Latest / The Bob Lefsetz Podcast / Robert Scovill

Transcript

Robert Scovill · The Bob Lefsetz Podcast

0:08
Speaker 1: Welcome, Welcome, Welcome back to the Bob met Sets podcast.
0:12
Speaker 1: My guest today is Robert school Why music Engineer extraordinary. Robert,
0:18
Speaker 1: good to have you on the podcast. It is my pleasure,
0:21
Speaker 1: Sarah good to be here. Thank you for him writing
0:23
Speaker 1: me in very nice Okay, we were scheduling this and
0:26
Speaker 1: you said you had to do the CMT Awards. What
0:28
Speaker 1: did that involve? Honestly, it was a very last minute thing.
0:32
Speaker 1: I um, I'm kind of enlisted to mix Kenny Chesney
0:35
Speaker 1: this year. He's gonna go out and mix. You're gonna
0:37
Speaker 1: do his normal stadium run throughout the year. So we
0:40
Speaker 1: were in rehearsals. We were in Nashville and rehearsing for
0:43
Speaker 1: about six weeks total, and then right before we were
0:46
Speaker 1: ready to finish, I mean the day before we were
0:48
Speaker 1: ready finished, they said, oh, we're gonna have Kenny closed
0:50
Speaker 1: the CMT Awards, so we're gonna go do that. So
0:53
Speaker 1: everybody kind of dropped everything they were doing and said, okay,
0:56
Speaker 1: let's go get ready to do the c MT Awards.
0:58
Speaker 1: So they closed the show and uh, it kind of
1:01
Speaker 1: went off without a hitch. It was a nice thing,
1:02
Speaker 1: but you know, you kind of get these curve balls
1:04
Speaker 1: thrown at you all the time. You know, so no
1:05
Speaker 1: problem there, let's go. So how do you interfaces Kenny's
1:09
Speaker 1: engineer with the engineer for the show? Yeah, it's it's
1:13
Speaker 1: an interesting thing, and honestly, every one of the award
1:15
Speaker 1: shows are different in how that sort of happens. I mean,
1:19
Speaker 1: as you can imagine, every band that comes on any
1:21
Speaker 1: of these shows. Uh, you know, has their own people
1:24
Speaker 1: that work for them. But you know, depending on what
1:26
Speaker 1: city you're working in, you know, it can be heavily
1:29
Speaker 1: regulated by the union. Uh you know some Nashville or
1:32
Speaker 1: Tennessee is kind of a right to work state, so
1:34
Speaker 1: it's not necessarily union. But you know, if it's not
1:38
Speaker 1: too complex, you know, more often than not, you're just
1:41
Speaker 1: gonna be you know, kind of the backstop for the
1:44
Speaker 1: engineer that is actually mixing the event to air. You're
1:46
Speaker 1: gonna kind of let him know, Okay, this is what's
1:48
Speaker 1: going to be hit and you here be ready for this.
1:50
Speaker 1: Usually there's you know, there's plenty of run throughs, you know,
1:53
Speaker 1: or camera blocking and rehearsal, so you can kind of
1:56
Speaker 1: get pretty well set where you feel comfortable with the
1:58
Speaker 1: audio that's gonna go to air and then the man's
2:00
Speaker 1: has got to get up there and performance, so uh,
2:03
Speaker 1: you know, so preparation is kind of the key to
2:05
Speaker 1: it sometimes. I mean, I over the last couple of years,
2:08
Speaker 1: I've gotten my Union card, after you know, forty years
2:10
Speaker 1: in the business, I got a Union card so that
2:12
Speaker 1: I could actually be the guy sitting in the chair
2:14
Speaker 1: for some of these awards shows where I'm on the
2:17
Speaker 1: other end of it, where the band's engineers coming up
2:19
Speaker 1: and guiding me through it. So you know, I've kind
2:21
Speaker 1: of been on both ends of it. Now. Okay, so
2:23
Speaker 1: you're rehearsing with Kenny getting the sound right when he
2:26
Speaker 1: actually does an award show. How much of his own
2:29
Speaker 1: equipment does he bring and how much of the sound
2:32
Speaker 1: from the stage are you responsible for before it feeds
2:36
Speaker 1: into the mixer for television? Right? Well, again, I mean,
2:39
Speaker 1: I hate to be so abstract about it, but it
2:41
Speaker 1: depends on the show. Like you know, obviously, some television
2:44
Speaker 1: shows are uh, you know, a pre record or you'll
2:48
Speaker 1: record it and then the band will get up there
2:50
Speaker 1: and mime to it. Uh. Some of them are fully live,
2:53
Speaker 1: things like Rock and Wall Hall of Fame induction that
2:55
Speaker 1: is a completely live event. You know, everybody's performing at that.
