Mix Live Blog: Pardon the Delay

File this one under “we almost didn’t make the gig.” Here’s the setup…

On Thursday, March 27, we had a show at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee. The following day we’d be at the Robins Theatre in Warren, Ohio, which is about an hour from Cleveland. Flying from Milwaukee to Cleveland sounds simple, but the reality is that you can’t fly nonstop, and even with a connection, we’d arrive in Cleveland way too late for a show day.

Weeks earlier, the band’s travel agent (aka St. Roy) and I figured out that the only thing to do would be to fly into Akron/Canton, also about an hour from Warren. The unpleasant part was that this involved a 7:00 a.m. flight from Milwaukee with a connection through Chicago. That meant a 4:00 a.m. wakeup and a 4:40 a.m. lobby call. Ouch. I was hoping to get four hours of sleep, but it wasn’t to be; by the time my head hit the pillow, it was closer to 1:00 a.m. Double ouch. Did I mention that we would have a two-and-a-half-hour layover in Chicago? Good grief.

(Note: We briefly considered driving the entire way, but 500 miles is an awful lot of driving.)

While waiting at the gate in Milwaukee, we were informed that our flight was delayed about an hour—no big deal, we had that long layover in Chicago as a cushion. We landed in Chicago with an hour and a half until the connecting flight would depart. After jogging 10 laps around O’Hare to pass some time, I headed for the gate, only to learn that the flight crew arrived late at a gate on the other side of the airport (in a different ZIP code), so the flight might be delayed while they did their lap around the airport.

A few minutes later, it was announced that there was a mechanical issue with the plane—but no worries, United is going to see if they can borrow an aircraft from another carrier. Sure they are. Then we hear that the flight is further delayed because the “team is waiting on the arrival of parts to complete their repairs.” I guess no one had a spare CRJ (regional jet) laying around.

Do they think we believe this?

Instead of a 10:40 a.m. departure, we were now looking at 11:45, which would put us down in Akron/Canton around 2:15 p.m., with an hour still to drive to Warren. I hate arriving late for load-ins, so this is hardly what I had in mind but it’s still do-able. Did I mention that we’d need to pick up rental cars in Akron/Canton? I texted our production manager “Big Jim” London, a dear friend and one of the best people on the planet, who was already at the Robins. He tells me, “Don’t worry, we have you covered.” I have faith.

Fortunately, the Akron/Canton airport is small, so rental car pickup requires no more than walking across the road from the terminal to the parking lot. No shuttle buses required. Yay! It’s raining. Boo! By the time we’re driving out of the airport, it starts coming down in torrents.

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We pull up to the theater at 4:30 p.m. Big Jim already has the backline in place with new heads on the drum kit, and the house crew is starting to pin (wire) the stage for us. My crew guys go from 0 to 60 in about 15 minutes, never ceasing to amaze me. I’m truly blessed, even if I am Mr. Crankypants due to lack of sleep and being abused by the airlines.

Other late-breaking news: Last night, one of the bandmembers mentioned to me that he wasn’t feeling well, so when we arrived in Warren, he went to a nearby treat-and-release. He’ll miss soundcheck, but will be able to do the gig. Okay.

It’s almost 6:00 p.m. at this point and we’re working through a line check. The band wants to come down, and I’m doing my best to hold them off while we sniff out a few suspect lines in the audio snake. Originally, we planned to be done with soundcheck by 6:00 p.m. Now it doesn’t even start until 6:15; fortunately, there’s no support act, so we can run a little late.

In fact, the theater was kind enough to hold doors for a few minutes so that the band could work out some musical kinks. The house and I agree that we’ll start the show at 8:15 p.m. instead of 8:00, considering the delays and the fact that the local crowd tends to be slow to file in. At the time the show started, I had already been up for 15 hours, as we had also lost an hour traveling between Central and Eastern time zones, but thankfully the start time was civil—not like those 1990s gigs when we were playing clubs and starting at 10:30 or 11:00 p.m., way past my bedtime.

But not on this night in Warren. I was in my hotel room by 11:45 and didn’t have to wake up until 6. I gotta tell you, it felt great to sleep in!