How to Handle a Bad Experience- From the band side...

[Geri O'Neil]

Wondering how to handle a less-than-stellar experience with a show yesterday.

It took a week to reach someone with the production company, the contact I finally reached couldn't have been less interested in talking to me if I were selling him needle-point supplies. Then at the show, I woke up the audio guy (young guy, late 20s or early 30s) when I walked up to check in (there was a band playing), he hadnt been given our stage plot and info that emailed the week before, he showed the same disinterest as his office guy, disapproved of us using our 3 IEM mixes and wireless mic and acoustic beltpack, and would not make one extra XLR connection at his console so we could have a 6th mix (guess who went without a monitor mix), then called me a jerk to the stage manager because I simply packed my bass rig and left without saying anything (I may be old, but I still hear pretty well).

I'm fully aware that there will be good shows and not-so-good shows and that's fine. In my production days, we had good bands and not-so-good days. The artist, her manager (she calls him "Dad"...

, and I are inclined to let it go and hope for a better show next time. A couple of the other band guys think I should call the office Monday morning and raise cane, under the notion that I would be "doing them a favor so they won't lose business treating shows like this.

I'm not going to call anyone, but what's anyone's opinion about this?

(Need to mention in fairness, a couple of things...I'm the bassist and thus have been christened "production manager". We don't carry any crew. And in spite of all the issues, "Dad" said the un-interested audio guy had a quite decent mix.

 

[Ben Lawrence]

Seems like at the least it might be worth a mention that your plot was not passed on to the audio tech.

 

[Jeff Babcock]

Hey there Geri.
Sorry to hear that. With your extensive production background over the years I'm sure you must have been cringing the whole time. I often play the "production manager" role when I am gigging myself. I'd say that probably 50% of the time the production crew either say that they didn't get our rider and stage plot, or they have the wrong one.

One of the acts I tour with (signed) is fully self contained with an IEM rig - we basically carry everything including mics and just hand tails from our split to FOH (or sometimes mix ourselves via iPad so just send a L+R pair to FOH. This works very well but of course is more work. I think it is worth it for the consistency.

This works great for non-festival style traditional shows where there is ample time for setup.

On larger (big production from a "Varsity" provider) festival style gigs we still use the IEM rig but use house backline and mics and take our split from THEM. No big deal, these guys are prepared for acts like us.

The SMALL festivals are the problem child.
They often have inexperienced or uninterested staff and there typically isn't enough time to accommodate our setup, even IF they are willing to try Usually we are the headliner which helps and might give us time to sort something out, but more often than not we just show up and make the best of it with the house wedges etc etc. We're not using tracks at this point so we can get away with that. Our preference is simply to avoid these types of shows as much as possible, though that's not always a realistic approach.

In any situation I try to go out of my way to be friendly and build some rapport with the crew upon arrival. If I run into someone who is grumpy I try to kill them with kindness and try to be sympathetic. If they seem uninterested, sometimes a little motivation is all that is needed......one trick I have learned is to ask them for their business card /contact soon after arrival with the "carrot" being possible future work with other acts and events if they perform well.

I have never called a production company about bad service, but I have certainly told the event promoter when things were less than stellar. These guys won't last long if word gets around that they are sleeping on the job and being lazy and uncooperative. That's just ridiculous. This is a service industry, I think they missed the customer service 101 course.

Hope that your next gig is more enjoyable!
​​​​​​​Cheers

 

[Riley Casey]

If this is a for profit company that provided such poor service then someone further up the food chain, certainly the person at the top of that chain has a very strong interest in knowing that people working for him or her are not good at what they do. The show crew being unresponsive or incompetent can have a very direct effect on everyone else in the organization being able to earn a living. Someone wants to know and react to your experience.