2:59
Speaker 1: But you know, kind of depending on the producers you're
3:01
Speaker 1: working with or the show format, you know, sometimes it'll
3:04
Speaker 1: it might even be a hybrid of that, whereas prerecorded music.
3:07
Speaker 1: Band is playing to it, but it's all live vocals,
3:09
Speaker 1: you know, So it can be any combination of those things.
3:13
Speaker 1: For TV UM TV is a very particular little animal
3:16
Speaker 1: there for doing live music for sure. Okay, so if
3:19
Speaker 1: you're doing it, do you record the live track and
3:23
Speaker 1: you do it before and how do you do that? Yeah? Well,
3:25
Speaker 1: I mean luckily, in this day and age, we're, you know,
3:27
Speaker 1: with the way we do live sound now, we're we're
3:30
Speaker 1: set up to do any kind of recording, any kind
3:32
Speaker 1: of multi track recording, any kind of to mix, etcetera.
3:35
Speaker 1: So what happened in this particular situation was, you know,
3:38
Speaker 1: we were recorded it at rehearsals. I mean it was
3:41
Speaker 1: actually the band playing the player run through. You record it,
3:43
Speaker 1: then you remix that in a studio and bring in
3:46
Speaker 1: what are called stems, which are you know, one volume
3:49
Speaker 1: control basically for the drums, one for this guitar player,
3:51
Speaker 1: one for the other guitar player. It's kind of pre
3:53
Speaker 1: mixed and then that's what goes to air, and then
3:56
Speaker 1: they put live vocals right on top of it. So,
3:58
Speaker 1: you know, television product and you know they're looking for consistency, predictability.
4:03
Speaker 1: You know, they've got to stay on schedule, you know,
4:05
Speaker 1: to the second. Really, so everything is really really highly
4:08
Speaker 1: scripted for those TV show, especially live TV for sure,
4:12
Speaker 1: you know, so they don't they don't allow a lot
4:14
Speaker 1: of flexibility there. Really for the most part, they want
4:16
Speaker 1: to know exactly what's coming at him and deal with
4:19
Speaker 1: that accordingly. Okay, so if Kenny is doing live vocals,
4:22
Speaker 1: does he bring his own mic and do you sit
4:24
Speaker 1: there with the engineer saying set the board like this,
4:27
Speaker 1: this is how he likes it, Again, depending on the show.
4:29
Speaker 1: On the vast majority of shows, especially for a lead vocalist,
4:32
Speaker 1: they can bring their own microphone. Sometimes it gets into
4:35
Speaker 1: a little bit of a problem if they want to
4:37
Speaker 1: bring a wireless microphone, because you know, wireless frequency management
4:41
Speaker 1: in this day and age is very very challenging, so
4:44
Speaker 1: you know, you'll you'll be under the strip confines of
4:46
Speaker 1: why he has to work within this frequency range for
4:48
Speaker 1: the transmitter and the receiver, etcetera. But usually that's that's
4:51
Speaker 1: even acceptable, and we can kind of get that going
4:54
Speaker 1: and then they can be comfortable with their own mic,
4:56
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, you know, see a lot of
4:57
Speaker 1: artists they have their own mic blinged out and cutting
5:00
Speaker 1: jewels and be dazzled and all kinds of other stuff
5:02
Speaker 1: on it, so you know, it's part of their brand,
5:04
Speaker 1: so to speak. So they'll theyn't want their own mic,
5:06
Speaker 1: and and that's fine. I have no problem with that.
5:09
Speaker 1: And then yeah, you'll sit there with the engineer and go, Okay,
5:11
Speaker 1: these are kind of the characteristics of Kenny's voice you
5:13
Speaker 1: need to look for here, you know, blah blah blah,
5:15
Speaker 1: and just try to help him be fast and get
5:17
Speaker 1: through it. So, okay, you mentioned the Rock and Roll
5:19
Speaker 1: Hall of Fame. You've been the overall engineer for those telecasts, correct.
5:23
Speaker 1: My first one was this year. I did the one
5:26
Speaker 1: this year after they you know, they postponed for a year.
5:28
Speaker 1: I was supposed to do it the year before, but
5:29
Speaker 1: then COVID shut it down. So this was my first
5:33
Speaker 1: year handling that and it was really cool. I really
5:36
Speaker 1: loved it. I hope I hope they asked me back
5:37
Speaker 1: to do more of them. Let's start from the beginning.
