Snippet #1501095

Leon found the spot on the stage where he’d be standing, and pushed his pedalboard along the floor into position. He then hoisted the mix stand around just behind it, extending it over the pedalboard and adjusting the height. There was no mic in it yet; the house team would provide those. He took the guitar lead that was on his shoulder, plugged it into the input of the first pedal on the board and trailed the other end over to the guitar stand. And that was pretty much his part of the set-up done.

He heard Kyle mumble a greeting to John, one of the crew, as he walked back onto the stage from the other wing holding a few sheets of paper and a bottle of water.

“Sorry,” Leon called out, “you missed the drinks order.”

“S’ok.” Kyle shrugged, holding up the water, “I’d better just stick with this for now. I’ve moved the set-list around a little, think it might work better. Just swapped Riptide and Trails around. Think we can still flow the second three songs together that way?”

“Not easily if you’re moving them around like that,” Leon frowned, “means I gotta put my guitar in drop D, then back to regular, then into drop D again.”

“Well we’ll give it a tryout when we soundcheck,” Kyle grinned, “you’ll just have to be quick on the tuning pegs.”

Leon rolled his eyes and paced up and down the stage a few times, trying to hear how the three songs could be blended in the different order. Suddenly there was a gentle pop from one of the amps as it was switched on. He looked back and saw Evie darting expertly back and forth between the different bits of gear, connecting leads and fastening cables together with ties. She was doing a pretty neat and efficient job of it. He’d rather expected to see her floating around behind John watching how he did it all. Guess you never can tell, he thought to himself.

His eyes wandered to the right where he saw Hal sat at the drum kit, picking at the tip of one of his sticks and blatantly staring at the girl as she went about her work. Rolling his eyes again, Leon sauntered over to Hal, approaching him from his blind-side, slipped a stick out of the bag hanging from the kit, and swiftly struck the crash cymbal. Hal jumped out of his skin, distracted as he was by his ogling, and almost fell off the chair.

“Yo lead-head.” Leon grunted, “Emil’s getting drinks, you better get down there if you want something.”

“Damn it man.” Hal said, recovering his composure. The drummer stood up and started to make his way down to the bar. As he passed Leon he murmered quietly in his ear, “Hope you don’t think that just because you saw her first it gives you any privileges.”

“Dude,” Leon chuckled, “with bandmates as ugly as you to compete with, who needs privileges. How about we let her get on with her work so we can be set up ready to do what we actually came to do, eh?”

Hal snorted and continued down towards where Emil was ordering the drinks. Leon rubbed his head thoughtfully, and glanced back over towards Evie. He had to admit she made quite an impression. It was almost a shame that she clearly knew exactly what she was doing; giving her a few pointers would have been an excellent excuse to strike up a conversation...

So instead he wandered back to his guitar, picked it up and plugged it into the lead running to the pedalboard. His amp wasn’t on yet, but even so he ran a few scales, planning how to link those three songs in the new order whilst also re-tuning his bottom string. That was the only downside to having a band front-man who didn’t play guitar; they sometimes made near impossible demands.