LUpton w RB & the Gang in SCC, FL, 5/18/18 ... and soccer?

Hi all,

My 1st attempt at following in the footsteps, and groveling at the feet of, the master, BassCliff, in attempting a gig report or 2. Belay any flogging until the end, if you please, I'm old and decrepit...

1st off, Friday the 18th. A gig with the 13 member RB & The Gang group. We play 50's -80's tunes to the various retirement communities here in the Tampa Bay area, among other venues. This particular engagement was for the Sun City Center Chamber of Commerce Spring Dance, an open-to-the-public, BYOB event held in, well, Sun City Center, a retirement-ish suburb just south of Tampa. Several members of the group live close around here, so it guess it qualifies us as a 'grandad' band. I live across the I-75 from there, so it was a 10 min commute to the gig. Works for me.

Load out from home goes into my trusty 2015 Kia Soul.
Just big enough to fit my stuff, and gets good gas mileage too.


The venue is in the middle of a huge golf-course community...


Here we are...

It's a decent-sized facility, a lot like many of the other rec centers in the area.


When I arrive, Mike, our roadie/sound guy, and several of the band are already unloading the trailer. Yeah, we have that much stuff...


The room is almost as big as a high-school gym, with a large stage set into one wall. The setup dance begins - we bring our own PA and some staging for every gig.


Mike has a novel approach to PA cable storage and transport...a file cabinet. Mics in a drawer, mic cables in a drawer, power cables in a drawer, etc... The cabinet stays in the trailer on his property. We also rehearse at Mike's house. He gets 2 shares of the pay split for his troubles.

PA gear consists of a Soundcraft digital mixer w stagebox, Turbosound mains, and JBL + misc stage monitors. We pretty much fill up the stagebox...

The Carvin power amp runs part of the monitor system.

Guitarist Eric runs a Mesa amp and a new-to-him Line 6 processor.

I'm helping him get it all organized. He's an ex-metalhead trying to wrap his head around pop/R&B guitar playing. He's getting there, slowly but surely.

My arsenal for the night:

Bacchus 533 5 string (acquired from TB classifieds) w Delano pickups and EMG preamp, and a recently acquired (again from TB classifieds), soon to be the subject of an NBD post, Warmoth 32" Jazz w Delano and Nordstrand pickups and MM-clone 2 band pre. Amp is a Carvin BX1500 into a Fearful 15/6. The Carvin is normally the backup to my Mesa D800, but it took a tumble during load-in today and stopped working...argh...so the Carvin was pressed into service.

Here's the rest of my office. Music stands are NOT optional with this group. There are many custom arrangements, medleys, and key-adjusted-for-singers songs in the repertoire, plus 3 horn parts for 75% of the tunes. As I am MD for the group (I didn't jump, I was pushed...),I write the arrangements and horn parts, along w playing bass.I also run monitors from the Ipad in my spare(!) time...

The other tablet is a 13" Android running the SetList Helper app. I make PDF's of the charts and display them there during the show.

Stage is set, awaiting soundcheck. We've played this room about a dozen times, so soundcheck is mostly a formality.

It takes a good sized stage to hold a group of this size - 6 singers (3 male, 3 female), std rhythm section, and 3 horns.

Okay, enough of this junk. Back in the next post to play some tunes so folks can dance.

 

Now to the gig - Here is the band:

Eric on guitar


Tony on keys:


Ray on drums:

Animal the Muppet is our unofficial mascot...

Our crack(ed) horn section: Al on tenor sax, Don on trumpet, and Mary Beth on bari sax.

Don and Mary Beth are married. Mary Beth is also the unofficial 'band mom'. She can barely see over the bari to her music...

Singerbabes: Flo, Judy and Anita. I'd go on the road backing these three any time...


The guys: RB, Ron and Charlie. Charlie is not a ghost, just brash lighting. Sound guy Mike took this picture, so I'm gonna pass the buck to him for the composition of the shot...

RB, on the left, is the BL, and sings baritone and doo-wop bass parts. He has recently recovered from brain tumor microsurgery, and is currently undergoing radiation and chemo treatments. To me, it's a wonder he is at the gig at all...

A couple of action shots. I realized too late that I didn't have any pictures of me, so look for the ugly SOB back behind Judy...

Again, Mike took these, so I wasn't in control. Sorry...

Then, we're done. 2 hour and a half sets, over 70 tunes or pieces of tunes (like in medleys), and we still gotta strike and get outta Dodge.


One each tired-a$$ bass player drives home...

Still have another days work tomorrow - something completely different...

Thanks for looking. Sorry about the lack of CAS and food shots. My dinner was from Subway, if you can picture that...

 

And now the soccer part.

