Waiting in a small room.. 6 of us sit, checking our gear, talking about photography and our experiences. After a bit there was silence, we knew it was almost time, going over camera settings in our minds, wondering what the pit would be like, what kind of lighting was going to be used, and at that moment the door opens and our escort to the pit walks through. 6:45pm at Budweiser Gardens in London Ontario we were going in......
Lights out, into the pit we go, 3 feet wide, lighting cables all over the floor, crowd behind us, stage in front of us.. 4 security guards standing in there with us, there wasn't much room to work and all of that quickly goes away as the boys from James Barker Band come out on stage! These guys brought the energy and warmed the crowd up right. 3 songs in it was time to go as we were escorted back out, up the stairs out through the crowd and back into our room where we would go through our images and wait until 7:30pm.
7:30pm and the door opens again for us to be escorted out to the floor. Again, Lights go out and we all make our way into the pit. Out of the darkness, comes HIGH VALLEY, lights beam on, the crowd goes nuts, yells "WE LOVE YOU", " YOURE SO HOT " blasting out from the crowd behind us. Guitars and and a banjo strumming loud, Brad singing right over head out to the crowd, white light beaming right onto them edging them out from the rest of the band. High Valley sounded so good, very clean, lots of energy as they ran back and forth across the stage, even making sure to look down at us photographers in the pit every once and a while to see us all singing along and making for some great engaging shots.
8:45pm, the moment everyone had been waiting for.. waiting for the lights to go out so we can get in the pit, everyones hanging out, talking, trying to relax and bam.. they go out.. the crowd goes nuts yelling and screaming, it gets so loud and in that moment we all hear ....... " B.U.S.H. P.A.R.T.Y we'll have some F.U.N tonight " , everyone singing and dancing along. So much energy filling up the arena, great lighting, colours all over the place, CO2 Canon's going off blowing smoke 20 - 30 feet in the air, what a performance.
I'd like to send a huge thank you out to Dara at RGK Entertainment for the media pass hook-up and the opportunity to photograph this tour.
JAMES BARKER BAND:
HIGH VALLEY:
DEAN BRODY:
