I Was Born With a Suitcase In My Hand.

Its a rainy day here in Nashville, so I figured that I would update you on my travels and antics while I do laundry and clean the apartment (I'm a hardcore multitasker... I'm making

coffee too right now. BAM!). I have a few ideas I need to update on the website: A few include the long awaited photography page, which include portraits and landscape photography, my lighting discussion page, which will be several articles I think every LD should know, and a fun "Traveling Monkey" page, which is the stuffed monkey I travel with. Ashley gave it to me... and won't let me leave home without (So I thought I'd share).

Where Have I Been?

It most certainly doesn't help that I don't blog as much anymore, but I was working on a post and everything took a wild turn. I scrapped it, and decided to see how everything shook out.

I always like a good adventure, and the past 6 weeks have been exactly that.

I should start a "Top 100 places I've been" page. That would also be fun

to share with you all.

IMMERSE

I finished out June working lighting for an event called "Immerse." It is formerly known as GMA week, and its an event where worship leaders and musicians alike can come and learn

how to better their careers, network and there's even a music competition element which up-and-coming artists get to show off a bit to try and earn a record deal... or something like that. I got called into to provide the lighting design for the entire week. I had a blast doing this event because we had some down time during the day that I would swap out colors and gobos in my rig, and from one night to the next, I'd have completely different elements. It was also a challenge, because I had no sort of intelligent fixtures. I had to create mood, and movement, without having anything that moved or changed color.

All-in-all, it was a fantastic week. I got to see the one and only Jeremy Bayne, whom I haven't done a show with probably for 2 or 3 years, Ashley got to come and visit me and that's always a very nice change of pace.

We also got a sneak preview of Blue Like Jazz - the movie: it was fantastic, its gonna ruffle some feathers... Go check

it out.

LBT

At the end of Immerse, I got a call from a friend asking me to come out with Little Big

Town as their LD. I took a day to think about it and I told him I could, which means that I ended up leaving 3 days later for about a month straight. Easily enough, that's where I've been. We bounced around the West Coast, and got to see the great western United States.

I've enjoyed LBT and their crew, we had had a blast touring the various sights like Yellowstone, Seattle, Boise, Las Vegas... etc.

Speaking of Vegas, we saw the Cirque Du Soleil show "LOVE".

Amazing doesn't even begin to describe it! The amount of choreography, the rehearsals, the time that went into it, is just mind boggling. I would love to go see it again, and if you are in Vegas, I highly, highly recommend it.

For those of you gear heads: currently, we are carrying 6 VL 2500s, 2 DL2s, 4 GRN LED bars, and a Kabuki drop... its a simple rig, but it works for what we're doing. My console, as always, is a Jands Vista S3: someday I'll get to carry a T2 or T4, but for having to dive out on the road real quick, the S3 has served me quite well.

**All pictures are copyrights of Chris Shrom, please send an e-mail for permissions to use**

A Whole New World

I'm engaged.

Yes, I'm about as shocked as you are, and I honestly have no clue where the future is leading; It feels as if everything I know is changing, or has become certainly uncertain. The one thing I know is this: I found a young lady who wants to stick it out with me... she must be nuts.

Ive posted 3 times this year. Yikes. This year can simply be described as utter chaos. It seems as if I've been all around the United States, into Canada (a few times) and back again without time to update the website at all. I've had several designs mapped out as the year progressed for the website and never actually saw it to fruition. I'm looking to get Adobe Flash soon.

Since I'm doubting that I'll be able to update again before the year end, I'm going to do a quick recap of the year:

Way FM 10

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This was a short 8-10 date tour with Jeremy Camp, The Afters, Chasen, and Jason Gray. It seems like it lasted a lot longer, but it was a ton of fun. The bands, and the crew were all great to hang with. I enjoyed getting to know everyone, and spending time touring the WAY FM circuit.

We had a Maxx Touring rig out that included 4 genie superlifts about 18 Elation 250s,2 DL2s, a bunch of Elation Opti PArs, and 8 of some sort of Elation Strobe light.

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Jeremy Camp Acoustic Tour

This tour was longer than the WAY FM tour, consisting of more than 20 dates across the US and presented a new challenge for me. The trick with the acoustic tour was to keep the look of the show conistent across every venue, without carrying the same equipment from show to show. It was a fun show because at times it felt as if I were just pulling rabbits out of my hat... I'm still thinking about chainging my logo... er, making a new one... or just having one at all.