5:39
Speaker 1: How did you get the get One of the um
5:41
Speaker 1: production managers for the gig knew me from touring years
5:44
Speaker 1: and years ago. We toured together, and you know, just
5:46
Speaker 1: reputation carries a lot of weight in that situation, and
5:49
Speaker 1: they had an opening and he called me and said, hey,
5:51
Speaker 1: are you would you be interested in mixing and rock
5:53
Speaker 1: and roll Hall of Fame inductions? I said, heca, yeah,
5:56
Speaker 1: let's go. So, uh, you know a lot moving parts
6:00
Speaker 1: in that show, Man boy, I mean, it's a it's
6:02
Speaker 1: a big it's kind of a monster to wrestle to
6:05
Speaker 1: the ground from the musical end of it as well
6:07
Speaker 1: as the rest of it. I mean, it's that's a
6:08
Speaker 1: big production to do, and especially given that they want
6:12
Speaker 1: to do it all as live performance. You know, there's
6:14
Speaker 1: there's no there's no miming in that show for sure.
6:17
Speaker 1: So that that's cool, That makes it. That's attractive to me.
6:19
Speaker 1: You know, I love being involved in those sort of
6:21
Speaker 1: things and taken on that kind of that kind of task.
6:24
Speaker 1: So you get the gig? How long before the recording
6:26
Speaker 1: date in that situation, Well, because of COVID, I had
6:30
Speaker 1: it almost a year and a half before. But in
6:32
Speaker 1: a normal situation, you know you're gonna get in listed
6:35
Speaker 1: for that gig a good a good six months in
6:37
Speaker 1: advance because you're doing a lot of work in the
6:39
Speaker 1: background on that interfacing with every band that's going to
6:43
Speaker 1: get there. What you know, what are you going to bring,
6:44
Speaker 1: what instruments are you going to show up with, how
6:46
Speaker 1: are we gonna make it, who's going to be the
6:48
Speaker 1: house band? And even in that situation, you know you're
6:51
Speaker 1: going to have, you know, that grand finale thing where
6:53
Speaker 1: you're gonna have multiple bands up on stage playing at
6:56
Speaker 1: the same time. So I mean it's you know, from
6:59
Speaker 1: an audio point of view and be a little bit
7:00
Speaker 1: like hurting cats, you know. I mean there's a lot
7:02
Speaker 1: you know, what do we do with three bass players
7:05
Speaker 1: during the performance of one song, or you know, six
7:07
Speaker 1: guitar players, or you know all of those things. So
7:10
Speaker 1: you know, that gets very challenging to make that kind
7:13
Speaker 1: of you know, just go and work. So it's a
7:16
Speaker 1: there's a lot of planning involved for that, lots and
7:18
Speaker 1: lots weeks of planning for Okay, so in the weeks
7:20
Speaker 1: of planning, since you're the major domo, to what degree
7:24
Speaker 1: are you in charge? To what degree do they bring
7:27
Speaker 1: the wrong guy. Tell you to what degree do you
7:29
Speaker 1: dictate to them based on television limitations. Yeah, in that situation,
7:33
Speaker 1: I'm the mixer on record and the mixer of records,
7:35
Speaker 1: so I will be mixing all the events. You know,
7:37
Speaker 1: their engineer is welcome to sit down right next to
7:39
Speaker 1: me and say, Okay, here's what I need to hear. Here. Uh,
7:42
Speaker 1: let's make this a little bit louder lessen. Don't worry
7:45
Speaker 1: about that. That's fine. You know, he can help guide
7:46
Speaker 1: me through it, for sure, and I welcome that. You know,
7:49
Speaker 1: that's that's a very necessary element of that. But at
7:52
Speaker 1: the end of the day, you know, I end up
7:53
Speaker 1: having to be the one to mix it. I'm going
7:55
Speaker 1: to be the one that has to answer for it,
7:57
Speaker 1: et cetera. Again, it comes back kind to TV production
8:01
Speaker 1: where it's like, I've got to have predictability. I've got
8:03
Speaker 1: to I've got to have known entities there. You know,
8:06
Speaker 1: as many as many constants and known entities as we
8:09
Speaker 1: can create in television production, that's what is wanted. That
8:12
Speaker 1: is what is desired by the producers for sure. So
8:14
Speaker 1: to get it right, how much rehearsal was there? You
8:17
Speaker 1: get quite a few run throughs with each act on
8:19
Speaker 1: the day before the show. Um, there is an off
8:22
Speaker 1: site rehearsal where you know, they'll have a musical director
8:24
Speaker 1: that will meet with the talent and they'll figure out
8:28
Speaker 1: whether they're going to sing with the house band or
8:30
Speaker 1: you know, it's going to be a band on its own,
8:31
Speaker 1: like you know in that situation. You know, Food Fighters
8:34
Speaker 1: was one of the bands that went in, so they
8:35
Speaker 1: were going to play on their own for sure, but
8:38
Speaker 1: yet you know somebody like uh, you know, Mickey Guyton
8:41
Speaker 1: was going to do a piece and she was going
8:42
Speaker 1: to sing with the house band. So all of that
8:44
Speaker 1: is rehearsed off site. There are rehearsal spaces set up
8:48
Speaker 1: away from the show, uh, you know for weeks previous
8:51
Speaker 1: where they're rehearsing and working on arrangements. Who's going to
8:53
Speaker 1: sing what, etcetera. And then I show up, you know
8:57
Speaker 1: really the day before the actual tape and airing, uh,
9:02
Speaker 1: and we have a full run through, and you know,
9:04
Speaker 1: a lot of time is spent with the artist on
9:06
Speaker 1: stage doing camera blocking, you know, like getting all the
9:08
Speaker 1: camera shots sorted out, you know, all the cues sorted out, etcetera.
