Starting the New Year off on the road...

Here is a list of shows for the first leg of the Evanescence 2012 tour! Looks like we are going to be very busy and traveling all over the place! :-) This time around it is going to be difficult leaving my son (20 months old) and my daughter (1 month old). My wife is going to have her hands full with everything...we also just moved to a new place and things are still in boxes and I leave tomorrow! Looking forward to going back to work, but leaving home is always the worst part of my job! 

FRI

1/13/12

Clemson, SC

Littlejohn Coliseum

3,800

SAT

1/14/12

Atlanta, GA

Tabernacle

2,432

MON

1/16/12

Tampa, FL

Morsani Hall

2,550

TUE

1/17/12

Hollywood, FL

Hard Rock Live

4,000

WED

1/18/12

Orlando, FL

House of Blues

2,058

FRI

1/20/12

Biloxi, MS

IP Casino

1,400

SAT

1/21/12

Little Rock, AR

Verizon Arena

4,280

THU

1/26/12

Monterrey, MX

Arena Monterrey

10,095

SAT

1/28/12

Guadalajara, MX

Telmex Auditorium

8,430

MON

1/30/12

Mexico City, MX

Sports Palace

18,950

WED

2/8/12

Yokohama, JP

Pacifico

 

THU

2/9/12

Tokyo, JP

Zepp

 

FRI

2/10/12

Nagoya, JP

Zepp

 

MON

2/13/12

Osaka, JP

Zepp

 

WED

2/15/12

Taipei, TW

Exhibition Hall

6,000

FRI

2/17/12

Seoul, KR

Melon Ax Hall

2,000

SUN

2/19/12

Manila, Ph

Araneta Coliseum

9,000

TUE

2/21/12

Hong Kong, CN

Asia World VIVA Hall

6,000

THU

2/23/12

Kuala Lumpur, MY

K.L. Live

2,000

SAT

2/25/12

Jakarta, ID

Istora Senayan

7,000

MON

2/27/12

Singapore, SG

SIS

6,192

WED

3/21/12

Perth, AU

Challenge Stadium

4,933

FRI

3/23/12

Adelaide, AU

Entertainment Centre

8,478

SAT

3/24/12

Melbourne, AU

Rod Laver Arena

11,554

MON

3/26/12

Brisbane, AU

Convention Centre

3,588

WED

3/28/12

Brisbane, AU

Convention Centre

3,588

THU

3/29/12

Sydney, AU

Entertainment Centre

11,546

SAT

3/31/12

Auckland, NZ

Vector Arena

7,720

SUN

4/1/12

Wellington, NZ

TSB Bank Arena

5,455

Evanescence

I have recently started working for Troy McLawhorn of the band Evanescence. This is a very fun camp and all the band members are great! We started tour in South America and are currently touring the US. 

Evanescence's new album has also just become the #1 album in the US!

My wife and I are expecting our second child (a baby girl this time) in December and I should definitely be home just in time for her birth which is amazing!!!!

11 shows into this tour...day off today in Detroit Motor City!

Guitar World Magazine and Back On Tour...

So...

I have been in Burbank the past few days getting all the gear prepped for a South America, US and Canadian tour that will last roughly the next 3 months!

In March, Guitar World Magazine featured Stephen Carpenter's guitar rig in their magazine. 

I worked very closely with the magazine in great length to capture every detail of Stef's guitar rig from the Deftones. You can follow the exact signal flow from guitar to the speakers! This is what I built, set up every show and maintain out here on the road...Enjoy! :-)

I leave in the morning for Santiago, Chile! We will be in South America for 2 weeks and then start immediately in the US in Seattle. Catch you on the road...

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Sorry for the lack of posts recently. Lots of stuff going on right now... Moved to a new location, spending time with my 10 month old son, and just trying to relax a little bit. I'm home until the end of March and repairing guitars/amps while I'm here! :-) More to follow soon...

Manila Philippines...rough little stint...

