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Last night, Khallus opened up for Small Town Titans at the Warehouse in Clarksville, TN. It was an awesome crowd and a really fun show, but it makes me wonder....
Is there ever a show where you can say "Yeah, it went without a hitch."?
Wrought with technical difficulties, it was definitely challenging. Khallus made some ambitious changes and upgrades to our stage set, which we debuted last night. We constructed 3 sections of wall, each of them with a small TV which plays supporting video clips to help drive the theme of the song home. We knew it would be ambitious for a small band in an opening slot. After all, as an opener, you basically have about 15 minutes to get set up to play and we try to be 100% off the stage within 5 minutes after we say goodbye. To us, it's a mark of professionalism.
The sets looked great under the lights and the fog, but we hit our first snag with the video playback. The DVD that had the supporting videos wouldn't play! So there we were, getting all ready to go and the DVD wouldn't play. The whole system was tested operational not 2 hours prior, but now no video. All that work.....for no video. My heart sank.
In comes a fan and good friend of the band, offering to lend us her DVD player that is at her house not a mile away. She returns 15 minutes later with a DVD player, video boots up....disaster averted.
(Lesson learned......redundancy. I will have 2 copies of the DVD and 2 players on hand for the next show. I should have known better.)
Once we got going, I almost got through the first song when my body pack for my wireless system failed. Not a dead battery....just component failure. So once again, I can't hear myself sing. Singing deaf. I finally gave up and pulled my pack off. Doug, the house engineer, saw what was happening and made adjustments so I could hear myself through the floor monitors, which helped get me through the show.
So my plan to have a smooth and seamless video debut....It died.
My plan to have freedom of movement all over the stage and not worry about feeding back as I moved out of my "safe spot"?.....It died.
They say the first casualty in a battle is the plan.
So...We got through it. The crowd energy was awesome and contagious. We had such a great time and got tons of positive feedback from the crowd and the other bands. People seemed to love the stage setup, so we are glad that was a success. Just goes to show that from the other side of the stage the majority of technical glitches, missed song cues and occasional sour notes are barely discernible. Hell of a show.
As always, we will pick through the show from beginning to end, from prep to loadout, and make the next show better. We don't ever want to be in a place where we don't feel we need to make improvements for the next show.
So technical difficulties? We men get them....it's all in how you adapt your performance. See you out there!
VM