9:12
Speaker 1: And they're doing run throughs of it during that that period,
9:14
Speaker 1: so you have a lot of time to kind of
9:16
Speaker 1: prepare the music and get it hopefully mixed properly for
9:18
Speaker 1: the audience. You know, it's kind of a I mean,
9:21
Speaker 1: it's kind of nerve wracking mixing for that audience. I
9:23
Speaker 1: mean it's a pretty heavy audience sitting there listening to
9:26
Speaker 1: you present those those bands, you know, so it'll get
9:28
Speaker 1: your attention. So the mix you hear in the room,
9:31
Speaker 1: is that the same as the mix that goes over
9:34
Speaker 1: the air. It is not. There is always a mixer
9:37
Speaker 1: that mixes to air, and there is always a mixer
9:39
Speaker 1: that mixes for the room, and just as there's there
9:41
Speaker 1: are mixers that mix for the artist on stage as well.
9:44
Speaker 1: You know, they're considered monitor mixers. So yeah, there's there's
9:47
Speaker 1: multiple mixing formats taking place at the same time, and
9:50
Speaker 1: it's all recorded in multi racked form. If they want
9:52
Speaker 1: to get back and remix it for the post for
9:55
Speaker 1: postwork before it actually goes to air, which they almost
9:57
Speaker 1: always do there. You want to get it as good
9:58
Speaker 1: as you can before it actually is to air, you know,
10:00
Speaker 1: So every act brings their own monitor mixers. They can
10:04
Speaker 1: absolutely I mean most monitor. Most acts at that level
10:08
Speaker 1: and of that caliber have their own monitor engineer as well,
10:10
Speaker 1: and same sort of thing. He would walk in and
10:12
Speaker 1: work with that monitor engineer to get all their ear
10:14
Speaker 1: mixes or their you know, their speaker mixes worked out
10:17
Speaker 1: properly for the artists. They're going to know all the
10:18
Speaker 1: artists sensitivities and sensibilities at that point. So yeah, you know,
10:23
Speaker 1: like I said, we welcome it as like bringing on. Yeah,
10:25
Speaker 1: the more info you can give me here, the better
10:27
Speaker 1: it's going to get. Just make my my world a
10:29
Speaker 1: little better here, as opposed to having to guests for
10:31
Speaker 1: an hour here and then figure it out at all
10:33
Speaker 1: the wrong times. So what's the difference between mixing for
10:36
Speaker 1: the room and mixing for television? Very big difference in
10:40
Speaker 1: my opinion. I've done both, and you know, you're mixing
10:43
Speaker 1: for a very different medium when you're it's really no
10:46
Speaker 1: different than mixing the live p a versus mixing for uh,
10:49
Speaker 1: you know, for CD or streaming or any of that.
10:52
Speaker 1: You know, they are two very very different dynamic ranges.
10:55
Speaker 1: They're two very very different frequency responses. Uh, there's a
11:00
Speaker 1: a very different outlook on you know, volume in those situations. Etcetera.
11:05
Speaker 1: So you know, there are guys that have done both
11:08
Speaker 1: at the same time. You know, in a pinch, I
11:09
Speaker 1: have done both in the same time, and it is
11:11
Speaker 1: really really hard to do and make them make them
11:14
Speaker 1: both great. You know, usually one suffers a little bit
11:17
Speaker 1: because of the other one, you know, in terms of
11:18
Speaker 1: you know, mixing life for the room versus mixing for air.
11:21
Speaker 1: You know, if you're trying to do both those things
11:22
Speaker 1: at the same time, that's hard, that's really really challenging
11:25
Speaker 1: to do. So something like the Rock and Roll Hall
11:27
Speaker 1: of Fame, which is recorded before. Are you involved in
11:31
Speaker 1: post and how much work is done in remixing? I
11:34
Speaker 1: can only use this year's experience as the the basis
11:37
Speaker 1: of this conversation. I was not involved in post there.