I freelance doing audio for TV sports, and one of my ongoing gigs is working for the Tampa Bay Rowdies organization (in the USL minor-league), mixing their game broadcasts for local TV, and sometimes ESPN3. The games are held in beautiful downtown St. Petersburg, FL, across the bay from where I live, so I have a picturesque drive to work on those days, over the Sunshine Skyway bridge.

The stadium is Al Lang Field, a former minor-league baseball park, located right on the waterfront in downtown St Pete. This is the view from one of the stadium entrances:

On Saturdays, the parking lot is filled with an event called the Saturday Morning Market. There's lot of food and other stuff for sale. It runs til 2 PM, then the lot has to be a real parking lot again. Part of this lot, and the street in the previous picture, is cordoned off every March to become part of the St Petersburg Grand Prix course, the opening event in the yearly Indy Car race series.


It has been very rainy in Florida this past week, so when I arrive, I am not surprised to see the grounds crew working with the field tarp. This can cover the entire soccer pitch, and must have cost a pretty penny...


The small broadcast facility is permanently installed in the press box area of the former minor-league baseball stadium.

This is my 'office': 2 Presonus mixers ganged together into a 48 in, 8 group, stereo out configuration, plus the usual spkrs, video monitors, and other peripheral gear, and crammed into a former radio announce booth. Yes, I actually use 40 of those inputs for this show.


Here's the real announce booth:

The huge TV in the 2nd shot is used as a backdrop for the announcers when they are doing their 'stand-up' portions of the broadcast.

This is the control room. It's not a $10 mil TV truck, but it does the job, and in HD...

This is where the instant replay machines are controlled. It's all video servers - not a single actual videotape machine in the building.


And this is Engineering. The guy on the left, Tyler, controls the cameras, tweaking them so they all look matched when cuts are made. Ed, the guy on the right, is the chief engineer of the facility. All of the equipment mainframes are in here, as well.

We use 10 cameras on the show, and this is just for a local/cable broadcast. Think of how much stuff is used for something like the Super Bowl...


Another shot of the stadium and surroundings, plus the very cloudy sky. Tampa Bay got drenched later in the day, but the field was in good enough shape to play on that night, thanks to the cool tarp. The Rowdies managed a 2-2 tie against the Pittsburgh Riverhounds last night.


Thanks for looking at my 'other' gig !

 

Thanks! I am still not worthy. I did this since this is our last gig til August, and our BL Ray (RB of RB and the Gang) is going to be undergoing radiation and chemo treatments for cancer during that time. We already have stuff booked into the fall and New Years, so the band will be carrying on when he gets well.

 

Yes, it's always everybody. Ray (RB) doesn't believe in cutting the group down so some can play while others stay home. It's also a 'retirement' band, so no one depends on the income from playing, which is good, since we only play one or two gigs a month.

Mike's 2 cuts of pay are worth it to us - he transports and stores the band gear, we rehearse at his house, and he runs live sound. I did the majority of the initial PA setup as far as board presets, routing, and assignments go, but he pushes faders at the gigs. I can't do it all...

 

I left it all at the gig...

 

Thanks!

Re: food shots - do you really wanna see me scarf down a Subway sandwich between soundcheck and the gig?

I didn't think so...

 

Let's see,

3 announcer headsets - 2 main, 1 bkup
2 announcer hand mics
2 wireless mics for field reporter - 1 main, 1 bkup
3 mics for the pregame show - 2 main, 1 bkup
1 ref wireless mic - split from house PA
1 wireless mic split from the house PA for National Anthem only
House PA line feed
2 crowd mics (stereo pr)
2 mics on handheld cameras
8 mics to pick up action on the field - 2 goal, 4 corners, far center, near center
stereo music cue playback from digital cart machine unit
stereo 'swish' sound from video switcher for replay wipe video effect
2 4 ch video replay servers
1 2 ch video replay server
2 returns from telephone interface units
stereo CD player playback for incidental music (occasional use only, but when you need it...)
stereo Ipod/tablet playback for 'something to listen to while setting up' music - mp3, Pandora, etc...

That's just off the top of my head...

 

Thanks Cliff,

Yeah, as you know, these 3 hr gigs rapidly turn into 8 hr days with setup and strike factored in... and Florida is indeed very different climate and terrain-wise from SoCal, where you are, and where I lived (San Diego area) for over 40 yrs before moving out here to be with the grandkids. I'm still adapting...

RB books the band, and currently, we mostly play these retirement community centers for some of their various organizations. We've sort of become the Sun City Center 'house band', for better or worse, over the last couple of years. He's like the grumpy uncle that everyone looks up to because of his experience, and he decided from the get-go that it would be 'everyone or no one' on gigs, and while they aren't paying corporate-style rates for these types of gigs, it keeps us in pocket and gas money, and fosters a sense of family with the inclusiveness. Some in the band want to break out and do a bit more, so we'll see where that goes along with Ray's recovery.

Thanks everyone for all for the kind words and thoughts,

Larry