A Day in the Life of Paul Languedoc Summer 1991 - Doniac Schvice by Doniac Staff It's soundcheck time, and Paul is sitting behind the soundboard, staring at the CD player. The moment of truth has arrived again, as it does every night touring with Phish. Seven hours of setup time combined with thousands of hours of preliminary work designing, building, wiring, soldering and transporting the sound system have passed. When he pushes the play button, digital information will travel down a complex path of wires, circuit boards, resistors, transformers, amplifiers and compressors...traveling across the room in a snake through racks and speaker cables and finally to a cone shaped piece of paper which will send vibrations through the air. These vibrations will move peopl's eardrums, therby causing a pleasurable sensation. People have traveled a long way for this sensation. They're counting on him... In 1984, Paul was working on building guitars in a barn outside of Burlington when he built Trey a custom mini guitar, the first of a number of guitars and basses he would build for Trey and Mike. The guitar was a beautiful 24 fret hardwood instrument shrunken to the size of a mandolin. You can hear it on "Junta" on *You Enjoy Myself*. Meanwhile, Phish was just getting off the ground and in need of some sound help, so to speak. Paul was the man. So in 1984 Paul started building up the massive structure that Phish carries around with them. Seven years later, it's still growing (expanding exponentially like some recursive virus). In that space of time, he's built Trey's guitar and Mike's bass, pedalboards, racks, light cases, drum cases, speaker enclosures, monitors, and the list goes on. Moving all this stuff around is another story in itself, and Paul, having rebuilt an engine or two in his day, holds the title of resident truck mechanic as well. Paul's job is not all fun and games. Phish's first trip to Colorado, for instance, was a direct fifty hour trip with six people crammed into a tiny windowless compartment (that Paul built) in the back of a cube van in August. The truck struggled toward the Rockies and finally gave out in the middle of a rainstorm at ten thousand feet. While everyone else slept, Paul lay on his back beneath the truck in puddles of water, not having slept in days, and managed to get the thing running. On the way home from that trip, Paul was finally getting some sleep when the truck pulled into a gas station around 3A.M. It turned out that in replacing a lost gas cap at the last stop, someone had put on a locking cap for which there was no key. So one by one, band and crew members began trying to get the cap off. Within minutes, there were four people gathered around the gas tank with tool box open, tools spread everywhere, hammering, wedging, and trying every conceivable way to get the stupid thing off...but to no avail - the cap would not budge. Slowly, the truck door opened, and Paul emerged, half asleep, glasses off, and wandered over to the tank. He picked up the tiniest screwdriver in the toolbox and gently tapped it into the plastic cap, wedging it against the locking mechanism inside. Without a word, he unscrewed the cap and climed back into the truck, leaving behind a group of wide-eyed observers. These are the kind of things that happen when Paul is asleep. One time Mike got left at a rest stop, again at three or four in the morning in Nevada or someplace and no one even realized it until an hour later. Paul and Trey had to drive back and find him. As a matter of fact, one time Paul was left at a rest area by Del Martin (roadie extraordinaire) and the band happened to drive by and see him and pick him up. There have been many gigs that wouldn't have gone on if it wasn't for Paul. There was a night at the Living Room in Providence when Page forgot his power supply for his piano and there wasn't on to be found anywhere in the city. With showtime drawing near, Paul built him one. Then there was the time when Mike and Trey began smashing their guitars together during "Big Black Fury Creature From Mars", leaving Mike's bass fret sticking out at a 90 degree angle. As the music went on, Paul appeared on stage with a mallet and hammered the fret back in so that Mike could finish the song. These kinds of incidents go with the territory; but the really fascinating part of Paul's job is to witness the live show in action and think what a minor miracle it is that this enormous structure of sound and lights actually works night after night. Countless thousands of connections, wires, cables forming a huge spider web of signals and power...everything must be taken into account: electrical engineering, acoustical physics, sound engineering, woodworking, physical engineering used in designing racks and truss systems. All this is blended together into one huge movable system to be set up and broken down once a day. The ultimate goal is the crystal clear reproduction of the music taking place on stage so that the audience hears it just as the musicians are hearing it. It's an exciting goal, because it can only keep improving with time, as technology advances. To look at the stage and see and hear what Paul has done in just six or seven years is staggering. It will be exciting to watch it continute to grow over the coming years. So it's soundcheck time...Paul is sitting behind the soundboard staring at the CD player. In a minute he'll push play and hopefully it will all work again. The band, through experience, is utterly confident that it wil, and that if it doesn't, he'll fix it. This faith in Paul creates a calm mood amoung the band members, who can concentrate on playing music. We want to thank and salute him for a contribution whose magnitude cannot be overestimated. Thanks, DOHC!!! © 1991 Phish, Inc.