They went up another two sets of concrete steps at the other end of the tunnel and emerged into the stage left portion of the backstage area. Here they encountered a considerable amount of activity. Roadies were moving everywhere, stringing cables and wires, climbing ladders to attach lighting sets, carrying boxes and crates from one place to the other or pushing them on dollies. All of them were wearing the tour member backstage passes around their necks. Many of them were smoking cigarettes and flicking the ashes carelessly on the floor. Security guards, about half tour personnel and half private, stood here and there, generally not socializing with each other. There was a large, plywood partition that separated stage left from the main stage. The door that had been cut in it was being held in the open position with a bungee cord. Jake could just see a microphone stand and a portion of Coop's new drum set through it.
"The sound guys are all ready for you," Greg told them. "Be extremely careful walking around back here. In fact, try not to come back here without an escort, and if you do, stand and sit where you're told. There's a thousand things that can hurt you back here - high voltage electricity, suspended sandbags, propped up scaffolding pieces, you name it."
None of them answered. They were all looking around in awe at the mechanics of putting on a rock show. Though all of them had been to dozens of concerts, none had ever been backstage of a professional tour.
Greg led them through the stage door and onto the actual stage they would be performing on. Constructed of one inch plywood supported by a frame of two by fours, it was forty feet wide and thirty feet from front to back. The entire thing could be broken down in less than thirty minutes and stowed in the back of one of the trailers, taking up barely ten feet of trailer space. The band knew its dimensions intimately. For nearly a month they had rehearsed their set on it in a rented warehouse in Burbank. On either side of the stage were the amplifier stacks - huge collections of commercial amps standing more than ten feet high. On the stage itself the drum set belonging to Gordon Strong of Earthstone had been assembled atop a wheeled platform and was pushed off to the very back corner. Coop's drum set was standing near the middle rear of the stage, a small collection of microphones placed in strategic locations to amplify the backbeat. In a venue of this size, going acoustic on the drums was no longer an option. Sitting in front of, and slightly to the left of the drum set, was the brand new grand piano graciously donated to Bill by the Caldwell Pianos Corporation. It was polished black and turned so the brand name was prominently displayed to the audience. Though an electric piano actually sounded superior when played through an amplification system, both National Records and Caldwell Pianos had insisted that Bill play an acoustic equipped with microphones onstage. All the better to advertise their brand with. At the very front and center of the stage was Jake's microphone. At stage left and slightly back was Matt's. At stage right and back even further, was Darren's. All of the various effects pedals were neatly arranged at the base of their respective microphones. Above their heads was a complex array of aluminum scaffolding - all constructed by the roadies - that supported more than a hundred high intensity lights.
Out beyond the stage was a flat auditorium floor surrounded on all sides by bleachers. About fifty feet out from the stage, in the middle of the floor, a large soundboard sat atop a four-foot plywood platform. Here the more technically savvy roadies would control all aspects of the sound and lighting. There were six of them out there now - longhaired men who looked like bikers - intently staring at a complex array of knobs, switches, and dials.
"Jake!" yelled a familiar voice from behind. "How was your trip across the country?"
Jake turned and beheld his friend Mohammad Hazim, the lapsed Muslim bartender from D Street West in Heritage. Part of the touring contract had specified that each band member could hire one person of his choosing as his personal assistant provided that person met the qualifications. The qualifications were fairly loose - only specifying that the employee be able to play and tune the band member's instrument and were passingly familiar with audio set-ups. Mohammad had jumped at the chance even though it meant leaving home for an indeterminate amount of time and even though the pay was only minimum wage - and it was only accrued when they were actually setting up, running the concert, or tearing down.
"Wassup, Mo," Jake greeted, giving him a hug of greeting and their customary handshake. "We were pretty much trashed the whole time. How was yours?"
"About the same," he said. "Lots of booze, lots of crank."
"Crank?" Jake asked, raising his eyebrows a bit. Crank was methamphetamine - a synthetic stimulant that was also known as poor man's cocaine. It had become popular the last few years and was widely regarded as the up and coming thing, particularly among those who needed to remain alert for long periods of time. Jake himself had never tried it, although Matt had and declared it 'a little too raunchy' for his tastes.
"They say if I wanna be a roadie I'd better get used to snortin' crank cause that's what fuels the show."
"No shit?"
"No shit," Mo confirmed. "So I've been doing my damndest to get used to it." He grinned. "I don't think I've slept more than a few hours the whole trip."
"Be careful with that shit," Jake warned. "I hear it'll eat your face right off your head after awhile."
Mo shrugged. "What's a man need a face for anyway?" he asked. "You ready for the sound check? I got your guitar all dialed in."
"We're ready," Jake said.
Mohammad disappeared through the stage left door and then returned a few moments later. In his hands he carried the Brogan six-string that Jake had agreed to play on the tour. Following behind him was Larry Milgan, Matt's personal assistant. Larry was one of Matt's friends from the Heritage Community College classes he'd been enrolled in before they started to get regular gigs at D Street West. He was carrying the black and white Stratocaster that Matt had successfully gambled their entire music career on.
The subject of their guitars had reached a quick and immediate head on the very first day of tour rehearsal. Jake had understood from the start that they didn't want him to play his old Les Paul. Though he hadn't been happy about this, he hadn't battled them too much. Brogan guitars - with whom National Records had an endorsement contract - were good instruments. The only problem he'd had was that they'd wanted him to play six different guitars during each set, to switch them out depending on which song was being performed. All the better to advertise the product with. They'd eventually agreed to allow him to play only one instrument - the Brogan AudioMaster 5000. This was a red and white model with dual humbucker pick-ups - basically a Les Paul knock-off, but a knock-off that was actually superior to the original. It could produce the distorted electric backing and the smooth acoustic finger picks that were Jake's signature sound.
Matt, on the other hand, absolutely refused to go onstage with any guitar other than his beloved Strat. He would not even rehearse the set with a Brogan guitar.
"I'll play the Brogans when we record," he told every National Records representative who tried to pressure him otherwise, "and I'll even spout about how fucking good they are when magazine and other media people interview us. But I made a vow when I bought my Strat that I would never play any other guitar on stage and I'm sticking to that vow. I tour with my Strat, or I don't tour at all."
"That will put you in breach of contract," he was told time and time again. "You'll be finished as a musician if you do that and we'll sue you for every penny you ever make doing whatever menial job you manage to get next."
But Matt didn't give a rat's ass about that. He was willing to trash his career and the career of his bandmates over this issue and eventually, after threatening, pleading, trying to get Jake and the rest of the band to apply peer pressure, and even getting the actual CEO of National Records to talk to him on the phone and threaten him some more, Acardio was forced to conclude that Matt really was serious about this. They finally agreed to let him play the Strat onstage. But there had been a certain look in Acardio's eye when he'd given the agreement.