Three Weeks On The Road With Power Chord Academy- Man, I Am BEAT!

  • Thread starter Thread starter stevieb
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stevieb

Just another guy, really.
A few here may have read my post concerning the gig my son and I just completed, providing backline and rental gear, recording gear and services, and live-sound gear and services for an outfit out of L.A. called Power Chord Academy. I am attempting to organize my thoughts, experiences and impressions from the last three weeks here.

First, a disclaimer: Everything I post here is my own, personal opinion. I do not wish to disparage PCA, nor any of it's employees. Overall, I have a positive impression of PCA, and have found everyone connected with the organization to be professionals who are good at what they do, and dedicated. That said, I do not intend to pull my punches, here.

PCA has been running rock n roll summer camps for the last 12 years. They pre-date the Jack Black film "School of Rock," and of course the spin-off RNR summer camp by the same name. They have a web presence, of course, and if you go there, you can see all the cities they promote RNR camps in. I stumbled across them while looking for something almost completely unrelated in the Atlanta Craigslist for "Gigs Wanted." (I also have now completely forgotten what it was I was originally searching for...) I saw a post for contractors to provide rental gear- guitars, amps, PA's, drums, etc.- to the 13 to 18 year old campers who, for whatever reason, would not be bringing their own gear to the camp. Further scrolling revealed additional post for contractors to record the camp bands' songs, and to provide and run a live-sound setup for their concerts. The rates were in the low-to-middle range, but given the time commitments that were expressed in the posts, they were not bad. An example: To record each band, the post gave a time of 1 hour for tracking, and 30 minutes to remix. The rate paid was posted as $150, or $100 per hour. Not great, but not bad. Live sound was actually pretty close to the going rate for a rock n roll show in a hall seating about 600 people. Hmmm. I have been doing live sound here and there, and making far less per event than what PCA was offering, so I have a rig, and though, this looks interesting. I sent an email to PCA, expressing my interest in the contracts, and called my son- he being the owner and operator of a recording studio in New Orleans- and laid it out for him. As July is a slow month for him- he works sound, lighting and rigging for concerts- he agreed to do it with me.

Famous last words. Before it was all over, we were both thinking murderous thoughts.

More to come...
 
I intended to post tonite, but got distracted and now am sleepy. Will try again tomorrow.
 
In For A Penny, In For A Pound. A Pound Of Flesh, As It Happened...

Continued...

After I submitted my initial bid via email, I got a call from the executive director. Very nice guy, we came to know each other fairly well even though we have yet to meet in person- several emails and phone calls can have that effect. A big question I had was, of course, "How much money do we stand to make?" It proved to be a very hard question to get a good answer to. David and I agreed early on, "In for a penny, in for a pound." We wanted all three contracts for any camp we worked, or we would pass- given we had travel expenses from New Orleans and Marietta to the Atlanta camp (actually in Rome, GA, more than an hour's drive from my house, which is 30 minutes' drive from Atlanta,) we knew we had to do enough business at the camp to make it worth the time.

The first stumbling block to getting a handle on how much money we might make was, PCA had never done a camp in Atlanta. My contact looked at the numbers for the '09 Seattle camp, and read off the numbers of amps, guitars, PA's, drum sets, etc. rented, and the numbers of bands formed and thus recorded. Running sims based on those numbers, and our projected expenses, it was clear that it would be fairly tight, but we could make some money. We figured on a minimum of six bands for each camp session, and I, somewhat optimistically, figured several kids would be flying in and thus not bringing their whole rig, and renting gear from us. I began to scour craig's list for cheap drum sets, guitars, amps, PA's. We had made a play to get the Miami sessions contracts, but my man with PCA told me their contractor for last year was returning, so I tried to keep to a simple formula: Cost of gear minus income for one week's rental should equal zero, or at most $50- I figured if I had to lay out more than the week's rental, I would get my profit when I re-sold the gear. Drums were easy to find for less than the rental amount- I paid as little as $50 to $75 for some very nice, quite complete kits, the most any one kit cost me was $100. Cymbals had me worried- the cheapest cymbal pack (Hi-hat and crash) was about $150, which would bust my budget. Then, I found a CL post from a women who ran a thrift store- she had bought out a closed-down music store, and I scored all the cymbals I needed- new but very cheap types- for $75. I had similar luck with amps, guitars, PA's, etc.

Maybe TOO good luck- as it came close to camp week, it became obvious I would not need the six drum sets, etc. I had bought. We ended up renting not more than three sets per week.

Bands recorded proved to be similarly dismal. Instead of the six to eight we were expecting, we actually only recorded 4 to 5 bands each week.

Overall, we brought in only about two-thirds the money we expected. To call that "stressful" is to engage in some pretty wild understatement...

Next: The Final Week Before.
 
Come on dude don't leave us hanging. Give us longer and more detailed descriptions.

How big was the stage? Who provided that? How many people. Time spent setting up/breaking down? Did most of the bands do cover tunes?

Thanks,
Racherik
 
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