The Anatomy of a Gig

So, last Sunday morning I was on the phone to a friend when I realised time was creeping onwards and that I'd have to go soon to start getting ready for the gig. When she expressed surprise that I'd be getting ready for an evening gig so early, I explained about how long it took to pack, drive down there, set up, sound check etc, and it got me thinking. . .

And here it is. The Anatomy of a Gig. A Gold Coast gig to be precise.

I’ll start off with the basics. The gig was due to start at 5pm down in Surfers Paradise, and was the usual 4 hour affair.


Mr Van and his...Van

I started getting ready at 1pm, sorted out clothes (Súnas has a moderate dress standard of no gigging in jeans, T-shirts or runners. Luckily enough this is something we all agree about, so we go to an effort –you have to look at us as well as listen after all!), checked through all my gear and retuned a new string that had broken the night before. I arrived to Mannie’s place at 2pm to find he’d been a very good boy and already loaded the van. We had a quick cup of coffee, waited for the girls to arrive then managed to set off about 20 mins later. The iPod was hooked up, and a truly bizarre play list of everything from Trad Irish to Bowie to Tom Petty to Roxette to Rachid Taha was soon thumping. After a frantic phone call from Mannie’s house, we returned to pick up the forgotten bodhran (my bad) and eventually got to Surfers just after 3.


Bridge tests my theory about blue lights, right before she kicks it over....

Set up take a fair bit of time. It’s usually quite a laugh, but there’s a lot of gear to lug and plug, and this generally takes about an hour, or a bit more if we’re mucking around. Basically, there are two sets of speakers to run, the ones you hear, called front of house, and our ones, which are called foldbacks (if we didn’t have those speakers on the floor in front of us, we wouldn't be able to hear each other, even in a fairly quiet room). Four microphones and the accompanying leads and stands, then four different instrument feeds and the assorted effects boxes and gumph for them. Hang the banner, arrange the lights (running power for everything from the central box too), a round of ciders, instrument stands. . . Then it’s time for the soundcheck, and this can take anything form 15 minutes to half an hour depending if there are any gremlins. Everything needs to be clear, tone-set and levelled with everything else, with care on the fiddle (which is a twitchy instrument at best) and the vocals. These settings vary from gig to gig, so we can’t just set and leave, oh, and they sometimes have to vary between what we hear and what you do (and believe it or not this is also dependant on what’s at our backs, be it a window, a wall, or a wooden panel). It sounds really farty, but one thing a sound engineer friend told me years ago is that most audiences don’t differentiate between simply bad sound, and a bad band. That’s to say if you’re a very tight, great band, but you’re badly mixed, a lot of people will still just think you’re bad. Unless you’re Lunasa, then you can play in the Concert Tent at Woodford in the middle of a powercut and still sound shockingly good. So we always take our time. Then it’s off to get changed, put on make up (Mannie) and have another cider (Bridge and Sair). I, of course, sit in a dark corner and meditate on life, the universe and my chords.


I think that's Patrick. Mannie insulted him and now they're brothers. It's an Irish thing.

The actual gig is kind of the easy part, though down at Surfers we pretty much play flat-out for four hours, with three breaks. We used to use set-lists but these days we just call it depending on the gig. Sunday was no exception. The usual bunch of mad buggers were in the house, so it was shouts and cheers from the get-go. It was great fun though, especially seeing Connor doing his dancing again! By the time we finished we were our usual 20 minutes overtime. Don’t know how this happens. I think it’s just because we enjoy ourselves so much.


Signing stuff is fun!

So, there’s a longish period to wind down, sell cds, meet people, sign them up to the mailing list, have a drink etc, then we have to start on breaking down the gear. Unlike setting up, this only takes about half an hour. We have to make sure all the instruments are cleaned, leads are free from cider spills (baby wipes are a godsend), and anything that’s given us trouble is marked before being put away. We see that the light that Bridge punted halfway across the stage is marked for replacement, and the appropriate fee removed from her apprentice's wages.

Then, food time. In Surfers on a Sunday night, we’re spoiled for choice. As long as that choice is takeaway and involves deep-frying something of dubious origin and biological status. We opted for a grilled chicken burgers, and because it was such a mild night (for Midwinter) we walked up and ate it on the beach. Ironically, we’re all on a health kick at the moment, so most of the food went half-eaten. Even Mannie left a bit of chicken in the bag (but that might have been more because the enormous Buddha of a man in a puffy jacket and a jewelled Raj turban was making eyes at him). Then we hit Starbucks for our usual tipple and it was back to the van and the ambient music cranked up for the drive home ('Winter’s Embrace' by Altus, this time, a lovely, hour-long piece of beauty -he gives his music away for free from his site, so go and enjoy!).


Bridge reflects on a manky chicken burger. Sarah oogles seagulls.

We stopped once at the deserted Yatala Pie Shop so Mannie could ‘stretch his legs’, then it was back to his place to unload the gear. By this time it was usually way past midnight, and Bridget still had another 40 minute drive home ahead of her.

Sunday was about 12 hours. 4 of which we were paid quite well for.

Wouldn’t swap it for anything. Seriously.


Listening to 'Regret Over the Wires' by Matthew Ryan