Well, its certainly been a busy year. I've hardly been at home. Heres the catch up Blog.

Festival season was tough this year. Not only was it incredibly busy with a few back to back festivals, but the weather certainly didnt help, and I had a short tour squashed in the middle of it too!

I worked my usual festivals this year;

Indie Tracks - Main Stage Monitors

Rebellion Festival - Main Stage Monitors

Reading Festivle - FR Stage, Patch.

Im involved in the build and site work for indie tracks, which is tough, but sometimes it can be a refreshing change, however this year was met with the unusual complication of a heat wave. This made all the site work much more difficult and take muc longer too. But it still all came together and the festival was its usual success. Some good bands and happy punters. Thats what its all about. The festival itself is still being refined each year. And Matt of XAS, is always invsting in the production too. Its all still growing nicely.

After Indie tracks, I was straight off to Rebellion Festival. Here we where met with everything running behind schedule. It happens, and you just have do what you can, when you can, The lighting department where still fitting fixtures when we arrived and still required an empty stage. So the audio department had to wait in catering most of the day before we could crack on. We then had to squeeze a days worth of build into the evening. Not uncommon, but unpleasent. It was my first year running monitors on  main stage too. Usually im the patch tech. However, even though we started on the wrong foot, so to speak, we got things going and we all settled in by the end of the day. So again it was another long and pretty stressful festival. But all parties where pleased at th end of it, thats whats impotant.

Next in my diary was a quick jaunt over to South america with Rumours of Fleetwood Mac. I was anxiouse about this little tour. Having never been to that area of the world before and not knowing what to expect. But in the end it turned into a very pleasent little tour. Lovely people, a good experience and very well received all round.

No rest for the wicked however. Straight from this little tour, straight into Reading festival. Reading is always a challenge, Larger profile acts, complicated patches, and a small working area. This year unfortunately they where running behind schedule with our stage too. So again, like Rebellion we had to wait untill the evening, before we could get to work. Luckily the hole team on site helped us out and we got everything running for the show to start the next day. 

So this summer season was particularly difficult unfortunately. But sometims its just the way things go, nothing can be done about it at the time, you just have to do your bit to get things up and running. 

The autumn was a little more relaxed. A couple of tours with Max Boyce, and The Classic Rock Show in Wales and Germany. Plus a TV spot for the Classic Rock Show on This morning. Again my role was that of Monitor engineer.

Plus not to forget my other local shows, At Real Time Live, The Venue Derby and Beefstock. Its been a very busy year, very frantic. But ive managed to enjoy some down time recently and im looking forward to getting back on the road again in the spring.