Dragon Con, Part II.
Playing big shows on big stages are like great meals to guys and girls who play music. It isn’t the reason you eat, but damn if it isn’t satisfying.

A word or two on the inner workings of the process of playing normal shows versus playing one like DragonCon.

On any given day, you have five guys and a van full of gear. Usually, you pull up to some dully painted curb outside a smokehouse bar as the sun is setting, look at your biceps, get out of the car and start the work. You run in place for a moment; do some isometrics against a dirty, fucked up brick wall; and start pulling amps and light boxes and computers and guitars and whatever the hell else ends up in the trailer. Someone, usually Chris or I, goes and finds out where the gear goes. From there, it’s pretty simple; all the stuff goes inside, on the stage, in a corner… wherever it fits. This is why musicians get paid: the playing is free. The manual labor will cost.

DragonCon isn’t like that.

When we arrived with our full kit, the convention had a set of wonderful people assigned to help us load in and set up. We had an army of the nicest people you’ve ever met who actually cared about our wellbeing. They pushed and pulled and made the world move for us. It’s a small thing, but for guys like us it was a real pleasure to be handled like that.

So, with our help, we set up our gear on a stage roughly the size of Canada. From our perspective, the room was endless… there’s a weird sort of potential energy in that. It makes your eyes fuzzy and your breath catch in your throat.

T-minus thirty minutes to show time, with a case of the willies like you wouldn’t believe, I remember sitting back stage thinking, “I’m either going to have a heart attack or this is going to be a great show. There is no middle ground.”

Here are some photos of the show. I don’t think I had a heart attack, but can’t really be sure.

–Josh