We Need A Roadie

     Back when I was in university, I was in a rock band.  While I loved playing, what I didn’t love was having to constantly lug all of the instruments and equipment around.  There were amplifiers, mic stands, and all of the PA equipment.  It was bad enough hauling and setting up before the performance, but it was really terrible afterwards.

    We were always exhausted after playing late into the night, then we had to break down everything, carry it out to our vehicles and haul everything home, unload it all, to store in the house.  I believe that doing all of that every time we played was partially responsible for our band breaking up.

    So flash forward fifty years and here I am doing it again.  I took the photo above last night, because I finally found a good way to pack everything in the back of the car, and wanted the photo, so next time I could see where everything went.

    During the cold months our jam plays every Tuesday in the narrow McBride Train Station Lobby.  Because it is rather small, the acoustics are very good and loud, so I don’t take my electric guitar, guitar  amp, or the PA speaker and amp.  That makes things a lot easier, but during the summer, the jam plays outside on the train station porch.  When playing outside, the sound of the vocals and un-amplified instruments, dies pretty quickly in the air, so we need the amplification, and that means hauling all of the equipment back an forth every week.

    In the photo you see the music stands, the guitar amp, the PA amp in the blue crate, and one PA speaker with the plywood back.  You can’t see the guitar, mandolin, song books, and bag of things like harmonicas, guitar stand, and other paraphernalia, which are sitting in the back seat.  Also there are the two mic stands which had not been put in the car when I took the picture.

    While lugging all this stuff around every week is still a pain, I am happy to do it, because I get so much joy out of playing music with everyone in our jam.

You can see my paintings at:  davidmarchant2.ca