11:41
Speaker 1: I don't feel like I need to be really uh,
11:44
Speaker 1: you know, the engineers that are that are mixing that
11:46
Speaker 1: thing are fantastic. I actually thought this year's show sounded
11:49
Speaker 1: fantastic over the airwaves, so they did a super John there.
11:53
Speaker 1: I'd probably just be in the way if I was there. Okay,
11:55
Speaker 1: there's a lot of literature and a lot of knowledge
11:57
Speaker 1: of what's going on in the recording studio. Oh and automation, etcetera.
12:03
Speaker 1: Let's start, what is the board that you use to
12:06
Speaker 1: mix lots? Well, you know I'm old enough you and
12:09
Speaker 1: you can see on camera here I got enough gray
12:11
Speaker 1: hair to back this up. But you know, I've been
12:13
Speaker 1: around for a long time watching mixing console development here
12:17
Speaker 1: over over forty years. So you know, the capabilities that
12:20
Speaker 1: we have in live sound today from mixing consoles are
12:23
Speaker 1: just incredible. I mean, we have reached really a really
12:26
Speaker 1: high degree of capability and mixing consoles there. Obviously everybody
12:32
Speaker 1: now is mixing for the most part in digital uh
12:34
Speaker 1: just because of all the capabilities, and it especially for
12:37
Speaker 1: things like you know, Rock and Hall of Fame and
12:39
Speaker 1: some of these other very complex shows. I don't think
12:41
Speaker 1: we could do them an analog. If we did, we
12:43
Speaker 1: it would require two or three mixers at the front
12:46
Speaker 1: of house to be able to do that. But we
12:48
Speaker 1: can do that all in one console now. So the
12:51
Speaker 1: capabilities are absolutely fantastic. Um, But I work on a
12:55
Speaker 1: Are you looking for a name of a console or
12:57
Speaker 1: just sure? Yeah, I I work with uh an Avid
13:01
Speaker 1: sxl Avid Technologies and the live sound business. Now. I
13:05
Speaker 1: actually helped them get into the live sound business in
13:08
Speaker 1: two thousand right around that area where we helped. You know,
13:11
Speaker 1: I was kind of enlisted to come in and help
13:13
Speaker 1: them conceive a console line that would work in live sound.
13:17
Speaker 1: So you know, we kind of came in and uh
13:20
Speaker 1: kind of reinvented the wheel a little bit in that world,
13:23
Speaker 1: you know, because you know, that was a world that
13:25
Speaker 1: was living in, you know, primarily in pro tools and
13:27
Speaker 1: video editing, and now all of a sudden we were
13:28
Speaker 1: going to jump into live sound. So you know, they
13:31
Speaker 1: they've kind of done some things that have really reshaped
13:33
Speaker 1: the way people work in that market. Now, So what
13:35
Speaker 1: was our inspiration to get into live Soule? Well, I'll
13:38
Speaker 1: ask that. I'll answer that question with a question, what
13:41
Speaker 1: is anybody's inspiration to build any product? Bob. It's revenue,
13:44
Speaker 1: you know, they want to make money. But by the
13:47
Speaker 1: same token, they had a gentleman working there named David
13:50
Speaker 1: le Bolt. I don't know if you know David and
13:53
Speaker 1: know that name. Um I met him in the early eighties.
13:57
Speaker 1: We were touring together with an artist named Lori Anderson, Uh,
14:01
Speaker 1: kind of doing a world tour. He was the keyboard
14:03
Speaker 1: player on the tour. I was one of the mixers
14:04
Speaker 1: on the tour and we kind of hit it off
14:06
Speaker 1: stop for a second, got in the whole rock and
14:08
Speaker 1: roll guy, How do you end up working with a
14:11
Speaker 1: performance artists like Lorie Anderson? You know, I don't know, man,
14:15
Speaker 1: These gigs just come across the desk, and you know,
14:17
Speaker 1: you know, I would be lying to you if I
14:19
Speaker 1: said when I got asked to do the gig that
14:22
Speaker 1: I knew everything about Lorie Anderson. I didn't. I had
14:24
Speaker 1: to go study it and and understand who she was.
