Bill Reiter knows a thing or two about multi-tasking. These days, he splits time between three bands: the hard-rock LucaBrasi; the resurgent The Urge; and El Monstero, the king of local tribute bands, who’ve added a summer show to their half-dozen, annually-sold-out, December dates at The Pageant. In addition to his duties as a keyboardist in the group, “I’m also the in charge of the video content for the show. So when I’m no rehearsing,” he says, “I’m doing that. It’s a pretty full-scale thing.
“Because we don’t rehearse year-round,” Reiter adds, it’s pretty much a three-, or four-night a week thing for the two weeks on either side of a show. And this year, we’re taking it to Chicago, so we’ll be retooling the whole thing after this version’s done. It’s pretty much all-consuming for a couple of weeks. But in that it’s only twice a year, it’s an easy sacrifice to make.”
This Saturday night, the band returns to the summer stage for only the second time, after last summer’s 8,000-strong turnout at Jefferson Barracks Park. Though that venue has played host to all kinds of different musical events over the years, the venue wasn’t capable of handling the volume of Pink Floyd fans that make up Monstero’s audience. They knocked the venue out of beer, soda and bathroom essentials, creating a demand in the process that lead them to the Verizon Amphitheatre this summer.
With the players will be dozens of technical workers, there to ensure that the event runs smoothly, including the pyrotechnics that are a big part of the Pageant shows, as the fire’s playing out in a smaller setting than Verizon’s.
“It’s all local,” Reiter says of the crew. “And we’ve got a lot of support, a great deal of support. The people spearheading the production are awesome.”
Asked if there’s a for-sure thing that people don’t understand about the enormity of their annual shows, Reiter thinks for a moment, but figures that “there are a lot of things that you don’t think about day-to-day. We’re all musicians, playing in other bands all the time, but for something of this scale, it’s all different. Jake Elking, the other keyboard players, is just across the room from me in rehearsal. But at the show, we’re eight feet in the air, 25 feet from each other, unable to really the guy and in partial darkness. That’s something you don’t even consider until you’re in it.
“Then there are all kinds of wrinkles, like the blocking for pyro, and all that stuff,” he adds. “I assume people may know, but there’s always a fire marshall standing there. And before we do the show, he has to say ‘yes’ to every piece of pyro you do. One of the added expenses of the show is that you have to test each [effect], and for every piece that we blow up in the show, something just like it was blown up prior to the gates being opened. It’s all pretty interesting, but you have to know that if you’re standing near a red light when the pyro’s [happening], they will not shoot it, but you’ve paid for the shot. You can’t exactly put that stuff back in the box.”
Nor will the group put itself into a box after this. (Ba-da-bing!) Instead, they’ll take their act to Chicago, for a date at the House of Rock on July 28.
“That’s something that’s always been discussed,” Reiter says. “At the end of the Christmas shows, because we’ve done them so much by the end of those weeks, it really feels like our job, as if we’re making our living as that. Just before I joined the band, maybe 11 years, there was an attempt to do an out of town show, which went okay. But the primary problem’s been getting all that production on the road. Here, we’re working with St. Louis people, friends and business associates, people that we’ve all known with our other bands. It’s going to be a different thing taking it to Chicago, a completely different animal. It’s a concern, even a bit of a worry, but it’s gonna be fun. Sometime, we figured we had to try, see how it goes.”
Before the Windy City, though, it’s all about St. Louis. And Reiter says the “usual buzz” is out there.
“I know that people are excited,” he says. “It’s quite a day of entertainment for the ticket price. Yeah, we’re certainly excited and we’re playing some new songs. It’s going to be interesting and fun and bigger than last year’s summer show, in a lot of ways.”
El Monstero: A Tribute to Pink Floyd happens on July 14 at 7 p.m. at Verizon Wireless Amphitheater. For tickets, visit Livenation.com.
