From Circus Magazine
August 26, 1980
By John Stix
Setting up for a major concert in a large hail starts eleven hours before the scheduled show time. At 9 a.m. the first of two large trucks arrived at Long Island’s Nassau Coliseum. The Utopia road crew and the local stage hands went to work. The road crew, specialized technicians in areas of lighting, sound, and instruments, directed a dozen stage hands hired from the local union. The stage hands provide the muscle, the roadcrew the know-how.
Lights were the first to be prepared. Jells are set and fixtures secured. A few hours later the sound reinforcement gear was unloaded and put into place using forklifts.
Instruments and amplifiers are the last to reach the stage. Then the drum, keyboard, and guitar roadies set up, troubleshooting for equipment failures. Stage hands work on hoisting up a video screen and surrounding the stage with a black curtain. Lights must be focused, pianos tuned, monitors checked.
Nearly eight hours after the setup, the band arrives for a soundcheck. Utopia band members Todd Rundgren (guitar), Kasim Sulton (bass), Roger Powell (keyboards), and Willie Wilcox (drums) prepare themselves for the concert. It starts with rehearsal before the tour and sometimes ends with screaming to open the voice before going on stage.
Circus: Are professional rehearsals much different than the kind you start out doing in your basement or garage?
Kasim: It's fairly the same as basement rehearsals. Maybe you rehearse less if anything. There's more business to take care of.
Todd: For this particular tour, I had to do a lot of video work. In fact I was working all the way through to the night before we left.
Roger: We've played together so long there's no heavy need for rehearsal before the tour. We'll learn the new songs we're gonna play, but most of the time is getting the production together.
Willie: It's rehearsing the coordination between the musicians and the crew. It's the timing of cues and sound and monitors. I think the times in the basement you had more concern about what you're going to do and how the show would go. On a professional level, a lot of the responsibilities are doled out. We couldn't make it without our roadies.
Circus: Is there anything special you do to prepare yourself for the road?
Kasim: I usually like to find a new guitar every time I go out on the road. It's just because when you get a new instrument it's exciting.
Willie: What I do is make a gigantic financial commitment to a situation.
Roger: That ensures he's committed to doing the tour.
Willie: Drumwise, I clean the dust off so it looks like I've touched them. Seriously I work out and keep physically active. Mainly I try to organize my personal life so it will function properly while I'm gone.
Roger: I used to prepare by practicing.
Willie: That's stupid, Roger.
Todd: I have a lot of extra-curricular projects going on all the time. Some of them get finished before I go and some of them don't. As the tour approaches, I usually wind up doubling up things in order to try and get stuff done.
Circus: What do you check for at the soundcheck?
Roger: Everybody has a mental check list.
Willie: The first thing I check for is available women and drugs.
Roger: I have only three keyboards and I guess the biggest thing is the monitor problems. They always fail during your solo. It's like an act of God.
Willie: Once the keyboards came through so loud I had to play with one hand because the other was holding my ear.
Roger: It was a simple mistake by the monitor mixer, but dire consequences.
Willie: The first thing I check is the drum machine. With regular drums you worry about the microphones. But with synthesized drums everything comes out of the monitors. If you hit it without the sound on, it sounds like hitting a leather car seat. The monitor balance becomes very important. I have to do two sound checks. With the acoustic drums the only thing I look for is head wear. I also check to retune the drums so there's no bad overtones or things that will affect the mix in the monitors.
Circus: The monitor mix the band hears on stage has nothing to do with what the audience hears?
Kasim: It has nothing to do at all with what the audience hears. No two halls are the same so you've got to go in there with the idea the sound isn't going to be the same everyday. You want to be able to hear yourself, and I want to be able to hear the drums. Even more important is my personal bass mix. I have two Ampeg SVTs on my left side that I use to cover myself across the whole stage. As long as they're working and not too loud for anybody else on stage, I'm usually fine.
Todd: For me it's important to see the hall. I don't like to step on stage and feel like I'm in a strange place. It makes me feel disoriented. Soundwise for me it's pretty easy. I have my own control for my monitor and it doesn't change a whole 1t night to night. I probably have it easier than the rest of the guys, because I'm further away from all the noise-making gear. My monitor mix is guitar in one half, voice in the other.
Circus: Do you do any warmups before going on stage?
Kasim: Usually right before the show I'll start screaming. Screams loosen your throat up. Other than that I don't play scales or anything.
Todd: I just go on. I used to do extensive vocal warmups, but at this point, the shows don't make my voice ragged. The amount of singing I do in the sound- check is usually enough. I just go out and hit it.
Circus: What's the best part of the tour?
Kasim: The second half. It's when I've loosened up and gotten used to being on the road. That's when I start to have fun.
Roger: This tour, which is three months long, the best part for me started about halfway in. By then the pacing of the show becomes natural. You stop concentrating on what's going wrong and start concentrating on what's going right.
Todd: It usually happens about two weeks into the tour. This tour it took many weeks because of some technical problems. Usually after you've been on the road a couple of weeks you hit your stride.
Willie: When you first begin a tour it's like a new pair of shoes. It takes awhile to break them in before you're not conscious anymore that you're wearing them. Things start to flow naturally and then you start to grow and become inspired, not burdened by the technicalities of the things you had to learn.