14:27
Speaker 1: But I'm just telling you. Once I got into that
14:28
Speaker 1: camp and worked there a little bit, I was completely
14:30
Speaker 1: on fire for it. It was so cool technically, I mean,
14:34
Speaker 1: it was performance art, no no doubt about it. I mean,
14:37
Speaker 1: and you know, she was really pushing the envelope technically
14:40
Speaker 1: of what you could do on stage and and with
14:43
Speaker 1: audio there. So it was fascinating to be a part
14:45
Speaker 1: of it. And I think that's part of what drove
14:47
Speaker 1: this conversation that we're gonna have here, because David was
14:50
Speaker 1: really into it and being the keyboard player. I mean,
14:53
Speaker 1: it was right when Samplers and all kinds of things,
14:55
Speaker 1: we're really just starting to hit the hit the landscape there,
14:59
Speaker 1: and so he and I hit it off famously. We
15:02
Speaker 1: did the tour, we went our way as at the
15:04
Speaker 1: end of the tour and he went off. He played
15:05
Speaker 1: with Billy Joel for a long time, and then I
15:08
Speaker 1: went on, you know, toured a bunch of metal acts
15:10
Speaker 1: and all kinds of other things. And at some point
15:12
Speaker 1: he actually went to work for digit Design. At that point,
15:16
Speaker 1: you know, who was developing pro Tools at the time.
15:18
Speaker 1: This was pretty early on in the development of pro Tools,
15:21
Speaker 1: and he kind of drove all that technical development to
15:25
Speaker 1: make that a really, really credible product in the studio.
15:28
Speaker 1: I mean he he really brought a lot of that
15:30
Speaker 1: functionality and made it a credible product as a recording tool.
15:35
Speaker 1: And by the time the late nineties, you know, two
15:38
Speaker 1: thousand rolled around, I mean pro Tools was pretty ubiquitous
15:41
Speaker 1: in the recording studio. I mean it was everywhere. And
15:44
Speaker 1: I get this call one day, I'm I mean, I'm
15:45
Speaker 1: at my home in Arizona and I get this call
15:47
Speaker 1: from David and I haven't spoken to him in twelve years.
15:51
Speaker 1: You know, Hey, uh, you know I'm working for digit Design, right, yeah. Yeah,
15:55
Speaker 1: we're thinking about putting together a live sound console. We
15:57
Speaker 1: want to use plug ins blah blah blah blah. You know,
16:00
Speaker 1: do you think we have to do it? I mean,
16:01
Speaker 1: this is something we got to do. And I just said,
16:03
Speaker 1: absolutely not. Don't do it. Don't do it. We don't
16:06
Speaker 1: want that, you know, we don't want pro tools in
16:07
Speaker 1: the life sound. But you know, the conversation carried on
16:13
Speaker 1: and he kind of convinced me to come up to
16:14
Speaker 1: San Francisco and meet with him. So, you know, we
16:16
Speaker 1: sat around at dinner table when when night, kind of
16:18
Speaker 1: discussing what we thought a digital console should be in
16:21
Speaker 1: life sound, and lo and behole. Five years later, you know,
16:25
Speaker 1: we released this thing called The d Show from digit Design,
16:28
Speaker 1: you know, a company who had zero brand equity, zero footprint,
16:32
Speaker 1: and live sound, and yet we took it really to
16:34
Speaker 1: be one of the most lauded consoles out there today.
16:37
Speaker 1: So you know, that was that was fun to be
16:39
Speaker 1: a part of that. That was kind of a new
16:40
Speaker 1: take for me, you know, to get in on the
16:42
Speaker 1: manufacturing side of it. And you know, I've been working
16:44
Speaker 1: with digit Design well Avid now you know since officially
16:47
Speaker 1: since two thousand five on console development. That's been a
16:50
Speaker 1: lot of fun. How big a market is there are
16:52
Speaker 1: you're talking in revenue or just people or you know,
16:55
Speaker 1: I mean, I think of how many acts on the road. No,
16:56
Speaker 1: a lot of these things have consumer level video YEO
17:00
Speaker 1: editing and all this stuff. When I think of live sound,
17:03
Speaker 1: there's a limited universe for how many people are looking
17:06
Speaker 1: for something of this capability. Well, it's funny you bring
17:09
Speaker 1: this up, because you know, I think this is h
17:13
Speaker 1: indicative of how people view live sound to begin with, right, um,
17:19
Speaker 1: where they think it's this kind of small thing that's
17:21
Speaker 1: off in the corner, and you know, compared to Apple
17:23
Speaker 1: or something like that. Of course it is small, right,
17:26
Speaker 1: but you know, just put something into your mind, just
17:28
Speaker 1: for a second. Now, on a given day, just in
17:32
Speaker 1: the United States, how many shows happened. I'm gonna let
17:36
Speaker 1: you tell me, because I would say, I don't know.
17:38
Speaker 1: I've never been able to research, but it's it's thousands
17:40
Speaker 1: upon thousands of certain right, every one of those shows
17:45
Speaker 1: has a sound reinforcement need, It has a console need.
