All in a day's work - Artist Liason

I have written a lot about how the bands at a venue are treated and what they do, but not a single word about what my job was. That is what I want to do with this post. I welcome you to a day of the artist liaison at a small venue.

You start with unlocking the door, turning on the lights and checking that nothing disgusting from the night before is still in the band room or on the stage. You might find that whomever worked there yesterday cleaned the place perfectly and it is shining and sparkling as much as the worn-down stage and rotting wooden floor can shine, or that the artists' dressing rooms are filled with cigarette buts, popcorn and carrots and someone forgot their guitar, their jeans or even their drummer.

Kick out the drummer, put the guitar and jeans away in a closet and clean the dressing rooms. Before the band arrives, check their rider for any sign that they want get-in food. If something is mentioned, sigh and run to the nearest shop to buy hummus, vegan bread (or, since no shop in Norway carry anything like that, lie! lie like a politician!) and vegan butter. If you didn't get the rider five minutes before, you have already bought whatever you needed. More often than not, you will have less than 24 hours before the gig when you work at a small venue. You will never have the correct amount of towels from the hotel you cooperate with. Either you bring seventeen and one is used or you bring seven and they could have needed twice the amount.

While you are chopping the vegetables and trying to make the food you bought look edible (or the food left in the fridge from the day before... always check best before dates and sniff for mould) the band will arrive. Unlock the door (again), greet the band and their driver (the latter will like to know a million facts about driving that you will not know, having never driven a car in this city, but after a while in the biz you will have at least seven different people saved on your phone under the tag "driving advice". Call them, give the driver your phone and help the band carry their gear. It is not demanded from your job (your position is above mere lifting of instruments), but it feels off to walk besides someone carrying 50+ kilos worth of gear and not do anything to help (I'm odd like that).

This is when you will find out that the idiots playing the day before burnt out a circuit, or turned off the electricity to the stage instead of putting it on stand by. The correct solution to this problem is to give the band some coffee, get your phone back from the driver, give him his advisor's number and run back inside while you call someone who might know if the big red button is red because it should be pushed or because it should not under any circumstances be pushed.

After pushing the red button and finding that the world did not end and you now have lights, electricity and everything is well around the stage, you will learn that you are lacking two very important things: coffee, and a sound guy. The latter will mumble something about not yet being awake / being a bit late / not knowing it was a gig tonight. Stop yourself from pointing out that it's Friday and asking him whether that is the day we have concerts fifty out of fifty-two weeks a year, or if he thinks this is the day for the Bulgarian knitting circle? A hint... the guys brought guitars, not knitting needles.

Run to buy more coffee. Buy chocolate and bananas as well, to keep the band from noticing nothing is going to happen the next hour. The light guy will help you in this, distracting the band with questions about coloured filters and travel time. This is a good time for the band to draw something in the guest book, and for me to finish making the plates for their catering and remind them to eat. They will either be famished (which means you bought too little food) or not hungry at all. Awkward silences might enter her, or you might smoke and chat with them as if you've known them for years. It all depends on the band, your mood and how pissed they are that the sound guy is still in a taxi somewhere.

Sound guy will arrive. Ploinking from guitars will be heard, then the beating of a single sharp drum, bass drum, cymbal, rinse, lather repeat. Something won't be picked up properly by one of the monitors, one of the mics will be messed up or something else will have mysteriously broken during the night. Curse the gremlins, replace and move on. If everything goes perfect this is the time to start fearing for tonight's performance. Nothing can ever go that good without blowing up something spectacularly during the gig itself. Repeat your mantra of "it's all going to be ok" until you believe it. Check the first aid kit, just in case.

The band will leave for dinner once the sound check is done, but you can't. Soon the other workers will arrive (mostly bar staff and security), and since you have one of the two keys to the venue, you can't go anywhere. Sometimes you will ignore this and get some food, other times you will become a champion in solitaire until someone comes along to partner up with you for poker or blackjack. If you know you are going to be alone for a long time, you have probably already bought your working dinner: two bananas and a cola.

Sit down and play Plants vs. Zombies until someone rings the door bell. Take the verbal abuse from the idiot guitarist from the day before, still in his boxers, and point him in the direction of the band room. Smile as he leaves, calling you words you would like to use about whomever raised him to treat poor innocent venue workers in such a way. Then smile when you remember that bastards like him usually don't get far in life anyhow. Plus, he had to walk here wearing boxers with red hearts on them. That's something.

Chat with the first people to arrive, distracting them from their duties of counting beer bottles and cigarette packs, cleaning floors and replacing the posters on the walls. Make sure the barriers are in front of the stage before the doors open. Start to count heads and sweat.

This is where the tense waiting starts. What if the band is late? What if no one comes? What if everyone comes and the band is too late? What if no one comes and the band refuses to go on stage? There is nothing you can do, except postponing the gig for ten-fifteen minutes to allow for more people to arrive. This is usually only done to please the band, since it usually don't help at all.

Some bands handle this fine, some are ecstatic that for once there are more people in the room than on the stage, and others sulk and moan about it, loosing whichever fans they did have in the audience. But the moment they are on the stage, you can breathe for the first time in hours. Your job is as good as done. If they walk off, you need to be the one getting them back on the stage again, but for anything but that, you are free. They are on the stage, nothing can go wrong here (unless someone plugged their guitar into the light rig and the sound disappears every time the light guy dims the lights... happens more often than you think! At least it's not your problem if it does.)

This is the time for a victory cigarette, a quick clean of the band room, to listen to the gig if the band is good or to sit down and chat with your co-workers backstage if they are bad. After all, your job is done and you are still going to be the last one leaving the venue this night.