On the streets outside Madison Square Garden yesterday, where the band Rascal Flatts was playing, you could see a huge number of semi-trailor trucks decorated with the band’s name and Tour 2009. I don’t know anything about this band’s shows–perhaps they use a lot of pyrotechnics or something–but how could a band possibly need twenty trucks of equipment to put on a show? Is it normal to have that much gear? And what type of gear might they be hauling around?
A lot of shows tour with the expectation that whatever venue they play in will be nothing more than a large flat space. eg: a stadium floor.
So, they bring a stage - lots and lots of decking panels and lots and lots of pipe and fittings to hold it all together. That’s bad enough. Next assumption is that the house PA system will be entirely unusable, so they need big powerful amplifiers and big speakers. Some lights would be nice as well.
Then there’s the band’s instruments. The road cases that protect the instruments from rough handling are bulky.
Rounding off the lot is all of the cables to hook it all together, microphone stands, a box of spare guitar picks, boxes of guitar strings, boxes of drumsticks, boxes of light bulbs, boxes of spare parts, tools…
And that’s not counting any pyro - the steel mortars and whatnot that contain the effects are pretty bulky and heavy.
It gets to a point that you’re surprised they only need 20 semis. And then, there’s a point where it’s bragging that your show travels with 20 semis.
I’ve never heard of this band before, but the following is a basic outline of your typical major rock band’s tour hardware inventory.
**Lighting: **
Hundreds of lighting instruments
Trusses and scaffolds to support them
Dimmer racks
Lighting control panels
Cable reels (many, and large)
Sound:
Dozens of speakers, some very large
Amp racks
Several large mixing consoles
Effects racks
Mike cases
Mike stands
Cable reels (many, and large)
Band:
Instrument cases
Instrument amps and speakers
Effects boxes
Drum cases
Piano/organ/keyboard cases (can be very large and heavy)
Costumes
Set:
Depending on the size and complexity of the act, this can range from huge to nothing. Get a load of the set for the Rolling Stones’ A Bigger Band World Tour a few years ago. That set alone was probably 20 trailers full.
Miscellaneous:
Tool cases
Spare parts
Bottled water
Food
Groupies
Booze and blow
All of the above travel in their own custom-fitted Anvil Cases which protect them very well, but also increase the total volume and weight to be transported.
So you can see how you might be able to fill up a few trucks.
Oh, and BTW, it’s “trailer,” not “trailor.”
Well, life is a highway.
Would they need two of everything? So that while they’re dismantling in one city, another team is erecting in their next city.
And Video equipment. Not mentioned above but also cumbersome. Got to have the visuals these days. Huge multiple screens for the folks in the way back to actually see the performers. Some cities you can rent a lot of the equipment - others you have to drag it all with you.
T-shirts/souvenirs/cds-dvds and just plain stuff. Plasma TVs and gaming consoles for the band and crew to play with instead of (in addition to) tearing up motel rooms.
I think it’s all of David Lee Roth’s brown M&Ms.
A big production (Stones for instance) use 2 complete sets + one base set
The base-set is the stuctural stuff that takes long to build and is the last part to load out.
So a really big arena production doesn’t travel with just 20 trailers, more like 60.
A big indoor set will be much smaller but because they are expected to load out and in in a very short time they cannot pack very efficiently so they will leave time consuming stuff in big pieces that are fast to set up but take lots of room in the trailer. For instance a drum kit will fit in a car but a drumriser with the drumkit on it will need a medium sized van.
Even the groupies?
They’re a country band, not a rock band.
typically these are provided by the venue/producer as specified in a contract rider
While some groupies and blow undoubtedly travel with the band, lots of both travel to rock shows independently.
For some things they need two so they have a backup. I was at a Tom Petty concert once when he blew a guitar amp. I was amazed that ten minutes later they dropped a new one in and went on with the concert (during which time he played This Land Is Your Land sans amp).
I was backstage after a Who concert and they started moving stuff onto the trucks the minute the concert ended and they moved very fast. Now most outdoor “sheds” are designed so that the trucks back right up to the stage so it’s very easy to load and unload the trucks. They didn’t have a lot of trucks that I saw, their stage setup in 97 was pretty basic.
BTW, some people get backstage passes that only allow access after the show but in many cases that means you don’t meet the band. What happens is they delay you from going backstage for a minute or two and when you get back there the band is already in their limos on the way to the hotel or wherever they are going.
So THAT’S how groupies travel!
Even if they did, the two sets of trailers would never need to be in the same place at once, so you’d still need enough stuff to fill twenty trailers at a given show.
True dat. I saw a photo recently (sorry, no link) that showed how Neil Peart’s massive kit is completely assembled and bolted to the rotating drum riser. It’s transported just like that. When the arrive at the venue the truck is backed up to the stage and the whole works is rolled into position. After that it’s just a matter of hooking up all the microphones and cables.
Incidentally, I read an interview with Rush’s road manager a while back. The band has used mostly the same gang of roadies for most of their career, and those guys have their system down to such a fine science that they can have the entire stage set disassembled and loaded onto the trucks in about 40 minutes. Granted, Rush uses a much simpler stage setup than most bands of their stature. When I saw them at The Gorge Amphitheater in central WA last year, I didn’t see anywhere near 20 trailers, unless they were very well hidden.
