Salt Lake is at its best with a little snow on the peaks, beautiful as soon as I hit the ground. The downtown grid is one of the most confusing I’ve ever traveled, with almost every street named something like “east 200 st south”, so even the GPS on the way back to the venue seemed mixed up. Flying in day of show and jumping into a totally unfamiliar situation is a little nerve wracking and I wasn’t fully sure what to expect, despite having talked to the band and TM ahead of time about their needs and preferences.

The urban lounge is a good old fashioned rock club, graffiti covering the bathrooms, small, loud, and gritty, but the back stage area is relatively clean and the staff are all nice and helpful.

I’ve tried to anticipate problems despite being told all gear is in good shape. When I arrive everything is already set onstage, so I use the opportunity to take some pictures and note settings, pedal placement, signal routing, etc. There’s nowhere near enough time to assess everything, but I start with some immediate basics, adding Velcro cable keepers to separate cables, checking batteries, adding power supplies to pedals without them, dressing cords down with gaff tape do they’re not a tripping hazard… Before I know it the band is on stage and I shift gears to watching their stage presence, asking everyone what they’ll want throughout the night, and getting a feel for the performance.

Everyone is pretty self sufficient on stage and laid back off, so I get a good feeling about how it will all go. My biggest challenge will be learning which tunings are for which songs. With around ten different tunings and a song repertoire of 50 songs, it’s a lot to keep straight, and with only two guitars going through all those wild tunings, there’s not much margin for error. The band changes the set every night, will be hand writing the set list, and Steven will denote which guitars he wants to use for which song. Hopefully I’ll have time to note tunings as well and not screw anything up during the gig…

Below are just a few snaps of various spots on stage. Hopefully the settings and everything sink in; they’re straight forward, but I’ve had hardly any time to go through the gear. Cross your fingers for me tonight and I’ll try to update later…