Pooch's Update: New Gear, Touring, & More!

[hahninator]

The resident FOH and fan-favorite sound engineer for Linkin Park, Pooch, has posted a huge update on Linkin Park's recent rehearsals and their preparations for the upcoming world tour for The Hunting Party.

 

After the Living Things World Tour, Pooch set off to work for Alter Bridge as they trekked across Australia, Asia and more before he left their North American Tour to come back to Linkin Park in April. He was asked to work for Alter Bridge after his previous work with Slash & Myles and he was instantly loved by that band and their fans as well.

 

And he hasn't been without his successes too - Pooch was named Tourlink's "Top Dog" FOH engineer of the year in 2013! He is no stranger to the award though, because he won FOH engineer of the year by Tourlink and also by the famous Parnelli Awards in 2008, amongst other achievements.

 

Pooch does a blog for SoundProLive and his latest update is titled "Never Enough Time When You Change Everything", referring to the Linkin Park rehearsals.

 

"I flew straight from rehearsals with AB to setting up for Linkin Park. We were scheduled for three weeks of rehearsals, which sounds like a LOT, but you would be mistaken. We have taken Linkin Park to a new level, and with that process we upgraded and changed EVERYTHING."

 

Everything at FOH and everything in the backline was changed out in preparation for the new world tour, which he details in the blog extensively. If you've watched the Tucson show videos, you'll also notice Mike and Joe are using some new gear on this tour too.

 

"Much of the three weeks was spent just getting gear to talk to each other. The band was still able to rehearse their parts, but we (the crew) would spend hours and hours after the band rehearsal, just getting the gear to work on the section of the set that the band wanted to work on the next day. Sometimes we couldn't get anything to talk to each other until 4am for a 9am rehearsal. Not much sleep makes for a grumpy crew, and we were starting to reach the end of our patience by the last couple of days. On the LAST day of rehearsals, we managed to make it all the way thru the set, without any equipment crashes. Hooray!!!!"

 

Along with the new gear, Linkin Park also has a few new crew members on this tour. Benjamin Chandler, who has worked with Deftones and Crosses, has taken over as the new guitar tech for Brad after Sean Paden (June 2003 - January 2014) recently left the band.

 

After discussing the recent Tucson radio show, Pooch closes with, "Rock in Rio in Lisbon is our first big festival. All the gear that we set up in rehearsals is flying to Lisbon to meet us. I hope that the guys that are loading all our gear on to the plane, and then thru customs, and then on to a truck in Portugal, and then on to the gig, don't drop, or tip anything over. ALL that work for nothing...... HA. But this is the life we have chosen. Nobody said it was gonna be easy. Everyone would do it, if it were."

Read the full blog post by Pooch here. Good luck to the crew and to Pooch on the European Tour!

[JZLP-Benningstrong]

Way too complicated for me, lol.