Introduction & Preface

I have had these grandiose ideas of involvement with music and media production ever since I was a kid, whether it be a performing guitarist in a famous rock band, lighting designer for massive arena concerts, record producer, or live sound engineer for a renowned band. Or at least something along those lines.

Somehow, by the grace of unfathomable luck, I happened to meet a group of kids in the grades above me at Syracuse University who started a band called Ra Ra Riot. Somehow, they persevered the gap after their graduation, wrote 12 incredible songs, toured themselves relentlessly for two years, built a fan base from the ground up, signed to Barsuk Records this summer, recorded those 12 incredible songs, and released an album that has Spin, Rolling Stone, The Washington Post, MTV, and Pitchfork Media talking. Somehow, I managed to build enough of a relationship with this band and their extraordinary manager over the years such that they would ask me to go on tour with them this fall as their sound/production engineer.

The tour extends from September 3 until October 18; Hitting every major city (that I can think of) in the United States and Canada. We are talking Montreal, Toronto, Syracuse, Rochester, Minneapolis, Chicago, Kansas City, Salt Lake, Van Couver, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, LA, San Diego, Phoenix, Austin, Dallas, Orlando, Chapel Hill, D.C., Baltimore, Manhattan, Brooklyn, Boston, and many places in between. They will also be performing on Late Night with Conan O'Brien THIS tuesday night, September 2nd at 12:30am... technically the morning of September 3rd. Tune in.

This little blog will serve as a window into my travels for these coming weeks. So far, I've been helping the band fix up their myspace page, create a tech rider for venues, purchase some new gear, and focus on stepping up the quality of live performance in both sound and stage. I hope to post stories, pictures, and videos. Enjoy, comment, and please come to a show if you can. And pick up their album entitled The Rhumb Line. It is fantastic.

http://myspace.com/rarariot

http://rarariot.com