Valras Plage - When a show is cancelled

Hello to you!

Today I speak about little things that make each concert different.

Tuesday, June 24, we had a concert with "Ce soir j'attends Madeleine", a show in which I play since 2009. This concert was in Valras Plage, in the south of France, for a festival.

We took the road Tuesday morning at 9am, braved Parisian traffic, and we arrived in Valras at 6pm, a little tired, but ready to play.

There, while technicians were setting the lights up, we discovered the stage, just between the sea and the port. The situation was completely improbable, it was the first time we went to play outdoors on the seaside!

So we begin to unload our gear, and there comes our first bad surprise, I notice that the bench that I use with my keyboard is broken. This is the second time it happens, each bench lasts me about two years, and strangely, it always break during one of these concerts... obviously when we arrive at the venue.

Never mind, I'll play on a chair. When I'm playing, I usually have my keyboard high, so I never had a problem playing on a chair.

Second bad surprise: a strong wind prevents mats to fit on the tables. We have quickly overcome this problem with thumb tack.
That done, we begin our soundcheck. The same wind than previously was still with us, and it was very loud in the microphones of the singer and the accordion.

The sound engineer had some windscreens, so he put them on the accordion's microphones, and the problem was solved for the accordion.
For the singer's microphone, the sound engineer cut all the bass frequencies, which improved the sound a bit, but we could not do much else, we thought we were going to deal with it, and we hoped that the wind would disapear during the concert.

After these problems, we went, in good Parisians, closer to the sea, then we ate at a restaurant across the street.
We then went back to the stage and prepared to play.

And the biggest problem came in, just five minutes before the beginning...the rain teamed with the wind, and after a few minutes of uncertainty, we unplugged the gear, and the concert had to be canceled...

These are things that happen, but we were very frustrated by this. You  may know that the road back is always longer, because all the excitement of the show is past, this time, it was very very long...