There is no price you can put on working with good mates

Hi Everyone Jrod here founder of Behind the Wall. We have A promise that you will be taught by current industry professionals and since I am the head trainer and facilitator I wanted to back my word up with a recent story of a gig I did. I am telling you this story for two reasons. Firstly as evidence that I currently work as a lighting guy or "Lampy" as we are called in the industry and secondly because this is not just a story about work it is about mates who get paid to hang out and have a SH#T tonne of fun.

So the gig was a few weeks ago in Leonora which is a gold mining town about 9-10 hours from Perth (11.5 in the 8 tonne truck). The reason for the gig was a concert over 2 evenings which served as an end of day celebration after a day of horse racing, cycling or running. So there was three main events in the town that weekend. The Golden gift - a well funded foot race over 1 mile on the main street of town. There was a cycling race from Menzies to Leonora and the annual horse racing carnival at the local track. What this meant is that the main street through town was shut down for 2 days while all sorts of athletes of junior to Olympic level were racing around eagerly trying to get there share of the prize money on offer. So where do two sound guys and a lighting guy fit in here? Well we left Perth with a truck full of kit on Friday morning at 5am had great banter all the way to Kalgoorlie then were pretty much over it for the rest of the way. For the record being 6 foot 5 and sitting in the middle seat truck will never be fun. We arrived in town before sundown, made contact with the event organizer and a decision was made to start nice and early at 7am. Yay. But now the fun begins.

Your away from home and all those domestic responsibilities so what do you do? Clearly you go to the pub and have a frothy, meet the locals and talk about stories past and present. Our next move was to grab some take away's and go back to the accommodation for the night and continue the chat. We were kicking our selves for not buying red cans in Kalgoorlie as the Leonora prices had a "middle of nowhere" tax on them. After Dinner in the mess and a few cans outside the donga (temporary mining accommodation) Jesse let slip that he had some marshmallows. Now I have never needed an excuse to light a fire and drink beer around it so off we went into the wild or at least far enough out of town that we could see a few more stars. The night was damp so finding the right fuels to start the fire was tricky until I found an old mining catalog on an abandoned mining plant. Hey Presto we have a fire and we are breathing good country air and drink beer without a care. What more could you want. Fast forward a few hours of banter we headed back to the room for some rest before a big day.

The next day we pulled up on site to find the marquee and staging team hard at it so we started to unload and build the PA and the Front lighting towers. We were on a 2pm deadline for a workshop that we were going to teach the local kids about signal flow but 2pm came around and no kids so we set up the backline and greeted a buddy that had flown into mix Cav from Eskimo Joe who was doing the acoustic thing. Sound checks led into the gig which was a great success in allowing the town to party the night away in the street.

Day 2 saw the pointy end of the street racing so as a lampy's job starts in the night I slept in and spent the rest of the day at the pub hanging with the rest of the crew. The concert tonight started with awards followed by a community choir and fashion parade. The local band finished the night off until nine when we had the fun part of the job packing down. We tried our best to make it for last drinks at the pub but failed by 20 mins, so it was back to the donga's for a red can or two.

The drive home took slightly longer as we made a few tourist stops. First on the tourist map was Gwalia, a ghost mining town with miniature tin houses and a mine with a lap pool on the edge. then we were told to stop in and have a famous Broady Burger at the Broad Arrow Tavern which is the only thing remaining from a 2000+ population gold rush town. Very cool with comments written all over the walls from travelers just like us. The burger was pretty good for being in the middle of nowhere.

A few more Fuel, food, coffee and toilet stops saw us home just after 8:30 Knackered but happy to be home with our families. For a Roadie the job is a gig but the memory is of a great old time with mates for life and I don't think there is a price you could put on enjoying a job with best mates. You never know where the office will be next in live events.

#Roadies #Roadtrip #matesforlife #bandcamp #behindthewall #gigs