The Club Systems on the Road.
 
 

Among the many  problems you can be faced with traveling on a club road tour, arriving to "load in" at the club can still be full of suprises too.  That is the time when you find out just what, if any, of the conditions of the band's contract have been met.

From my road experience I have found  three things that tell me everything about the level of a clubs operation.

The first is the friendliness of the people working for the Club you make first contact with.

The second is how nice they have the dressing rooms setup for the comfort of a tired traveling road band & crew.

Third, the condition, type, and make up of their sound system.

This alone tells you the level of importance the club owner/s place on the sound quality they want THEIR paying customers to hear.  Which then becomes the sound quality standard for your band's performance that night.  This alone, speaks volumes, and reflects on the band's  performance.  Small stages and poorly thought out house/monitor systems are what makes for a nightmare gig from hell.

Note: A small system is not always a bad thing, and a big system is not always a good thing.  But a big, bad, and loud system, is the worst thing.

In the summer I got the idea to shoot some pictures of the sound systems I had to work with in the clubs for this page.  I had taken pictures at most all the gigs from two short road tours.  After looking at all the pictures, I decided that we all know about the sound systems from hell, and the so-called engineers who run them.

This page is not about that.  It is intended as a general information page for the musician to get a feel of what to expect from the different sound systems that are being used in the clubs today, and to give a little insight to my approach to FOH Engineering.

Below are some of the systems that I had to work with.  Some of them were a little stressful to get the most out of them.  But when the owner, or their house sound man walks up to you and asks, "How did you get it to sound so good?", you know then you are on top of your game, and everyone is going to be happy tonight.