MF #21
Coastal Country Jam 2018
Date
June 24th, 2018
Location
Huntington Beach, California
Reason
Pro Systems
I woke up in my hotel room with a smile still on my face from the night prior. Above & Beyond was incredible. Now, we were headed back to the same venue working on the same stage for an entirely different crowd. Today was country music only.
Working with DJs is incredibly easy compared to working with bands. There’s just way more equipment involved with a band, which means more things can go wrong. We arrived on site extra early to allow time for an extended sound check.
Soundcheck goes in reverse order. The headline act goes first. Chris Young and his crew met us on site at 8:00 am. Luckily, they were fully self contained. That meant while we were the audio guys on site, he had his own audio engineers working with their own equipment. They simply plugged into our speakers. This made our job relatively easy, at least for this band.
The hard work started with Chris Janson’s soundcheck. He would be using our microphones and audio equipment. My job was to mic up the drum kit and help with set change overs. We had to get Chris Janson set up and happy quickly, as it was closing in on 10:30 am and we still had three extra bands to soundcheck.
Our crew was used to the pressure and quickly soundchecked the next few bands, getting everything setup and ready in time to open the doors without a delay. The crowd filled in as soon as the gates were open. Everyone was excited to spend the afternoon on the beach listening to great music.
“Hold Your Beers Up” – Coastal Country Jam 2018
While the Above & Beyond crowd was on a lot of MDMA and psychedelics, the country music crowd was drinking. Encouraged by the very first act, it wasn’t long until the crowd was drunk.
Fist fights slowly started to break out among the crowd. There were only 15,000 people in a space that easily held 30,000 people yesterday, but the increased alcohol consumption led to an increase in aggression. I stood side stage and watched the security attempt to deal with the madness.
Exploring the VIP section during High Valley’s performance.
High Valley was one of my favorite acts of the day. While I was way busier today than yesterday with all the set changes, I was still able to find time to run around the event and capture photographs during this set. The VIPs were sitting in hundreds of bean bags, all enjoying the afternoon sunshine. I exploited the all access production pass and joined the VIPs, setting into a beanbag and enjoying a few songs.
I returned to the stage in order to help with Chris Janson’s change over. This was the most important part of the night, at least for my positions. We handled the set change without issue, and Chris Janson soon took the stage. The sun was setting over the crowd as he performed. I pulled out my camera, snapping a few photographs from my upclose vantage point. I even took a short video using my DSLR as it was just such a cool scene.
On stage with Chris Janson – Coastal Country Jam 2018
When Chris Janson finished, our crew could relax. Chris Young’s team would be running the rest of the show. They should’ve called it the Coastal Chris Jam. This was a good show, but had nothing on the magic I witnessed the previous night. I was happy to see the show come to a close, as that meant we could pack up the on stage equipment and head back to the hotel.
Normally I’m not so excited to get back to the hotel, but one of our female coworkers had joined the crew for the event. We had a little friendship that had been growing in interesting directions. I didn’t get much sleep that night, but we didn’t have much work left to do come Monday morning. Our crew returned to site for the final time. We quickly took down the remaining speakers, loaded up all the equipment on the truck, and hit the road back to San Diego.
I love getting paid to see music.
