Inside the Mind of Sators

Been a while since posting updates on what’s happening with Jamie and I and life, so here goes for March. 

In January, I started touring with Little Big Town as their monitor engineer.  That has been fun and a different change of pace.  Last group I was on tour with was Stellar Kart which at times was just me and 4 other guys.  In the LBT camp, there’s anywhere from 14-20 personnel on the road at any time among the band, crew, family, managers, etc.  The band also carries their own production, minus speakers/amps, so that’s also a nice change of pace compared to SK that only carried backline – being on the same console and the same setup every day helps with the confidence of always knowing what’s going on in the signal chain.  With the new territory comes new challenges though.  Some of the band individuals are very specific in knowing what they want to hear, which has at sometimes been a challenge achieving that successfully.  Overall though it’s definitely been fun and a good time meeting new crew and working in the new atmosphere.

Jamie and I are still in the “home moving” mindset.  While previously our minds were set on moving to Indianapolis, our final destination now looks to be Nashville.  As opposed to other groups in the Christian or Pop industry, the Country industry does not favor paying travel expenses for out-of-town crew members.  Right now, that means I’m getting myself back and forth to Nashville out of pocket. (Thanks to Southwest for less than $60 one-way travel back and forth to Nashville!)  So, with this in mind, Jamie and I are looking to rent a place for a year to start with in Nashville.

The million dollar question becomes when?  We have packed up a bunch of our stuff in Chicago and continue to load up everything we don’t need on a daily basis into a local storage unit in order too prep the house to paint, recarpet, and fingers crossed to go on the market.  No, it’s not on the market yet.  I really want to get the house to shine before we pull the trigger.  As with the housing market everywhere else, it doesn’t look too promising for here either.  Many of the homes in our complex are bank owned and selling for sometimes $60,000 less than our house…and I paid $159,900 for it.  Crap.  Even those houses that are selling for super cheap have been on the market for 3 months or so.  I’ve never sold a house before, and I know now is probably one of the worst times to get in the business, but we’ll see how it goes.  We’ll probably get the house on the market in April.

Late December and Early January I had both gum grafting surgery and hernia repair surgery done, all in the matter of about 2 weeks or so.  2 weeks after the hernia repair I was out on the road starting up with LBT.  Crazy – all went well though and those ailments have been out of mind.  I’ve been fighting a nasty case of bronchitus over the past two-three months that still prevails, took a nasty spill on my rip stick a few weeks back that the scars are still healing from, and this morning just hurt my neck washing/drying my hair.  This is not encouraging as my body gets older…sad.

Naturally, Jamie and I get the “kids?” question every now and then.  We’ll be married for two years in April and really with Indianapolis as our moving destination we were planning on delaying till we got settled there so that we could be by Jamie’s family.  With Nashville as the next stop…well, we’ll have to get back to you on that.  I think I speak for the both of us that we don’t feel ready…

I miss blogging…it’s always an ideal of mine that I want to hop on and write more often.  Maybe I’ll post up some good road stories here and there.  Till then…

Ever have one of those days where it seems that you’re doing so much that if something falls slightly out of place it comes back to bite you bad? Welp, I’m flying through some web designs today, hammering out emails, taking care of some band business, mail, banking, post office, taking the trash out, etc. all before 4:30 p.m. We get all packed up and head off to the airport excited to head to Canada. I kiss Jamie goodbye and get to the ticket counter and see the lady in front of me hand over her passport. DUH!!! It hit me like a brick wall. Crap. I get up there and the guy just looks at me like you idiot. I keep a digital copy of my passport on my laptop, tried pulling that out – no go.

So, I get on the phone and give Jamie probably 20 phone calls with no answer so I called over to Chelsea and Ann, two friends who live relatively close who I would trust granting them access into the house to dig through our belongings to find my passport. Chelsea goes speeding over from her house and Jamie calls back and is closer to the house – so I call off Chels. Time is always a factor isn’t it? My flight was supposed to leave at 6:20 p.m. I had a connecting flight in Toronto to my final destination, London, Ontario. It’s 5:30 p.m. I live 30 min from the airport. I get a hold of Jamie around 5:55 p.m. She gets home and finds the passport with a little work and makes it back to the airport at 6:30 p.m. Obviously not making the 6:20 p.m. flight, even though it was delayed till 6:45 p.m. I had a 2 hour layover in Toronto, so there was some buffer. I get booked on a 7:40 p.m. flight getting me in at 10:15 p.m. to get over to my 10:55 p.m. flight. Typically not a big deal – customs & immigration. The ticket counter guy when he booked my flights pretty much said, leave your bags at customs in Toronto and file a missing bags claim when you get to London saying you forgot them and they’ll get them to you the next morning.

