Off the Air

A collection of press clippings, special projects or appearances including Garrison Keillor.

Summer Love Tour: All About the Weather

August 18, 2010

PHC staffer Nic Vetter is on the Summer Love tour with Garrison, Sara Watkins, Fred Newman and The Guy's All-Star Shoe Band and will update us periodically from the road.

We just had our first day off in 7 days on Monday, and while it was a welcome break for everyone, we had been on a roll with fabulous shows and audience turnouts in Richmond, Brevard, and Indianapolis. All three of the venues were outdoors and so we were hyperaware of the elements. In Richmond a thunderstorm threatened but never came, in Brevard, the rain threatened ... and it did come down in a deluge for almost the duration of the show. And the temperature topped out at around 99 degrees in Indianapolis. We've learned to adapt to the heat and have possibly shed a few pounds from all the humidity, but the true heroes are the fans, who certainly aren't just the fair-weather variety. And what's summer without a little rain and a lot of sunshine? It's like baseball. People expect weather. It's part of the game.

Tony Axtell has been educating me a little bit on the audio engineering he does out in the house. Not only is he a sensitive man, a quality his girlfriend appreciates, he's got super-sensitive ears that I'm pretty sure he hears things at a level that only dogs can. He has one of the trickiest technical jobs on the crew for the tour, because every venue's sound system is different, which impacts acoustics, overhead, delay, tone, gain, and a bunch of other terms I forget. He masterfully integrates the variables so our average ears don't notice the difference, whether you're sitting in the front row or are a hundred yards away.

We've got two more shows in New England then we're going to find out what "hot" really means — hello Dallas, Texas!

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