Sometimes being a musician and knowing people can lead to some cool opportunities. The drummer who played on my first CD is a guy named Chris Snykus. I've known Chris for over four years now; he's currently the drummer for Perfect Thyroid and The Big Shoe, and he's the shop manager at Firehouse Productions in Red Hook.
Firehouse Productions is a live sound company that handles sound for major tours and events such as Neil Diamond, Peter Gabriel, VH1 Storytellers, and the MTV Video Music Awards. This Sunday they are handling the sound for the 2011 Tony Awards at the Beacon Theatre in New York, and in an effort to test out some new equipment before it was all loaded in this week, I was asking to come be part of a small jam session last wednesday night. Very cool.
The equipment was actually a tractor trailer that is already completely wired to run sound for a live show simply by running little more than a few cables to the stage. It's compact, it's organized, it's easy to set up, it looks cools, and we got to be the guinea pigs. We set up on the complete other end of the building - Chris on drums, Eli on bass, Brett on guitar, and me on keyboards. We were miked, given in-ear and floor monitors, and basically told to have at it while they worked out any and all kinks that appeared in the system. We started out with some jamming and soon dug into legendary versions of "Too Hot" by Kool & the Gang, as well as "Careless Whisper" by Wham! And they gave us pizza and beer ("Steeeella!"). Needless to say my first trip to Firehouse Productions gets two thumbs up.
I wonder if they would let me move in.
So, what do you think? Too many links? I went a little happy here.
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