The tour is officially over and I have met some fantastic people, saw some new parts of the country and played almost every night for 6 weeks.
I had a blast playing in the show and since we were on stage at times, we had to be in costume and act a little bit too. It was great fun and brought a different dynamic to the show instead of being hidden away in the orchestra pit. I loved everyone I worked with too, everyone in the band gelled extremely well with each other. I was the only guitarist playing in the show, the other members were:
Musical Director: Laughton Kora
Musical Supervisor and Keys 1: Paul Barrett
Keys 2 and Saxophone: Jimmy Reiney
Bass: Sam Nash
Drums: Cameron Burnett
All of them are outstanding musicians, I have a lot of respect for them and to top it off, they were all awesome to hang out with when not playing (which is extremely important on tour!). Laughton did a great job with the feel/groove/style of the songs to give us all a little more freedom during the tour. It made it much more interesting as a musician to play rather than playing what’s written religiously every night for 6 weeks. I hope I get to work with them again at some stage in the future!
Left to Right: Jimmy (Sax), Me, Paul (Keys), Sam (bass), Cam (drums), Laughton (MD)
The Performances
We performed all over New Zealand from KeriKeri all the way down to Invercargill. Like I mentioned before, during the performance we would be on show at certain points. For example at the dance scene at prom, we were acting as the live band ‘Johnny Casino and the Gamblers’. This made the show for us a lot more interesting each night rather than being in an orchestra pit. The actors would obviously change how they would interact with you each night which kept it fresh throughout the season! Here’s a few pictures of those scenes:
I also mention in the gear video (below) that there was a scene that we had to go out to the front of the stage. This was during ‘Those Magic Changes’ and we (Sam, Jimmy and me) would initially be playing the song underneath the set and around half way through the song, we would squeeze through some school locker doors and join everyone else on stage. Here’s a picture of us during that scene:
And here’s a short clip of one of the improvised solos I did during ‘Grease Lightning’:
Some venue highlights for me were definitely Dunedin (Regent Theatre), Christchurch (Isaac Theatre Royal) and Hamilton (Claudelands Arena). The Dunedin and Christchurch theatres were absolutely stunning and Hamilton brought in our largest crowd throughout the entire tour. Here are a couple shots of those theatres:
Hopefully at some point in the future I will get to work with everyone again… Here we all are at the end of our final night:
Setup/Gear
(scroll down to view video)
Wireless
Sennheiser EK 300 (transmitter for in ear monitors)
Sennheiser SK 100 (transmitter for guitar)
IEM
Shure SE215
Amp
Blackstar Artist 15
Guitar
Fender Squier 1990 Japanese Stratocaster
Pedals
Keeley 4 knob compressor
Fulltone Fulldrive 3
Fulltone OCD
Line 6 M5
TC Electronic Polytune
Here’s a walkthrough of the stage setup:
