Meet The Crew.

This, so far, has not been an easy tour. It's big, nay, it's huge. There's a lot of crap, and the problem is, there's not enough crew people to deal with it all. But on the lighting end, there's enough crew people if all they dealt with was the lighting gear. Instead they've been forced into other roles, mostly setting up curtains and set pieces, normally a carpenters job.

They work their butts off all day with little to no breaks to do anything. I've never seen them in catering. But they must be eating.

So here's my tribute to my very awesome lighting crew. The gear on the other hand... Another blog maybe.

This is Jeff. He's the lighting crew chief. His forte is politics. He's a competent lighting tech, but he's definitely my "go to" guy when it comes to getting things sorted out.



This is Emily. I haven't had much contact with her so far on this tour, since she was doing day shift at rehearsals while I was on the night shift. But I know for a fact she's a hard worker. In New York a couple of days ago, she was in her harness up 30' in the air hanging on a truss trying to get some of the bi-parting drapes to work, FOR THREE HOURS. Not a fun day. She sounds like another favorite crew person of mine, Desirae "Wheels". Are all women lighting techs supposed to have raspy voices?



Say hello to Jason. He's another hard worker, and I got to see it every night because he was on the night shift with me. When ever a light broke down, he was in his harness up in the rig fixing it. He's also a huge hockey fan. And like me, he's not a fan of specific teams or players, but really a fan of the sport.



And this is Kevin. As far as I'm concerned, the hero of the bunch. It's only his second tour and he's on probably the hardest gig anyone can have on a lighting crew. He's the dimmer guy. He has to run all the cables that get plugged into all the lights and power. Not to mention, he's also the "techo-weenie" on the crew who knows all the ins and outs of all the different electronic gear. So if something breaks or acts up, it's up to Kevin to sort it out. He's running around from the moment the load in starts to the moment the load out ends. And during rehearsals, he was, more often than not, the stand in when ever we needed to see a body on camera or in the light, as displayed in the above picture.

And he does it all with a smile on his face and the calmness of a Hindu cow. Kudos to him.

There you have it, my crew for the fall 2009 Maxwell arena tour. All Canadians. All the time.

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