When the Call Comes Last Minute, We Answer It

Sam and I got an emergency referral call a an hour before showtime this saturday night — the engineers fell through, the band needed someone, and we said yes before we even knew what we were walking into. In 20 minutes we were there.

We pulled up to a venue we'd never seen, never heard of. No advance. No input list. No idea what shape the system was in.

What we found wasn't pretty. Broken channels on the snake. The input patch was wrong. The outputs were mislabeled. Nothing was going where it was supposed to go — and we had 30 minutes.

No time to complain. Sam took one end, I took the other. We traced signal, re-patched inputs, sorted the outputs, and built a picture of the system in real time with whatever gear was available. Line check. Soundcheck. Band on stage. Under 30 minutes from the moment we walked in.

Then I got my favorite moment of the night.

We'd just got In-A-Fect's sound dialed in. I took a breath, turned around, and looked out at the room. The crowd was dancing. Fully into it. And I knew we had done our job.

Nobody out there knew about the broken snake or the 30-minute sprint. They just knew the music sounded good. That's exactly how it should be.

Live audio isn't always a clean advance and a perfect system. Sometimes it's a last-minute call and a venue you've never seen. The question is whether you can handle it.

We can even if it's 30 minutes before show start.