17:48
Speaker 1: Now buckle that into the concept, and I'll give you
17:51
Speaker 1: this number because I know how many. I know this
17:52
Speaker 1: one was accurate. From a few years ago. I was
17:55
Speaker 1: doing some research on the houses of worship market, which
17:57
Speaker 1: was moving into production, you know, in their services. This
18:02
Speaker 1: was probably oh, this was probably mid two thousand's, you know,
18:06
Speaker 1: and I was kind of coming back to Avid and
18:08
Speaker 1: making a player for them. We should examine this market
18:10
Speaker 1: that stands up be a very rich market. And I
18:15
Speaker 1: kind of brought up the number. I said, you know,
18:16
Speaker 1: who knows how many churches there are in in America?
18:20
Speaker 1: And you know, I could see that kind of gears turning,
18:23
Speaker 1: and they, you know, they really weren't thinking too hard
18:24
Speaker 1: about it. I said, today, right today, it's three d
18:27
Speaker 1: and thirty five thousand churches in America. Every one of
18:32
Speaker 1: them have a sound reinforcement need on Sunday and throughout
18:35
Speaker 1: the week. So you know, I mean, when you start
18:38
Speaker 1: putting the numbers together, all of a sudden you start
18:40
Speaker 1: thinking about it's like, well, okay, now let's make that
18:41
Speaker 1: a global number. It's pretty big number. It's pretty big
18:45
Speaker 1: market out there for this. You just gotta go find it.
18:47
Speaker 1: You know. It's just not one of these things that
18:49
Speaker 1: are that is in everybody's windshield when you see it.
18:52
Speaker 1: You know. Okay, So since you're involved with Avid, how
18:55
Speaker 1: simple a product do they make for like houses of worship?
18:59
Speaker 1: We were us to play pretty far down into that market.
19:02
Speaker 1: But see, I mean even even what you say there,
19:04
Speaker 1: I say to you, hey, man, don't think of house
19:06
Speaker 1: of worship as being a simple thing. I can I
19:09
Speaker 1: could name you sixty churches plus in America that have
19:16
Speaker 1: live sound, recording, studio broadcast type facilities that would rival NBC.
19:23
Speaker 1: I mean, they're unbelievably technically adept. You know. So you
19:27
Speaker 1: know that that whole house of worship market is a
19:29
Speaker 1: big thing now, big big deal man. Okay, So in
19:33
Speaker 1: terms of the console, yeah, I want to get one
19:36
Speaker 1: from Avid. Do they build custom depending on the number
19:39
Speaker 1: of channels where you have a certain number of products
19:42
Speaker 1: and you choose from those products. No, they have a
19:44
Speaker 1: I mean again, we in our current product range, we
19:47
Speaker 1: don't play very deep down into the market. There are
19:50
Speaker 1: other competitors that play at the much much more inexpensive
19:53
Speaker 1: end of it. I mean, it's really a professional product
19:56
Speaker 1: right now. But we kind of changed the game here
19:59
Speaker 1: recent they because we kind I think, you know, I
20:01
Speaker 1: kind of saw the writing on the wall and how
20:02
Speaker 1: this was going to go into the future, and we
20:05
Speaker 1: have this thing called I can't believe I'm going to
20:07
Speaker 1: talk about this on your podcast. We have this thing
20:11
Speaker 1: called unified platform, right, which is basically a menu of products,
20:15
Speaker 1: so you can pick how many faders you want on
20:18
Speaker 1: your console, how how powerful of an engine you want,
20:21
Speaker 1: how many microphone preamps do you want to be able
20:23
Speaker 1: to and just kind of ala carte put together a
20:26
Speaker 1: huge system or a pretty small system, right, and you
20:29
Speaker 1: can kind of piece this together as opposed to making
20:32
Speaker 1: a small one, making a not so small one, making
20:34
Speaker 1: a bigger one, making a bigger, bigger one, etcetera. Because
20:37
Speaker 1: the challenge that comes with that in software development is
20:42
Speaker 1: you end up having software that is specific to every
20:44
Speaker 1: product and you can't keep the development going. In our world,
20:48
Speaker 1: we create one piece of software that works on everything,
20:52
Speaker 1: all of our hardware interacts and can scale. It was
20:55
Speaker 1: the first first time this had ever been done for
20:57
Speaker 1: any kind of live sound product, you know, where you
20:59
Speaker 1: didn't have an actual product per se. You had pieces
21:02
Speaker 1: that you put together into a product. And that allowed
21:05
Speaker 1: us to have one string of development with software. We
21:09
Speaker 1: developed one piece of software that works on everything we make. Okay, Traditionally,
21:21
Speaker 1: software that has a relatively small user base is buggy,
21:25
Speaker 1: So how does the software for av it? Well, every
21:29
Speaker 1: software has bugs. I will say that, but you know,
21:32
Speaker 1: we're also very cognizant of the fact that we work
21:34
Speaker 1: in live sound. Right, this is live events. You cannot
21:39
Speaker 1: be sitting in front of sixty people and have a
21:42
Speaker 1: software bug to take your show down. You can't do it.
