We woke up Thursday morning to find that a cold front had moved across West Texas. Temperatures had dropped from a pleasant 85 degrees to a bone-chilling 45 degrees overnight. The steady drizzle of rain made the air feel even colder! This was a great way to begin our “crazy schedule” for the next few days.
We headed over to the City Auditorium for an 11:30am arrival/12noon load in. This is an old, majestic theatre in downtown. We have performed here in the past and remember the town people has being a lot of fun. We were being sponsored by Angelo State University Performing Arts Committee so most of the load in crew would be volunteers. As it turns out, the volunteers were a bit late showing up and load in was pushing to 12:30pm. Rick, Laura, Josh, Katie and the gang started ramping the cases to the stage under David’s direction and Cindy’s stage guidance. We were in and the day of putting the show up began….
We had several challenges come at us throughout the day. The first came before we even began to load in and David noticed air leaking from one of our trailer tires. Jason, the go-to-guy from the Auditorium was right on it calling one of his friends to come over and repair it for us at the venue. The most significant challenge came from OUR equipment – the controller for our intelligent lighting system decided it no longer wanted to work. Now, this shouldn’t have been a surprise for me since this is the prototype for the Universal Controller – the first one they ever made. It’s been on the road for almost 13 years and done thousands of performances. Today, it decided it would need to take some rest.
Once again, Jason came to the rescue (as he would many times during the day) and called a colleague who owned a lighting company. At 5pm, another Universal Controller arrived at the venue and Kylie and I started the daunting task of writing NEW programs for the lights! There would be no way to get all of them done before the show but at least we had intelligent lighting!
We were hauling to get things ready before the doors would open at 7pm…and then, a last minute television interview for the local NBC affiliate was arranged literally seconds before the doors. I rushed to do the interview; ran to the dressing room; changed and we were on!
Cindy did an outstanding job with this show!! as did the entire crew. The show went well and the audience was great. It wasn’t a huge crowd (about 400) but they were excited about being there. And, for us, that’s the most important thing – it was a fun show!
We had a great load out crew and made record time hauling all that equipment down the ramp and into the trailer…it was time to head to Whataburger (one of our favorite Texas treats) and then to bed! The “crazy schedule” has officially begun. In the morning, we’re off to Grapevine and the Historic Palace Theatre.