I arrived in London for the Macklemore & Ryan Lewis world tour on September 8, a couple days ago in a flurry of flights, passports, work permits, and English cabbies.  Adapting to the new time zone, after traveling through 7 time zones, has been the hardest adjustment.  This is the beginning of the team’s first Arena world tour, and there are a lot of expectations and logistics to sort through.

The entire team slowly gathered at 02 Academy over the next day or so, with some of the crew having been there already for a week previously. Day 1 of my arrival had the entire production, stage and band hanging out around Brixton, London – and getting prepped for the upcoming tour: rehearsing music, practicing lighting cues, special effects, pyrotechnics, staging, props, security… everything…

One thing that’s wonderful for me to experience, especially since I’ve had the unique perspective of working closely with Macklemore and Ryan Lewis since 2008, is watching the amazing trajectory that their careers have taken over the last couple of years.  The shows back in 2008 started off as stripped down performances like when we were opening for Blue Scholars at Neumos with DJ Omega Watts, Owour on trumpet, me on violin, and Ben.  Now in England, for the 2013 Fall World Tour of the Heist, it is a completely different and awe-inspiring thing to see, complete with dancers, huge video screens, entire lighting, catering, special effects crews, and more.

Day 2-3 – Once the live set had been tightened up, and staging had been worked out, we performed our first live shows in London at the 02 Academy. Both nights there were sold out to capacity.  Tensions were slightly high as we worked out some kinks on and off stage, but overall things ran very smoothly.  We kept pretty close to the venue and the surrounding area, even though most people told us that it was a very “dodgy area.”

Day 4 – After our initial shows in Brixton, our 50-person team loaded up onto our 3 tour buses, which were parked at the O2 Arena half way across town, and shuttled north towards Birmingham across the English countryside. We drove at night while most of the crew tried to sleep in their coffin-like bunks, so when we arrived the next morning, it was hard not to feel some sort of uncanny sense that we had teleported a great distance.

Birmingham’s stage set up was significantly smaller than the Brixton shows since the stage itself was 1/3 of the size of the starting shows. Despite it’s more cramped conditions, the show was still crackin’ and was actually easier for us to feel the sheer energy of the entire audience in the smaller room. Even with the huge crowds that we are expecting for the rest of the tour throughout Europe and the US… there is an element of comfort that comes from playing the occasional more ‘intimate’ shows like this one.  I guess it’s just a nice reminder of the raw and humble beginnings of the Neumos show days.