BOSS, Electro -Voice, AKG and Roland: My Spring 2025 Rig Run Down...(and the most stressful part of touring)

Me acting like I wasn't stressed at the airport baggage claim earlier that day

CLEVELAND, OH - The most stressful part of touring...anybody guess? Is it the travel? Is it the new stage to perform on? The introduction to the A/V professionals you're going to work with? The bad restaurants? Funky smelling hotels? Late Uber drivers? Hotel showers with bad water pressure?

Nope.

None of that is stressful, dare I say a fraction(!) as stressful as when I get of a plane at a tour stop and I stroll into baggage claim and feel like a anxious father picking up his kid from a month-long summer camp sleep-away. Are they ok? Is my kid traumatized by mosquitoes that look like they do CrossFit? Will my kid forgive me for sending a care package with off-brand toothpaste included?

Of course, I am alluding to that eternal few minutes I am standing at baggage claim and hoping my gear made the one, two, three or more time zone trip to wherever I am working. When I was on tour a few summers ago, I arrived in Berlin to discover my gear was two flight behind me. Me without a fundamental understanding of the German language and sorely lacking the tools, pedals and microphones of my trade.....certainly not the best way to start a tour that took me to three countries and four states.

Hopkins International Airport was the scene a few short weeks ago, where seconds felt like minutes and minutes like seasons of one's life: Did my gear make it from Las Vegas?

With an unceremonious kah-thlunk my rig made it through the conveyor belt system and thudded softly a few short feet from me. Now the next stressful moment: Is everything still working? The dirty floor of baggage claim and under the curious, albeit fatigued gaze of domestic travelers isn't the best place to run a quality check on my rig. A quick set-up and check at my hotel a few hours later told me I had dodged a bullet this early in my tour and the touring gods smiled upon me and blessed me with a rig that is still how it was when I drove to the airport in Vegas six hours prior.

It wasn't until the meet and greets began at the Cleveland Museum Of Natural History that the common questions were asked by curious concert goers:

"How do you do that?"

Then finally....."What do you use to make this show happen?"

The video below answers only the latter of the two.....15 years and a slew of social media content...well...that addresses the former.

-John Allen

Cleveland, OH