So that’s what I did. I even got into Toronto 15 minutes early, I contemplated waiting for the bags as I was first in line at customs, first in line at immigration, flew past everything. Toronto airport is quite large and took some time just to get to the gate, so I abandoned the bags and met up with the band who was also on the same flight just as they were getting on board. I get to London and file the claims and they said that the bags should arrive at the hotel around 10 or 11 am tomorrow morning. Perfect – don’t need them until 4pm. Bags being one bag of wireless mics and my rip stick. Can’t go without the rip stick! We’re at an arena tomorrow! Perfect territory…

Sigh – feel like a complete idiot tonight and thankful I have people like Jamie and Chelsea who are there and willing to pick up the slack when I drop the ball.

Ya no joke. So we find ourselves in Batavia, IA, and if you haven’t heard of it, neither has anybody. However, they do have a gas station thankfully. It’s about 1am on a Saturday night, Sunday morning and we pull off to fill up and our driver gets out and there’s a lady behind us going crazy saying “Your bus is on fire!” I’m within ear shot and I look out and our driver, Jason Rounsaville of Chariot Coach, says to me “Get the fire extinguisher!” These are one of my most feared moments as a road manager. Hearing stories like Relient K’s bus fire and the like place it in my mind that as soon as there’s fire reported and the extinguisher’s out, I don’t care what time of day it is, I’m waking everybody up and evac’n the bus.

So, that’s what I did. Cody and Adam were watching a movie, Jordan and Lauren were asleep, and Brian was with his family. We all get out of the bus to see the back end of the bus smoking and Jason in the engine compartment with the extinguishers spraying away. It wasn’t a huge fire – couldn’t even see flames, just a ton of smoke. After everything was out, we discover that it was the starter to the bus (pictured above) that started the scare. (Jason said in the 20 years he’s been driving, he’d never seen a starter do that.) Thankfully we were at a 24h gas station with bathrooms and showers and not on the side of the road. About 15 min. after pulling up, 2 county sheriff cars pull up with 4 total police officers who inspect the situation. Apparently there isn’t much going on in Jefferson County, IA as they hung around for a good hour shooting the breeze and us daring each other to be tazered by them. Nobody did. Cody and I did get some good time in on the ripstick and Brian’s longboard though.

Time goes on and it’s apparent that no mechanic is going to come out to our rescue that night. We were only 3h away from the gig and didn’t need to be there till 4pm at the latest Sunday afternoon, so we all went to bed. I wake up at 10am to discover Jason and 2 mechanics working on the bus. Come to find out, they had been there since 4am working to remedy the situation. Apparently the fire burned through several electrical cables that they had to fix which took forever. They finally got us up and going at 12pm and we were on our way and made it to the gig just fine!

We didn’t start the fire, ironically the starter did. The bus rolls on though!

Well, yes I have found a new way to kill myself. A few months back while I was still working at Willow, this high school kid named Phil came in with this freaky looking skateboard thing called a “Rip Stick” that only had two wheels instead of four and the wheels swivled 360 degrees. I humored myself and tried to ride it back…I was at least able to move around a little on it, but nothing to brag about by any means.

Little did I know back then that a few months later I’d be seeing these things popping up at your local sporting goods store, Target, and the infamous cover of SkyMall magazine. So I was with the boys a week or two ago in Florida at a skate/surf shop and they had one and I took the dive and picked one up. Not only have I never had so much fun on a skateboard before, but actual real live skater folks have respect for me being able to ride this thing around! With such glory comes sacrifice though, I do have my first wrist injury racking up over $1g worth of emergency room bills – yes I will be buying the $20 wrist guards and pads at Target before I try riding down any more steep ramps.

But hey, you can only live once. Riding the rip stick around the neighborhood has started more conversations with my neighbors than ever before, plus I get an added kick trying to see Jamie, Brian, Nathan, Catlin, and other friends try to ride the thing around. Keep practicing folks!