So I woke up way too damn early. I had hoped this would give me some time before the show to get some non-band things done before the madness began. And…well, I did get a new headlight for the car.
But then at 11 I had to roll over to the StromChastic practice space and start loading gear. As I’m The Guy With The Big Car we managed to fit all the stuff that didn’t fit into Ned’s Honda or…uh, Berger’s Honda into the back and schlept them to the club in time for soundcheck. The it was time to run over and snag Iris. We got most of their gear in my car, too. We got a little waylaid on the way over to the club – I had to stop for gas, and Reagan desperately needed some bottled water after his jog. And then Reagan was a Good Samaritan, leaping out of my car at a stoplight to help and older gent who was struggling to get his trailier hitched back up to his car after it fell off in a major intersection. So, that taken care of, it was back to The Inferno!
Got Iris dropped off, caught the tail-end of Stromkern’s soundcheck, and then I ran home. I realized that this point that it was 1:40pm and I hadn’t actually eaten anything, so a brief stop for a sub was required.
Got home, started getting ready. The ever-lovely Robin Schmoldt showed up to give me a hand with the merch, rolling all the tishirts, doing count-in for me, and just generally organizing the hell out of everything. Dan and Chuck showed up, we all oogled Chuck’s shiny new pickup (which would come in handy later), and then blisterd through a rehearsal of the set, packed everything up, tossed it in the NullDeviceMobile, and went forth to sound check.
Thank god we have a small equipment list. Soundchecks were a little behind, but it wasn’t bad. We got setup, checked, and struck in like 20 minutes. The whole club staff was pulling triple-duty helping the bands, getting the club sorted, getting the food vendors going, etc. Matt Fanale (the promoter responsible for this insanity) was doing about 14 things at once, and still managing to crack jokes about Stochastic Chuck.
We got all our merch deposited with the divine Lisa Quatmann, who had driven up form Chicago just to help us all out.
I was sent on an errand to retreive Iris from their hotel, but when I arrived only Andrew was ready, so he hopped in my car and the others opted to take a cab closer to their set time.
Then it was time to kick back, and wait for the show to start…