MRAZ Pre and Post Show
By Misha Chellam
Staff Writer

On paper, it seems like Howard Hopkins leads the life of an investment banker. He works 15-hour days. He rarely leaves his workplace and certainly never escapes the mindset of the job. He often works on the weekends.

But Hopkins is practically the antithesis of an I-banker; he’s in the business of rock n’ roll. As the production manager for Jason Mraz’s U.S. fall 2003 tour, he is working a job that will keep him on the road for ten weeks. Every day he wakes up in a new city, unpacks the building blocks of a show, assembles them, and afterward puts them all away again. The only thing that changes is the venue.

On Sunday that venue was Bridges auditorium. The three tour buses and the semi for Mraz, opening act Steadman, the production team (which Hopkins heads), and the equipment arrived early in the morning from the Bay Area. The production team, which includes the light engineer, three sound engineers, the production manager, and an instrument tech, got up around 10:00am for an 11:00am load-in. They were met by 12 Bridges stage hands, employed by Bridges to assist Hopkins for the day.

It took the entire group about four hours to configure the sound and lights. There was some joking around, but this was business, and Hopkins was gruff as he sent the helpers to their tasks.

By 3:30pm, the musicians had started sound checking; Mraz’s band took about two hours and Steadman took one more. By 6:00pm the technicians were working out the last details of the show, and the crew got to rest for an hour before the doors opened.

Tim Morrison, who runs Big Bridges, came to the venue at about 10:00am. He spent the early part of the day overseeing the last-minute ticket sales, and at 4:00pm he started to supervise hospitality.

In addition to his work that day, Morrison spent countless hours arranging this show, which was booked months ago. He expressed interest in the act in May, and was in contact with Mraz’s booking agent, Little Big Man, for months before anything came together.

When the show did finally get confirmed, it was with the help of a middle agent, Mad Booking. Its president, Marcie Cardwell, negotiated the specifics of the show with Little Big Man and Morrison, and she came out from Nashville on Sunday to oversee the show.

Morrison employed an event staff of 38 to make the show run smoothly. These people arrived at 5:30pm and monitored access to exits, backstage areas, and bathrooms. They also showed people to their seats. Six volunteer ticket-takers arrived at 6:00pm to take tickets. There were also four campus safety offices helping out around the loading dock area, separating the musicians and crew workers from overzealous fans.

A catering staff also worked throughout the day to keep the musicians and the production team fed, providing breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

All told, there were 83 people who spent the majority of their Sunday working to make the two-and-a-half hour show run smoothly. Which it did. Mraz was fantastic and fans appreciated the show, even if they didn’t realize how much work went into it.

After the encore and as soon as the house lights came on, Hopkins gathered his helpers to break the show down. Again, this was time for business. Everyone was tired from a long day of work and Hopkins was more brusque than before. At one point, as he was barking orders to an engineer who misdirected volunteers, it looked like the scene might get tense, but Hopkins’s goal was to get people home a little earlier, and it was obvious that everyone understood this.

With the labor carefully divided, it took a surprisingly short time to get the show back into its separate pieces, and by midnight they were loading the truck, headed back up the coast to the next venue. Truly resting for the first time all day, Hopkins was visibly exhausted, but when asked whether he enjoys the work, he didn’t hesitate: “I love my job. It might not always seem like that, but I do.”