Time to go away again, another Supergrass festival appearance, and this time it's in Norway, the Bukta festival in Tromso. This is without doubt the furthest north I have ever been to mix a show, a lot further north than the artic circle! Heres a map to give you an idea of the location……..
A lot of travel was involved to get to Tromso. It was an early flight out of London Heathrow so I had to travel down to London the night before. This was very easy as the bands tour manager, Mark, lives about 70 miles north of me so we made an arrangement for him to pick me up at the local motorway service station only about 10 miles from where I live. At 6:30 in the evening we meet up and Mark drives down to the airport where he has arranged a hotel for us to stay the night. We meet up with the bands equipment van and check we had everything we needed, we took only the minimal amount of gear due to the weight restriction allowed nowadays for air travel, he also wanted to avoid any excess baggage charges. The cut down microphone kit (the band have all their own microphones) became a part of my luggage!
The 6am alarm call came a lot too fast! We took the shuttle bus to the airport to meet up with the band and the rest of the crew. After a very fast check in and the usual security checks I made my way to the room where the new iris bio scans were being done. This is a new idea introduced recently by the UK immigration people. There were very few people there! The process is as follows…… you have to look into a special screen (without glasses) and they take a photo of your irises, you then move to another screen (with glasses!) and they check that they register. The information is then matched against your passport details. Will it work on my return to the UK?
We all made our way to the gate and boarded the flight. The heavens opened! It poured it down, a huge thunderstorm over London and 45 minutes sat on the tarmac. As this flight was only going to take us as far as Oslo we were all wondering as to whether or not we were going to make it there in time to catch the internal flight north to Tromso. Having arrived late in Oslo we went through immigration and picked up all the baggage (my bag seemed very wet!), rechecked in and just made it in time to the gate for the next flight, would the gear make it in time?
The flight to Tromso took almost the same amount of time as the London to Oslo one did! All the equipment had made it! It was then off to the hotel for some food and to check the situation regarding my wet luggage! It was drenched! There was even water in my toiletries bag, I constructed a washing line so I would have some dry clothes for the journey home. Luckily the microphones I was carrying were not wet!
The festival site was only 10 minutes away from the hotel, the crew set off early to sort everything out. I always feel sorry for the back line boys in this situation as they have to sort out the locally rented drum kit and amplifiers to get them the same as the band are used to (good work Gavin and Neil!) A 30-minute change over and the band were on. I was provided with a Soundcraft MH4 console, Martin LE700 wedges and D&B side fills, I had a great show! The only factor I didn't enjoy was the fact that it was so cold! I could see snow on the mountains in the distance! In July! How the band managed to play their guitars in the cold weather Ill never know!
Soundcraft MH4 Sound consoleAfter one of the coldest shows I have ever mixed we went back to the hotel and out for a couple of beers, it was still daylight even at 3 in the morning! After having a bad nights sleep we made the return journey to the UK. I slept most of the way back home! On arriving at Heathrow I tried out the new iris recognition system, there were huge lines of people everywhere except the new booths for the new system, I walked in, looked into the screen and was in! Fantastic! It works!
Photos on the Supergrass tour diary websiteSupergrass on MyspaceSupergrass Website