Great stuff H!
And a terrific choice of the Billings kit, especially for their fittings and scale accuracy.
As for DEVO, I saw them way back in the day! Great show for sure. Congrats to your son for getting to work with the Mothersbaughs. Mark is a monster talent who has had a huge career in TV music as well.
As for your engineer, having worked in Hollywood post production for 38 years I completely understand the incredible talent, discipline, and effort it takes to be a sound engineer and a music editor. I had the honor of working with John Williams, Ennio Morricone, Hans Zimmer, and even Stevie Ray Vaughn, albeit not as deeply as your engineer has to with the musicians he has to work with. But, I get it!

You have to be proud of those boys!
Keep us looped in on the Banckert!
👍👍👍

That Tugboat looks quite a lovely challenge - hope you enjoy it - There are paint sets available for these kits too:

https://www.cornwallmodelboats.co.uk/acatalog/billing_boats_banckert.html

My son visited the UK Leeds Hobby shop on his off day there. He is sound engineer for Chappel Roan and many more. He did a FaceTime so I coukd pick mamas present. Up on second floor I was looking at tugboats. We decided the Billings Banckert was my choice. He brought it back n paid $80 tariff. He took it to his house in LA. I’m in east coast MA. My other son is in band Devo playing guitar n keyboards. His brother is doing Sound for most of that tour. Chappell n other bands in between. Both boys will be back for thanksgiving n I hope to get the ship. If not I’ll be in LA Xmas n build it there to use in his pool. I read the instructions on line. Looks like a lot of work to build superstructure. I need to finish my USN Crockett and Creole Queen. Or sell one of them both built up to doing railings. Queen has motor n belt drive in as well as servo. I haven’t install reviver, battery n smoke generator. Xmas will be good fir my workroom