  The band turned over some staff as the drummer and keyboardist quit, going back “home” to North Carolina.  We replaced them and struggled on, recording a nice demo tape, and doing our best to make it.  We took a gig as the opening act and back-up band for Leslie Phillips (A.K.A. Sam Phillips now).  My mixing matured as my hair grew longer too.  Must have been the longer hair that helped my mixes sound more rock-n-roll.  The apartment always seemed small and I always felt like a fifth wheel.  One day I learned that my friends from Mylon LeFevre and Broken Heart (Kenny, Stan and Scott) had room in their apartment.  If I recall correctly, they had a room available for me to rent and I took my trusty mattress and set up on the floor, calling it “home” for a while.  I was again an outsider, with no real connection to their scene, and rarely just hung out with them.  This was partly due to the fact that I am not sure I can ever recall coming home to that apartment without the living room having less than twenty strangers in it.

By this time, my college loans were coming due and I was scared to death of not knowing how I would repay them.  I had managed to reconnect with an old friend that was building houses in Texas.  Upon contacting him, he invited me to come and live with him and his wife and go to work with his outfit, building and remodeling.  More learning to be had!  I soon learned to be quite proficient with having fights with the nail guns whilest skipping along the trusses of half-built roofs.  We were a crazy bunch, but my friend, Paul, once again saved my bacon.  I would never have made it in those days without him and Donna asking me in to stay at their place.  Thanks, Paul!

About the time that I had begun to think of the road as a fading memory, I got a phone call.  While working with Sacred Fire, I had met up with Gary, who had been the sound engineer for Sacred Fire, but had gone one in to become the production manager for Kerry Livgren’s new band, AD.  AD was formed just after Kansas came apart and consisted of Kerry, Dave Hope (the former Kansas bassist) as well as two of the “auxiliary musicians” from Kansas (Warren Ham, and Mike Gleason), plus a fine studio drummer, Dennis Holt.  They were by far my favorite band ever, with every bit as much talent to play live as they had in the studio.  I had admired Kansas for years and always found meaning, beauty and a sense of awe in Kerry’s majestic compositions.

As my friend, Gary was explaining their touring situation, I gradually realized that I was about to be invited to go on the road again … with AD this time.  My head spun with the news, I could barely contain myself as Gary explained that I would need to be in Atlanta the next morning.  I was incredulous, but said my goodbyes to Paul and Donna and packed my trusty mattress onto the roof of my Honda Civic and headed off down I20 to boogie across the midsouth as fast as I could go.  I drove all night, broke down in Alabama (alternator belt), had adventure, no food, barely enough gas, and a long, sleepy drive into Atlanta.  I arrived late at the recording studio where I was to meet the band.  Gary was ticked off with me, but there were no such things as cell phones back then and I had no money to make a long-distance call anyway.

When I first met the band, my hands and voice where shaky and I was just about as excited as a little kid who had met Santa Claus on the way to his bathroom.  It was unbelievable that I, a short-haired college kid would end up meeting these guys – even more unbelievable that they knew of me and wanted me to come on the tour.  I was to become Kerry and Dave’s “guitar and keyboard tech”.  Kerry discovered quickly that, while I had an EE degree, could fix & design stuff, I still needed to be taught how to tune his guitar.  Not an auspicious beginning for the new guitar tech, but … I made up for it with very hard work.  And, lots of truck driving, and … lots of nights with no sleep, and … many the other sacrifice.  For the first time on the road, I was paid to do this gig: $50/night for a 12- or 14-hour work day and the privilege of either driving the truck through the next night, or sleeping sitting up in the front bench seat of the rig.  Do the math – it wasn’t a lucrative life!  Per-diem on the road was a new concept for me with this act.  I think I was paid $10/day for food, etc – I was delighted to discover that this happened every day on the road, with or without a gig.  I felt rich!

The year was 1985, and they had just released their Art of the State album.  The album didn’t do terribly well in the States, but they did get a few number one hits in Puerto Rico, of all places.  We would later head down there, but that’s the subject for another story.  I rode the AD wave throughout that spring and summer of ’85, but became increasingly concerned when I realized that there was no real schedule of tour dates for the fall.  Eventually I think I asked Kerry about this and learned that the band wasn’t quite sure what their direction would be.  I found work with a cabinet maker named Dieter Fust and spent time working in his shop most of the days when I wasn’t touring.

Working for Dieter was also a great education; I remain a woodworker to this day, but back then, I was merely an unskilled laborer in Dieter’s shop.  Dieter had been the sound man for Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, so it seemed like there was always someone from the road stopping by.  We often were commissioned to work on road cases, speaker cabinets, etc.  I recall building a nice little birch-laminate effects rack for Kerry’s studio during those days.

This period of time saw a gradual rise in my status in life: when starting with the band, I spent the first night on the floor of my friend, Wayne’s apartment (he had since married).  I rapidly sought my own address: a post-office box in Marietta, GA.  For the living part, I found a home in a keyboard stand case in the back of a rehearsal studio in downtown Atlanta.  I would dump out Kerry’s keyboard stands when we came off the road and lie down in the box, which was 6’4” long and had two inches of thick foam rubber on all sides of the case (a padded cell, basically).  I just had to be careful not to let the lid of the case lock when I got in, but I had become fairly adept at this routine, as I had been using the case for a bed on the road as well.  While going down the road from city to city, if I was not on driving duty, I would get into the back of the truck and have someone else close me in.  It wasn’t the most ideal situation (no bathroom, no food or drink, and no way to communicate with the driver or passenger), but when you are in that much sleep deprivation, it’s a very welcome thing!

By Thanksgiving time, I was getting pretty desperate for work and knew that it was time to make another change.  I had moved on from being a guitar tech to becoming AD’s lighting director (more learnings), but eventually became a pretty good LD.  I ended up with several prospects for work at that time, including DeGarmo & Key, plus several others prospects (Mylon Lefevre, Michael W. Smith, and Amy Grant).  The AD crew made somewhat of a “wholesale” move over to D&K – Gary went as the sound man / production manager, and I went as the lighting director (LD), and my good college friend, Jim, whom we had recruited to take my place as the guitar tech, all went together.  We moved to Memphis, where I took up residence in D&K’s “rehearsal house” on Morrison St.  Considering all that I had gone through in the past year and a half, this was a complete gift to me.  I was now making double my AD wages, out on a six-month long tour (100 dates), and living in a house, not an equipment truck or a road case!  I remember sitting on the front steps of that house on Morrison Street and just crying with joy after moving in.  It was overwhelming to be so well taken care of.

I recall the first of my D&K dates: Pittsburg, PA.  Somehow, I was unable to make the start of the tour with Gary and Jim, so I was flown from Memphis to Pittsburg and took a cab to the theater.  I arrived as an unknown, having never met the band or the other crew members.  I was up on the trusses pulling focus before the band even knew I was there.  Unfortunately, I had forgotten my handy crescent wrench in Memphis – the wrench with my nice little wrist strap to keep it from falling.  I was partway through with the focus when the band got into the sound check.  I continued on my job, focusing and tightening down the cans with the wrench.  About the time I was directly over Eddie’s keyboards, my wrench got loose from me and went clattering down, kersmack!  Right on top of Eddie’s keys.  He stopped playing (as did the whole band), hauled back, squinted up at the truss, turned to someone on stage and said “What’s his name?”, then proceeded to try hard not to laugh while yelling at me.  Again, not an auspicious beginning to a gig; I had a proper introduction after the show, in the first truck stop out of town.