It’s just turned 10:50 PM on a warm September night when the band returns to the USANA Amphitheater
stage southwest of Salt Lake City for an encore.
Though they make it seem spontaneous, the move is, of course, planned, and the song
had, of course, already been picked.
It’s a perfect send off that will leave the crowd buzzing and keep the band from violating
the venue’s strict 11:00 PM curfew.
But as the show ends and the audience makes its way to the exits, another meticulously
choreographed and time-sensitive show begins… one with far less fanfare.
The tour’s next stop is Ball Arena, in Denver, 522 miles or 840 kilometers away, and that
concert starts in exactly 21 hours.
So now it’s all hands on deck to get the band, their set, and their double-digit crew
to Colorado on time.
Really, this show—this process of getting the band and company from Salt Lake to Denver—began
a few hours ago when the tour manager headed into their backstage office along with the
venue's promoter carrying record of the night’s box office receipts to hash out the money
splits, from ticket and merch sales to utilities and even clean towel fees, before coming to
a final settlement.
While an unspectacular process of crossing t’s and dotting i’s, it’s this step
that makes the tour possible, and really more than anything else, fuels the music economy
today.
The USANA amphitheater, after all, holds a maximum of 20,000 guests—that’s 20,000
potential ticket sales of which the band will receive an already-agreed-upon-split somewhere
in the ballpark of 85%.
Once the money’s settled and the band’s finished, though, all attention focuses on
the load out.
To be playing venues like the USANA amphitheater and Ball Arena, the band has to be big, and
big bands tour with big staffs.
This group, like most touring groups of its size, is broken into three groups.
There’s the A party made up of the artists and their inner circle, the B party, made
up of the band, dancers, and backup vocalists, and the C party, or the crew, from guitar
techs to pyrotechnic specialists.
To maximize overall efficiency, and the comfort of some, each party’s taking a slightly
different path to Denver.
For the A party it’s off the stage, and depending on timing, grabbing something to
eat or a shower, then heading straight north in hired Suburbans to the Atlantic Aviation
FBO at Salt Lake City International Airport, where a chartered jet is waiting.
For the rest of the onstage talent, the turnaround is nearly just as quick.
Dancers, background vocalists, and additional band members load onto tour buses that, depending
on the configuration that the tour manager settled on months prior, can carry up to twelve
people spread across two aisles of triple stacked bunks.
They’re off the stage and out the door quick, but won’t be seeing the other side of the
Rockies until they wake up the next morning.
For the C Party, what they brought out and put together only hours earlier now needs
to be returned into their cases and rolled back into their trailers in a precisely efficient
order before they too hit the road.
Under the oversight of production and stage managers, guitar techs carefully pack up guitars
and riggers carefully dismantle the set.
With the turnaround being so sharp, roadies working on the tour are joined by a hired
set of local stagehands who help pack out everything from the band’s audio/visual
assets to the tour manager’s office onto the trailers backed up against backstage.
Once the venue’s cleared, the C party, like the B party a couple hours ahead, jumps on
tour buses headed east—where showers and clean towels await them at the arena.
And now the time crunch shifts from the crew to its drivers.
None of the truck or bus drivers saw the band’s show in Utah.
They were sleeping.
In fact, not until the show’s end did those who were driving the B party even check out
of their hotels.
And only after the show’s conclusion did they begin their systems check, inspecting
tires and timing belts before warming up the bus.
They’ve waited until the very last minute because their driving time is incredibly precious.
By law, they can only drive for ten hours before they take a required eight hour rest
period and with electronic logging devices built into their dashboards and tracking the
bus’ every move, there’s simply no cheating the ten hour limit.
Facing down 500 plus miles and the Rocky Mountain range, Denver stretches the limits of what’s
possible when adding in stops, morning rush-hour traffic, and the potential of anything unpredictable.
Move the bus too early and the next night’s concert might get stuck on the side of the
road short of the destination in Denver.
Now, to an outsider, the load out process might look chaotic, and the pace of the tour
may seem unsustainable or unmanageable.
But though grueling and exhaustingly complicated, these massive, nation-wide tours function
remarkably smoothly considering the variety of variables.
And they have to—there’s too much on the line for them not to.
This is where bands make their money and this is where deadlines are their absolute toughest—a
band can’t simply reschedule in the middle of a tour during the middle of the busy summer
season.
To make these tours run smoothly then, their managers leave no stone unturned.
To minimize the chaos, and limit potential mistakes, the band’s tour began perhaps
a month or two prior on the west coast, and had been in the works for upwards of a year.
Knowing that dates fill quickly during the summer, their agent began negotiating fees
and revenue splits with interested venues the fall or winter prior, passing back and
forth drafts of deal memos like these before ultimately coming to an agreement.
With the concert dates penciled in and a spot to rehearse for a few days prior identified
somewhere in southern California, the tour manager then sent their dates along to truck
and bus leasing companies to go back and forth on price and configuration that’d best match
the band’s needs.
