Nicholas David West Coast Tour '13: Can you spell Albuquerque?

Today we drove from Pueblo to Albuquerque.  I love the diverse and changing landscapes that we are driving through.  The transition from the Mountains into the rocky desert of New Mexico is truly beautiful.  Our spirits were high from the great show in Denver, but there was an air of nervousness as we headed to our first support show with the Avett Brothers.

Dylan and I trying to look cool.

Upon our arrival at the Kiva Auditorium, it hit us that we were in a whole new world. The Avett Brothers were sound checking as we loaded in our gear and luggage.  Seeing their stage set up was truly awe inspiring, and our nervousness soon turned into giddy excitement.  We coolly walked past the crew and musicians into the privacy of our dressing room and proceeded to act like giddy children on Christmas morning.  

For these shows, our front of house board, monitor board,all necessary microphones and other gear and our monitor engineer is provided by local sound companies in each city.  This is a scary proposition, as we will be working with an unknown engineer and gear for each show.  Monitor engineers are extremely important, as a bad monitor mix can adversely affect a performance and make for a nightmare on stage.  Tonight's monitor tech was outstanding, and extremely easy to work with.  

The show was fun and exciting.  The Kiva Auditorium has assigned seats, so it takes them some time to get everyone into their seats.  Because of this, we played as people were still trickling in, and were not in front of a full house.  Despite this, the audience reception was great, and we got a lot of great compliments, met a lot of appreciative fans and, most importantly, sold a lot of merchandise.

VIP Badge.  Silly Avett Brothers.

After our show I got the pleasure of seeing the Avett Brothers perform for the first time.  I was truly impressed.  They are great performers, and their live show is amazing.  

After the show the crew complimented us on our friendliness and the fact that we were extremely nice and easy to work with.  This happens often to us, and it makes me wonder what other bands are doing.  Maybe it's a Minnesota Nice thing.  I never understood why you would be anything but gracious and polite to the crews you are working with, but I guess some musicians have ego issues and treat the crew like they are beneath them.  This makes no sense to me.  Be nice to people and they will be nice to you.  That should be a rule, a golden one.  Also easing this worry is our awesome sound tech and front of house engineer Jim Trouten.  He is outstanding and makes us sound great and not have to worry about sound system issues.  

We got out of the venue late that evening and pushed on a few hours towards Mesa, AZ and checked into a hotel.  Onward ho!

Random Thought:  Thanks to this trip, I can finally spell Albuquerque without having to look it up.