12/27/2023 0 Comments Hella mega tour![]() ![]() Morgan takes comfort in the fact that he won’t be working in packed clubs (“a sweaty mess, and that’s the ultimate transmission medium for Covid”). Is there going to be a strict no-strangers rule on the bus? Will that be enforced when we stop and restock the bus for food and other essentials? All those little details have to be worked out.” He’s been told answers to those questions are forthcoming. “And if so, who’s going to do it? You can’t expect the bus driver to be a housekeeping service as well. “Does the bus have to be sanitized every day?” he wonders. But other aspects of travel give him pause. Morgan isn’t concerned about his coworkers, who will likely all be vaccinated by the start of the tour. “I’m wondering what the vaccine policy in the building is going to be.” “I’m wondering how much physical separation there’s actually going to be,” he says. “People can walk right up to me and tell me how much they like James Taylor and or tell me an interesting James story from years back.” Now, though, he worries about those fans - who may or may not have been vaccinated - getting literally in his face, and whether and how they’ll be screened before they walk into the venue. “We’re normally pretty relaxed out there,” he says. Like most front-of-house mixers, Morgan is the technician you see sitting in front of a soundboard in the middle of an arena, with only bike racks between him and concertgoers. My hands are busy all the time.”įans Are 'Devastated' Beyoncé's 'Renaissance' Tour Isn't Coming to Pittsburgh Anymore It’ll come right back, like riding a bike.” In that setting, Morgan is willing to wear a mask, but gloves are out of the question: “The job is too tactile for that. I have to put that together, and I’m looking forward to it. Steve Gadd may be really digging in, and people around him are going to have to play harder some nights. But it’s never played with the same intensity or sometimes even the same notes as the night before. “There’s no prerecorded stuff,” he says of the tour. Morgan admits he may have to relearn parts of his job after more than a year of not pushing knobs and faders on his board. In his job, Morgan mixes the sound of each show as it’s being performed, angling for just the right nightly balance of voices and instruments. One of the greatest pleasures I’ve had an engineer is just listening to these guys play every night.” ![]() “I get to mix the best band in the business,” he says of Taylor’s musicians, “and it’s a stellar organization and such a joy to work with those guys all the time. But the postponement of those shows - and the $100,000 in income he lost - has forced him to resume this year and possibly next, with Taylor and/or another boss, Stevie Nicks.įor Morgan, who’s worked for Taylor and Fleetwood Mac since 2005 (and for Paul Simon for 20 years before that), the resumption of touring satisfies him on several levels. Morgan, 72, was planning to retire last year, after one final tour with Taylor. “I realized that being on the road really does fulfill my soul.”īut some crew members facing months of road work are balancing relief and trepidation. “The entire time, start to finish, even the hectic parts, I realized how much I missed it,” he says. Still, Weldon says the experience was “amazing,” even when he was rushing around putting out various technical fires (figuratively speaking) that night. The setup wasn’t quite the same as Weldon’s normal work conditions: Only half the number of crew were there - all socially distanced, pre-tested for the virus, and wearing masks and gloves. Three months ago, Weldon had a taste of his former life when he was hired to work on a virtual show for Royce Da 5’9″ in Los Angeles. Yet as stoked as those workers are at the thought of their livelihood being restored after it was abruptly taken from them, they’re also grappling with one of the most daunting challenges ever faced in their business. This summer and into the fall, touring professions like Coble will find themselves back on the road after a debilitating year of no work and perilous financial conditions caused by the concert business lockdown that began in March 2020. It sends tingles down my spine as I’m talking about it.” “After all these years, I love those moments when we’re about go on stage, all the apprehension and energy. “They’ll all be laughing and you’ll hear the crowd getting louder and louder, and then you call ‘House lights!’ and it’s, boom, the show’s on,” he says. ![]() At Dallas’ Globe Life Field on July 24th, the tour manager will gather together the members of Green Day from a warm-up room and walk them to the stage for the first show of their long-delayed Hella Mega tour with Fall Out Boy and Weezer. ![]() The moment Richard Coble has been anticipating will arrive in just over a month. ![]()
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