The Ups and Downs..........

Granted, I'm very lucky to be working, let alone sharing a stage with such illustrious company. I've had a few bad moments though.
The show before last was another open-air, winery show. The result was no soundcheck for anyone. Once again we had the local support band. We agreed they could borrow the drums again (no snare, no cymbals).
A very quick change over between bands was scheduled, but I decided to nip onstage just to check the positioning of the kit. It was all over the place.
The stands were all marked and memory locked to suit me. The previous time this band borrowed the kit, I was able to sit down and play it straight away.
This time I saw they had actually changed the memory locks, not even loosened them to alter a stand (which would have annoyed me enough), but actually changed them. So our drumtech of the day assumed the kit was still set up for me. 
I feel a bit worse about the fact no one asked, or later apologised. No one said a word, which strikes me as a little selfish.
Last night we were back indoors and got our usual 1 hour soundcheck.
We had yet another new drumtech. This guy was good (and nice), so I asked him to change the head on my Craviotto snare. When he removed the drum for the stand I noticed for the first time a 1.5" scratch on the shell. Too deep to be buffed out.
Again, I was upset because I don't even position my drums too close together and we'd only played 4 shows at that point. Anyway, I don't know when it happened.
As the drum tech changed the head on my Craviotto, I put the new Brady Jarrah on the stand so we could continue the soundcheck. To my disappointment I noticed one of the tuning rods had gone missing. This is a drum I haven't used on a gig and had only been removed from it's case and placed near the kit in case something went wrong with my main snare. Again, it escapes me how a tuning rod could have come loose and been lost on an unused drum. 
The perils of touring without a dedicated drum tech!
Lastly, a perennial bug bear cropped up. I had had a suspicion about this for a few soundchecks. I can't hear my drums out-front unless someone else plays them. However, I can tell from experience what my drums should sound like when they bounce back to the stage from the back wall of an arena. And in this case my suspicion was confirmed, my bass drum was being gated by the outfront sound man.
I tend to play at a consistent level throughout the show, but we are good musicians and also play with dynamics. Several songs in the set drop down to a very quiet groove for 16 bars or so. It really bugs me to think the guy has mixed 4 of our shows now (PLUS soundchecks), has heard the quiet sections in some songs, can see I'm still playing, but has never done anything about the fact I'm not coming out of the PA system at that point!!!
Aaaaargh. 

I don't think there are any other support bands.
We have two shows in New Zealand at the end of the week, so I haven't checked what is scheduled, but I think we only had the local support for the two outdoor shows in Australia.
I hope the gated BD issue was resolved. I pointed out the issue during the soundcheck and played at my lowest level for several minutes while he fiddled with the gate. I don't understand why gating is needed, my bass drum is fairly tight (not to mention damped).
I wouldn't be surprised to find my toms are tightly gated too.
In these cases, as you can't control the sound yourself, or hear yourself during the show, you have to rely on the good practices of the sound reinforcement team.
A couple of people I trust have said our sound is great. I guess that's all you can ask for.
I've got to admit I'm not too keen on the sound of Keith Carlock's snare and toms through the PA. He's using tiny clip on mics, like a 10 cent coin on the end of a stalk.
I don't know if that's the problem, or just that my taste differs.
His overhead mics are Earthworks. His (Zildjian) cymbals sound superb, as do his vintage hi-hats.

I find that really frustrating, because at the end of the day, a good sound might show us some new headliners, and probably make famous bands work harder to be considered headliners. I recently saw Metallica live, with a very poor performance (in my opinion), because they can now fart at the mics, and everyone will start cheering...

Sorry for the off topic...

Regards

Chris,

Thanks for the updates I'm looking forward to hearing about the Sydney and Melbourne shows. You mentioned that you couldn't hear yourself very well on stage. Is this due to poor monitor mix or "no" monitor? Also, what type of monitors do you prefer for stage work, in-ear or  some type of floor wedge? My apologies if this was mentioned elsewhere.

It's great to hear the ins and outs of someone working at the moment. I miss the daily grind of playing. 

Just one thing about IEMs - in order to facilitate the use of a metronome, etc. I simply set up a small mixer of my own and take my monitor feed in and out of that. I use another channel for the metronome so can check it at any time and/or use it as a click. It also allows me to control the level of my own mix if needs be, without recourse to the sound guy. Most of the Shure IEMs give a pretty sizeable dB cut. I can't find the exact specs on it at the moment.

Did you happen to mention the Drummer Cafe? 

Now we are in Christchurch, New Zealand, the last venue for this whole tour.
We are getting closer to Antartica and the weather is cold and wet (10c).
Tomorrow we all fly home. This is about as far away from the UK as you can get. My flight is only 3 to 4 hours, but my band mates have 26 or more hours ahead of them. 
Ahhhh, the glamour of touring.
The previous gig in Auckland was great. We had an all new soundteam, New Zealand based, and I had a new hire kit to contend with. It was DW again, and sounded fine. I had a problem with the bass pedal during soundcheck and it manifested itself during the actual show. The pedal detached itself from the bass drum on the third song and there wasn't anything I could do to reattach it. The bass drum had moved a bit on the floor, but somehow I managed to play the rest of the show fairly normally with a slightly distant drum and an unattached pedal.
I'll have to investigate and/or replace the pedal before this final show.
So...........yet another small taste of music touring comes to an end.
I'm looking forward to getting home where it's warm and sunny, the very beginning of summer. I know after a week or two I'll really miss that busy feeling and the artistic satisfaction of working in a team and entertaining large amounts of people.

Tour over.
I'm about to step on the flight home.
I see on another drum forum I've been criticised for being a basher.
I guess I should be pleased that at nearly 49 years old I can still offend people with the volume of my backbeat. 

And the knucklehead who uttered the words probably never graduated from jamming in his basement with his beer buddies.

Congrats on a successful tour.

Now Chris, that same guy also says that your snare sounded beautiful, and much better than Carlock's brass Yamaha.  That's gotta count for something, yes?    

As others have mentioned, THANK YOU for sharing your experiences!  Priceless info for us commoners.