Arrived in the Philippines from Japan which was a nice little 4 hour or so long flight. Slept most of the way, which was great! When we got off the plane, we collected all our bags and all our gear (about 50 pieces in total) and this little midget of a van pulled up. It was funny to see this van completely lowered to the ground from the weight of everything inside. The next day morning we came in early to the venue to check everything out. We played at the World Trade Center building in Manila which was just a huge square room, kind of like Walmart but with nothing in it!! Haha Had some serious power issues going on there. Their power is 240v and our gear runs at 120v. Problem being that the step down transformer that converts 240v to 120v was not functioning properly. We were getting extreme voltage through the ground leg of their power which would have blown up our gear at 70v through ground. Had to help them sort this out because after 4 hours of waiting for any type of power before I could plug anything it...enough was enough. Found the issue on the 240v distro box...i had them move the step down transformer connection to a different source and it dropped the volts on ground to 20v. Better, but not acceptable for our gear! They called in an electrician to re-wire their cables at the generator and this brought the volts on ground to under 1v which was good enough to do the show! Once I finally got power for everything, all my gear was working perfectly fine, except for the rental 4x12 Marshall cabinets. We had ordered 9 4x12 cabs and only 2 of them worked. I had to re-wire 2 cabinets just to have a rig that worked. Not sure how rental companies always get away with sending out crap that doesn't work, but it happens all the time! There was one more major problem as well before we could start sound check... Every single XLR (microphone) cable for every cabinet, D.I. Box and mic had some sort of issue with them. Some crackled, some popped, some just didn't even work at all!! We went through over 20 different XLR cables before we got everything working...just for Stef's guitar rig. After all of this, I was so frustrated and grumpy about all I had to fix just to do the show, but that is just part of my job sometimes!! The show ended up being great, so all the hard work definitely paid off in the end!

I think I'm turning Japanese...

Show day in Tokyo yesterday...

The show was great! The kids were absolutely crazy for a Japanese crowd. I think it had something to do with the 4 American guys in the middle of the audience who were screaming and yelling all freaking night. One of them screamed for Chino to spit in his mouth...only in America (via Japan!) haha. It was a super small venue and got hot inside very fast! 

It can be fun to do the smaller clubs in Japan because everything runs smoothly 99.9% of the time out here. The people who at the venue and our promoters were great! I found the tape on the wall from last time I was here...roughly 6 years ago with The Used. Who knew tape would stay on the wall that long without someone ripping it down! :-)

The shows out here usually start really early and everything has to be finished by 10pm. We were all packed up and started heading back to the hotel by 9:30pm. After the show, a few of us walked down to the Hard Rock to grab some dinner. All I can say is that I ate so much food that I nearly burst. I had the spring rolls, onion rings and was craving some ice cream, so I also got the hot fudge brownie sundae! Sounds like all junk food, and it is...price to pay for being a vegetarian in Japan late at night! haha. Your options are seriously limited under those circumstances. 

When I woke up this morning it was snowing outside in Tokyo. Not such a great thing to see when you don't really have any warm clothes! Every singe place we have been/going to (except for Japan) is hot and humid. I didn't pack many warm clothes! ;-)

Meeting up with my buddy to go out in the snow here in a little bit. We are going to take the subway somewhere in the 4 hours we have before we have to leave for the airport! This is definitely the shortest trip to Japan I've ever had. Flew in late at night, next day had a show and then flying out to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 

There is always so much to see and do out here that it is impossible to really enjoy it unless you are here for a few days. Gotta run downstairs, more to come later...

Jakarta to Tokyo and everything in between!

Everything has been completely non-stop since leaving Australia!

This was the view from my hotel room in Jakarta. I've also included some pictures showing how they searched each vehicle that was coming into the hotel with dogs and mirrors. It was definitely an experience to say the least!

The Jakarta show was great! Couldn't believe how loud the crowd was singing along to the songs. Almost 2 hours of people going crazy!

After the show we packed everything up and headed back to the hotel! When we arrived at the hotel it was a little after midnight. We had to be up at 4:30am for lobby call...which meant only getting 4 hours of sleep! The ride to the airport was a completely different experience with the absence of traffic and only took about 30 minutes instead of 4 hours. haha.

This is what the traffic looks like in the day. There were literally thousands of motorcycles who owned the roads and the lines on the street were basically ignored by everyone all the time!

Leaving Jakarta, we flew to Hong Kong before arriving in Tokyo Japan! The first flight was completely full, but the second flight was empty. In rows 40-70 there were only 6 people total. It was an amazing flight because I had 3 seats to myself and the flight crew were like waitresses at a restaurant...they would check on you every so often to fill up your drinks and bring you more food! It was great!

After 14 hours of traveling, we finally arrived in Japan! We are only here for one and a half days, so I have to make the most of it I guess! Arrived late last night, show today and then we are gone tomorrow. :-(