And with the venues locked, stage managers and production managers began assembling advance
sheets that outline every last technical detail about the venue, from bus and trailer parking
to office space and AV capabilities and hook ups that the tour could possibly need to know
beforehand.
Months ago, the tour manager also sent along
a rider to each of the touring party’s hotel’s —essentially a sheet of requirements that
spans from ensuring late check out or day rooms, to asking about whether or not there’s
any construction happening nearby.
If meals are to be eaten at the hotel, dietary restrictions are communicated through this
document, as are allergies, or ETA’s, or even how room keys should be packaged and
distributed.
If the crew has an off-day, it’s important to find out what the bus parking nearby looks
like, and what’s nearby for the crew to do.
And if the band’s famous enough, a likely scenario given the size of the tour, a rider
will inform the hotel that access to backdoors and service elevators will be required.
These documents often run pages long and aren’t exclusive to hotels either, as tour managers
will send ahead riders for the venue’s backstage setup, from food to layout, as well as a technical
rider, spelling out the AV and rigging needs the show requires.
Though sent to each hotel and venue long in advance, these riders are dynamic documents
that change and evolve along with the tour, so managers will update and resend riders
weeks and even days before their arrival.
While the artists would have arrived at Centennial airport in the early hours of the morning
and quickly transferred to their hotel, the rest of the tour’s day begins around 9:00
am, laying in their bunks, as their bus comes to rest beside the loading dock of Denver’s
Ball Arena.
Upon completing the 8-hour drive through Wyoming, the driver hooks the bus up to a provided
240 volt connection to deliver power without idling the engine, and joins the tour’s
other bus and truck drivers for the short walk across the street to the SpringHill Suites
hotel, where day rooms are booked, to get their legally-required rest before driving
onward after the concert that night.
The above-average eight-hour drive makes this day a particular challenge—everything must
run perfectly to get the show built on-time.
The first people into the building are the tour’s leadership: the production manager,
production coordinator, head of security, lead rigger, and potentially others.
Their first stop is the catering room, where a local company set up breakfast over the
hours prior.
Next, the team meets with the venue’s management to conduct a walk-through and plan out the
day’s activities.
They then work their way through the backstage, posting this day-sheet throughout to give
a rundown of key moments through the day, and also labeling different rooms for different
purposes: they’d need a production office, where the management would set up their desks;
dressing rooms, for both the lead artists and their supporting acts; a storage room,
for empty road-cases and extra equipment; a wardrobe room, for the costume department
to get their work done; and more depending on the size and scope of the tour.
In addition, they put up maps and directions to these different temporary rooms and key
permanent spots like the venue’s shower-rooms—given that nearly everyone lives out of the tour
bus.
Nobody should need to know where they are—in fact, through the fatigue, many of the tour’s
members might genuinely forget.
Also early in the order of operations is making the final decision on the placement of the
stage.
In North America, most large concerts occur in the indoor arenas otherwise occupied by
NHL and NBA hockey and basketball teams—as is the case with Denver’s Ball Arena.
Given that traditional stages have, at best, 270 degrees of line of sight, these tours
only sell a portion of the 360-degrees of seats surrounding the stage—but the exact
number can be altered.
Therefore, if the concert hasn’t sold out, management might decide to bring the stage
forward to kill some seats and make the venue appear more full, while if the concert has
sold out, they’d do their best to push the stage back to give more seats a sight-line
and fit more on the floor, allowing them to sell additional tickets.
But they’d have to make this decision quickly because they’re on the clock, and setup
has to start quick—the arena has no stage, no lights, no audio system, essentially nothing
but an empty floor and some seats, while thousands upon thousands of people are expecting a concert
in less than ten hours.
First in the order of operations is rigging.
This is essentially the process of getting anything that hangs—be it lights, speakers,
screens, prop pieces, or even the stage itself—up into the air.
Typically a tour will include a lead rigger, or perhaps a few touring riggers, who work
with a far larger team of twenty to forty local riggers to complete the incredibly time-sensitive
setup process for a given concert.
It starts with chalking-out the floor—essentially, marking the exact point on the ground where
a motor should hang above.
The core of the rigging task involves using a combination of math and cables to hang chain
motors in exact points from a grid of beams in the roof.
More often than not, there is not a beam directly above the exact point where a motor is needed,
so riggers hang two cables to bridge the gap between two beams.
Knowing both the horizontal and vertical distance from a beam to their desired point, the pythagorean
theorem is used to quickly calculate the required length of rope along the third axis, and these
lengths are marked on the floor with a standardized chalk diagram like this.
They also mark out the length of rope needed to wrap around each beam, given inconsistency
in width, and, if applicable, the length of a rope to hang beneath the connection of the
two others.
