Road Trip

This past weekend me and some friends went on a little road trip to Dallas, Texas. Our original plan was to go to the All Hope Is Gone World Tour show featuring Slipknot, Coheed and Cambria and Trivium. Of course, being that close to Fellowship Church, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to visit and when I found out they have a Saturday night service, I had to go.

Awesome service. Dex and the band did four songs (including Forever, my favorite off the new CD), then Christine Caine shared a powerful message about allowing God to fulfill his promises in and through our lives. Of course, Ed was there, and it was cool to see him in person. Must say, I’m still cracking up every time I think about what he said in reference to churches/pastors that talk trash about other churches because they’re too big, too loud or too progressive They can’t say anything bad about the message being preached but they sure can find fault in the presentation. As Ed put it, “Big steeple, few people.”

Also at Fellowship we hooked up with an old friend of mine, Lance Philips. He moved to the DFW metroplex in 2007 and has been attending Fellowship Church for the last several months. It was great getting to catch up with him. Definitely have to go back now as I know someone in the area other than my relatives.

Anyways, onto Sunday. We stayed at my aunt’s house, so it was cool to catch up with her and my uncle as I haven’t seen them in at least two years. Sunday afternoon we went to Grapevine Mills and had lunch at the Rainforest Cafe. They were even kind enough to make me a Grateful Dead even though they’d never made one before. Luckily, I had my iPhone so I could Google the recipe.

After wandering around the Mills for a couple hours (I lost count of how many sword/knife stores there were) we headed to Grand Prairie for the show. The Nokia Theatre is definitely one of the nicest venues I’ve been in. It isn’t too big (seats a little over 6,000) and feels really intimate, even in the balcony, yet it provides enough ceiling height and floor space to accommodate any band. And being a geek, I had to get a pic of the FOH position. Of course, being Slipknot, they were running Meyer Mica line arrays, Meyer MJ212A monitors and Meyer M2D delays for those of us in the balcony. The lighting was awesome as well. There was one truss above the stage with 20 intelligent lights on it which were used for Trivium and Coheed. Slipknot also used it, but I’ll get to that in a bit. After the show I went down and introduced myself to Dave Nicholls (audio director for Slipknot) and chatted for a bit.

The opening band was Trivium. Before Sunday night I wasn’t much of a fan. I mean, the only song I’d even heard was their cover of Metallica’s Master of Puppets. But they definitely put on a good show and I’m going to check their stuff out now. After Trivium we had a quick set change and then Coheed and Cambria took the stage. I felt so bad for Claudio, as he was having problems with his pedal board or guitar. His guitar tech was still working on the pedalboard in the first song (which, for those interested, was Welcome Home). They finally got the problem solved during the second song. Their final song was the best though – they showed why they deserve to be on a metal show, even though they lean more hard rock. Claudio ripped a solo behind his back, then with his teeth, and to top it all off humped a Mesa double stack while soloing.

And then the curtain lowered. There was no curtain for the Trivium/Coheed set change, so we knew something was up. That something turned out to be a beast of a stage set, six additional lighting trusses, multiple stationary LED’s that were about six feet tall each and two Meyer line arrays used for side fills. And their performance: unbelievable. Slipknot definitely lived up to the hype, as they are consistently voted one of the best live shows year after year.

Slipknot set list (Runnin’ With the Devil was played over the FOH system to warm up the crowd, Iowa and 742617000027 were played over FOH as Slipknot’s intro and ‘Til We Die was played over FOH at the end as Slipknot threw pic, drumheads and drumsticks into the crowd.)

To view some professional photos taken at the concert click here.