I'm off topic. Go figure. The "tour look" featured a background that had the ability to change color, with 4 - 8 moving spot lights that ranged from some Chinese 250 fixture to Mac 2Ks. I generally asked that there be 9 lekos available for use, and I would spot each member of the band with a real tight focus. It was so tight that if they stood up, they'd be in the dark. I continued to use Jeremy's Vista S3. I ran that entire tour live, because I never knew what I was going to get from show to show. It tested my ability to creatively think ahead and many days I felt as a part of the band, because I needed to change when they changed. The set gave the idea of a living room, and a lot of evenings it felt like we were sitting in an extension of Jeremy and Adie's living room. There was a lot of joking, talking, requests, and random incidents that would happen if we were just chilling at the house with our instruments.

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Summer -

Travelling with Jeremy, I don't remember a lot of the summer. We did a few festivals here and there, I remember Seattle, WA and San Diego Co Fair which were both a lot of fun. Then there was Orlando, FL at Universal Studios where we carried a Barco MiTrix wall. It looked awesome, and it was a great dry run for our Fall Tour.

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Martina McBride - Shine All Night Summer Tour 10

Martina McBride. 'Nough Said. We rocked close to 17 shows across 3 1/2 weeks or so, and that's all just guestemation. I had a blast with the MM Crew. She took us into Canada probably 2-3 times, then over to Cor D'lene Lake, Lake Tahoe, and Napa Valley to name a few stops - it was absolutely hands down the best tour I've been on yet. Now don't get me wrong, it wasn't all just wine and boats; it was a lot of tough work, some days we were outside in some nasty heat, nasty cold or just straight up nasty weather, but the downtime outweighed it enough that after it was all said and done, it landed in the positive, and I'm looking forward to the day I go out with them again. Honestly, the scenery was great, the entertainment, amazing; but witout the people that were out there with me, it wouldn't have been anywhere close to as fun.

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Jeremy Camp - "We Cry Out" Fall Tour 10

Jeremy released a CD at the end of the summer entitled, "We Cry Out." This album, contrary to Jeremy's usual style, is filled with contemporary christian music, and was his first full worship album. I can recall the state of mind across the group as the recording process ensued, and the best way I can describe it is "reverence." The album was very powerful, I knew this long before I heard the tracks for the first time, but it wasn't until the album was out that I actually listened to the track "Overcome." I remember being blown away during the shows as we played that song, there was nothing like it, and we got to experience it night after night.

We also travelled with Carlos Whittaker, and John Mark McMillan who were both awesome on stage and off. When the tour ended it was sad to see it go. We're working toward the new year and tours to come, hopefully, Jeremy, we'll be in a town near you, and I look forward to seeing you there,

God Bless -

-Chris-

March and the Acoustic Tour

Happy March!
The madness is here, and I'm not talking about basketball. We're well
on our way into the Camp Acoustic Tour featuring Jeremy of course and
his wife Adie, who is just as talented as legit as Jeremy is. I
totally enjoy spending time with the Camps, and the Camp Crew, being
out with them is like being out with a little extension of my family.
I'm working on getting some pictures of the tour up, I'm going to have
to apologize for the quality, pictures from FOH don't always turn out
great.
We just got back from Florida today, and I'm looking forward to a
little bit of R&R this week before we travel up north to New England.
This will be the second time up in those states for me, I'm looking
forward to the states, not so much the cold. Good news is, I'm back in
Texas the week after.
In other news, I'm going back to my roots, I'll be doing some TSD
this week at Bandit. I always love coming back to a "home base" in
between shows. I'll write again soon.
-Chris-

Speaking Louder than Before - Way FM

Hello from Boca Raton, FL!

We're on the road again with Way FM extending the Speaking Louder Tour into 2010. Joining us are the Afters, Chasen, and Jason Gray, its a great show. I know its been a while since I've updated, but as of the last time, the Belmont Country Showcase had just finished, and we were doing some fixture cleaning at Bandit. There was wind of me signing on with Jeremy Camp

and wouldn't you know, I've been with him now for almost a year. Its crazy how time flies.

I'm hoping to update as we continue through the tour, and I'll try to update you on the happenings and adventures as we travel across the united states.

We've got a show here in Boca Raton tomorrow at the Spanish River Church, 2400 Yamato Road - check us out if you're in the area.

Coming Soon!!!

So, I've discovered that as you grow in lighting that you can take a lot of what you learned and put in into photography as well. I've recently acquired a D60 and I'm thinking about starting a photography company in my spare time. So - if you know someone who is looking for

some senior pictures, I'd love to take them. I'm attaching a picture of my younger brother, Josh. He's graduating this year and needed his senior pictures done. I'll add a link for photography at some point.

For the time being, I'm working on updating the rest of the site. I'll grab some pictures of the Way FM tour and shoot them up here as we progress... for now, check out the video Lief did for the tour... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJjPU1zjjuE

-Chris-