Finally, the exact point is marked with this symbol if it’s up to a quarter-ton weight,
and this for a half-ton, full-ton, and two-tons, respectively.
On a typical arena tour, there can be anywhere between a few dozen to over a hundred rigging
points that need to be assembled, so quickly, the team’s up-riggers harness up and head
out onto the beams above, while the down-riggers start laying out motors and other equipment
next to the relevant points.
Once in place, each up-rigger lets down a rope to which their down-rigger ties equipment
to be pulled up.
First, a burlap sack is wrapped around the beam to soften the edges, then ropes are fastened
around the beam, connected, and finally the chain-motors are attached in the exact desired
point, regardless of the variance in overhead grid from arena to arena.
Precision and safety are absolutely crucial given that within a matter of hours, both
the general public and some of the world’s most recognizable artists will be standing
below—the margin for error is essentially zero.
But to provide a standardized experience in a non-standard set of venues, rigging is crucial.
With anchor-points set, the work of assembling lighting and audio trusses can go on, along
with setting up the stage itself.
Once each element is constructed on the ground, the motors above slowly pull them up into
place—also allowing the tour to hoist them to a common height regardless of the venue’s
ceiling height.
Typically, and especially with the late start in Denver, this entire process needs to be
completed within four or five hours, by early afternoon.
Each department then takes a brief break for the lunch provided by the local caterers.
While the tour always strives to carry everything they need for a given show with them, reality
often gets in the way.
That’s why the ensemble of hired local labor always includes runners, whose job is to head
out into the city to grab last-minute necessities—be it something as simple as backstage snacks
from Walmart or as crucial as fresh guitar picks from Guitar Center.
But all the big tasks should be completed by around now, mid-afternoon, because that’s
when the artist arrives from their hotel, and attention focuses on fine-tuning.
The sound-check is a crucial milestone, as it’s the first test by the artists themselves
of the day’s setup—they play a few songs, both for calibrating the on-stage audio system,
which is crucial for making sure they can hear themselves properly, and testing the
audience’s audio system, which needs to be fine tuned both to the venue and the style
of music.
As afternoon transitions into evening, the countdown to doors looms large.
The tour’s head of security meets with the venue’s security to talk through some key
elements.
They’re in charge of passes, so they’ll communicate which get access where—who can
go on the floor, backstage, to the VIP room, or even to the artist’s room.
For the security working the stage, they’ll also talk through likely moments of artist-audience
interaction, and what security support is needed—if the artist is going to pull audience-members
up on-stage, for example, security likes to know in advance.
And perhaps most importantly, the tour security communicates likely audience demographics
and behavior—they know much better than the local security the proclivities of their
fans and the likelihood of rowdiness, barrier crushing, mosh pits, and other potential security
risks.
But finally, its time: the lighting department switches on a pre-programmed pre-show lighting
configuration, audio starts mic-ing up the artists, security gets into place, and everyone
else finally gets their first moments of calm since Salt Lake City as the doors open, the
concert begins, and the tour starts its unbelievable 24-hour cycle once again.
Clearly, given that you’re still here, you enjoy learning about logistics.
So do I, of course, which is why I was recently fascinated to learn what went into the design
and construction of the Twin Towers in New York through Neo’s video on the subject.
It’s a great watch, and right after that you can watch the latest episode from our
series, Extremities, about how Tristan da Cunha manages to survive as the world’s
most remote inhabited island—the story of how people manage to live all the way out
there is pretty fascinating.
Then you could give Real Engineering’s fantastic series, the Logistics of D-Day a watch, where
he shines a light on the perhaps less cinematic but certainly more fascinating efforts that
went into the allies’ landing on Normandy.
All of this top-tier logistics content is available exclusively on Nebula, the streaming
site co-founded by us creators and designed from the ground-up to be the best home to
the stuff we make—the economic model behind it means we can manage to fund things that
wouldn’t survive on YouTube like videos about the logistics of the world’s most
remote places, and the fact that it’s not ad-supported means we don’t have to shy
away from more sensitive topics like the logistics of some of the bloodiest days of World War
Two.
Thanks to this, myself and my team have made all of these Original documentaries, shows,
and videos, and we keep releasing more each month.
Plus, there’s plenty more from plenty of other creators that you almost certainly already
watch, but what makes this almost certainly the best deal in streaming is the best way
to sign up for Nebula—the CuriosityStream bundle deal.
When you sign up for any subscription at CuriosityStream.com/Wendover, they throw in a Nebula subscription for free,
for as long as you stay subscribed.
That means you also get access to CuriosityStream’s massive library of top-quality non fiction
shows and documentaries, like the fascinating series Inside the Mind of a Con Artist.
And while that’s already an unbeatable deal on its own, signing up not only helps support
Wendover Productions, but almost the entire educational creator ecosystem.
So, head over to CuriosityStream.com/Wendover or click the button on-screen to sign up,
and thanks in advance for your support.