FWIW, I used to work as a stagehand at a theater with about 3,000 seats. The bands that played that venue didn’t need to construct a stage, and they didn’t have any really fancy sets, pyro, video, or whatever, but I would say that the average headlining at the time (Sting, Sinead O’Connor, that chick that was married to Kurt Cobain, MC Hammer… oh, man, am I dating myself) would have about four to six trucks of stuff, if my memory serves.
Actually, sound systems and lighting are much, much smaller than they used to be. When I was a sound and light engineer, speakers were huge for the amount of sound they produced. But modern “line arrays” produce far more sound per cubic foot of speaker. Often, the amplifiers are built into the speakers, eliminating the need for separate amp racks (which are also much more efficient theses days) and speaker cables. Even the mixing boards are getting smaller. When I started doing sound, a 16 channel board weighed 200 lbs. Now, I can mix 128 channels on a board I can tuck under one arm.
And while all rock tours in the 1970s had hundreds of PAR lights on trusses, because you needed separate lights for each color desired and area needing to be lit, modern computerized moving, color-changing lights can provide millions of colors aimed anywhere on the stage or at the audience from a few locations.
I’m sure that you know the story of how the “No Brown M&Ms” clause was a smart way to see if the arena had read the contract.
Speaking of Van Halen, I used to work as a stagehand at the Frank Erwin Center in Austin and worked their concert for either the 5150 or the OU812 tour (I can’t remember which.) They had 21-24 trucks, a little bigger than most big name acts. As well as I can remember, this was the order of their load-in:[ul][li]At 8:00AM, the first trucks back down the ramp and onto the floor. The stage is unloaded in sections and rolled to the back of the house (at the opposite end of the floor from the ramps and where the worst seats on the floor will be in twelve hours.) More trucks back down to the bottom of the ramp, and the lighting trusses are unloaded.[/li][li]While the roadies inside the trucks control the flow of stage and lighting trusses onto the floor, other technicans gather local crew (stagehands) and manage the assembly of the stage and lighting.[/li][li]Work on the stage and trusses continues. Other trucks back down the ramp and unload the lights and winch boxes, big and freakishly heavy Anvil cases full of motors and chains. These are staged nearby until needed. The lights are clamped to the trusses. Lighting techs on the ground work with local crew in the rafters of the house to get the winches connected and ready to lift the trusses.[/li][li]The stage is beginning to take shape. A truck is unloaded, and half of it’s load is Marshall speaker cabinets. Two of the cabinets are loaded with speakers (one for Sammy and one for Eddie), and the remainder are dummy cabinets. These are all loaded onto the stage. The drum set is also loaded, along with at least some of the monitors and sound reinforcement.[/li][li]In the meantime, more house speakers and power amps have been set up around the lighting trusses.[/li][li]Sometime in late morning, the trusses are lifted into position in the air at the front of the house. A cry goes out, and all available hands go to the assembled stage at the back of the house. Everyone pushes the now assembled stage to the front of the house. With this one move, the entire set–stage, lighting and sound–is about 80% complete.[/li][li]Doug Finn, the stage manager for the Erwin Center, starts telling his stagehands to take turns getting lunch–sub sandwiches and cokes are provided in a room backstage.[/li][li]The amount of work to be done tapers off quickly, and around 2:00 or 3:00, most of the local crew is standing around. Doug starts walking from stagehand to stagehand, telling each one in turn that they’re fired, and that he will see them back at 10:00 that night for the loadout.[/ul][/li]
As a rule, loadouts were easier and usually a lot more manic. It’s a lot easier to tear things apart than to put them together, and everyone wanted to get the job done so they could either get some sleep or have some sort of party. In any case, the trucks were usually on the road sometime before 2:00, 4:00 at the latest.
The trucks were all loaded to the ceiling, usually in layers with plywood floors laid down as each layer was loaded. Thinking about it, I’d guess that the load for the average touring act fell equally into five categories: stage; lighting; speakers; lighting and sound controls and amps, and band equipment and props. This was back in the late '80s, at the end of the “big speaker/hundreds of lights” era mentioned by gaffa.
As high as ticket prices have risen, the rental costs for the sound and lighting have not risen anywhere near as much. So sound and light companies are expected to provide a constantly improving service, at the same price and to take up less space in the truck. I got out of sound and into video - mainly so I’d never have to lift another A2 bass cabinet ever again.
Which makes me wonder who is getting all of the money (I know, it’s the promoters and record companies, but…)
Back in the Eighties, it seemed that one lighting and sound company had a lock on all of the arena-sized acts. I don’t think that they hired the trucks, but the sheer amount of equipment they brought along meant that they controlled the loading. The only band that didn’t use this company was KISS. The load-in for that show was a mess–we were still putting the stage together when it was time for soundcheck. There wasn’t even a packing order at the end of the night; everything went into the nearest truck. As competitive as the industry is, you would think that the one organization that had their act together could hold onto market share.