Welcome

Hello, and welcome to my tour blog! I've had a few requests to keep some kind of journal to share, so this is it! I'll be posting some pictures as well.

You probably already have a basic idea of what I'm doing, but I'll use this first entry to go into a bit more detail.

I've worked for a stage production company called Live Technologies since June 2007. We provide lighting, audio, video and sets for live events ranging from music festivals, award shows, concerts, and corporate meetings. A few months ago people were talking about a new business opportunity which would be going on tour with the comedian, Jeff Dunham. Our company has never provided equipment or crew for a tour, so it would be a whole new thing for us. This opportunity came about because the head of our fabrication shop, Steve Quinn, knows Jeff's touring manager. They were not happy with their current production crew, so to make a long story short, we took it over!

Steve is pretty much our guy in charge on the road, and he has quite a bit of touring experience. He was on the road with Loverboy and AC/DC back in the 80s. Our audio technician also worked on the road with Fastball, Duncan Shiek and others. But this whole thing is pretty new to the rest of us. There is a total of 8 Live Tech employees on the tour. This has been good for the company because we've been losing quite a bit of buisiness lately since many companies are trying to save money because of the economy. It's also good for the tour crew because it's job security for at least the next 6 months, and we all got a decent pay raise.

They basically asked everyone if this was something they would want to do instead of throwing them into it whether they liked it or not. Not too many people were completely willing to do this, but I was! I knew it would be different and a challenge, but also a once in a lifetime experience. Before we left Steve was telling how how happy he was to get back out on the road, and that this should be a lot of fun for us. I still can't quite believe all of it. I just think of it as a job, but every once in a while I stop and realize what a big deal it is! It's been great so far, and I feel very lucky to be doing this.

So thanks for stopping by! I'm excited to share things with you. I started to write things in a little notebook for the first week of the tour so I'll be adding that here shortly. I'm sure after a while there won't bee too much to write because it will be a lot of the same thing going on. But for now, I hope you enjoy it!