21:45
Speaker 1: I mean, you just can't be allowed. Now that that said,
21:48
Speaker 1: no one's perfect, and you know, I've it sounds uh,
21:53
Speaker 1: what's the word, kind of contrived and rationalized, but I've
21:56
Speaker 1: said to people at times, Okay, look, this is the
21:58
Speaker 1: world we live in. Here. It doesn't matter how much
22:00
Speaker 1: money do you spend, or how much how many of
22:03
Speaker 1: the great people you get to work. Sometimes the space
22:06
Speaker 1: shuttle crashes, sometimes the space shuttle blows up. You can
22:09
Speaker 1: have the best people in the world, the most money
22:11
Speaker 1: in the world working on it, but things happen. The
22:14
Speaker 1: thing you have to be able to do is be
22:15
Speaker 1: able to respond to the failure. Right, It can't be
22:18
Speaker 1: a failure that just well we just got to stop
22:20
Speaker 1: the show. You know, you've gotta have you gotta be
22:23
Speaker 1: able to respond to a failure and keep the show going. So,
22:26
Speaker 1: you know, we we're pretty adepted at doing that kind
22:28
Speaker 1: of thing. It it took time to get that. But
22:30
Speaker 1: that was one of the calling cards of our our
22:32
Speaker 1: product when we first came to market was that it
22:34
Speaker 1: was very reliable, I mean really really reliable and you
22:37
Speaker 1: could really count on it. So and it sounded great, so,
22:40
Speaker 1: you know, added bonus. So you have a lot of
22:42
Speaker 1: experience forty years. What kind of problems have you had
22:45
Speaker 1: in the middle of the show. Oh man, it's a
22:50
Speaker 1: long list. I mean, you know, there's lots of times
22:52
Speaker 1: where it you know, it has gone sideways, no doubt
22:55
Speaker 1: about it. I mean, you know, I mean I've said
22:58
Speaker 1: this to artists trying to get them to calm down
23:01
Speaker 1: a little bit after a mishapp is like, hey, relax,
23:04
Speaker 1: I've messed up way bigger shows than yours. Okay, so
23:07
Speaker 1: you know, just take it easy. It's gonna be fine here,
23:08
Speaker 1: We're gonna get through this, you know. But yeah, you know,
23:11
Speaker 1: everything from microphone failures to console failures to p as
23:15
Speaker 1: on fire. I mean, you know, I mean, after forty years,
23:18
Speaker 1: you know, you can feel like you feel like you've
23:19
Speaker 1: seen it all. You definitely haven't, but you can feel
23:22
Speaker 1: like you've seen it all. So let's assume you have
23:24
Speaker 1: a misshap did you ever have to end the show
23:26
Speaker 1: or do you always have a way to patch it
23:28
Speaker 1: back up for extra equipment. I personally have never had
23:31
Speaker 1: that happen. I know of shows that have had that
23:33
Speaker 1: happen where they haven't been able to continue the show,
23:36
Speaker 1: you know. But you know, in fairness, I've seen that
23:39
Speaker 1: happen for a litany and reason. It's not just an
23:41
Speaker 1: audio failure, you know. So there's all kinds of things
23:43
Speaker 1: that could cause that. But you know, Bob, I mean,
23:46
Speaker 1: and this may take us down a deeper conversation here.
23:49
Speaker 1: That's the beauty of live sound, right, It's the beauty
23:52
Speaker 1: of it. Everything's at risk. It's at best when it's risky,
23:57
Speaker 1: when when things might just go haywire. That's the juice.
24:01
Speaker 1: That's the juice everything. When everything is all sort of
24:04
Speaker 1: out and predictable and all the bows are tied on
24:07
Speaker 1: the knots and everything, you know, that can be pretty
24:09
Speaker 1: vanilla at times, that can get kind of stale. I
24:12
Speaker 1: actually think the desire to do that is has driven
24:15
Speaker 1: us into some bad corners and performance and live event,
24:19
Speaker 1: you know, where we try to make it too safe
24:20
Speaker 1: and too predictable and too perfect. It's like, hey, let it,
24:24
Speaker 1: let it ride. Let's go, you know, let's have some
24:26
Speaker 1: juice in the room here. Let's get back to that.
24:28
Speaker 1: But first let's talk about the console. What makes a
24:31
Speaker 1: live console different from a studio console. Yeah, okay, so
24:36
Speaker 1: h a live console has to have way more h oh,
24:41
Speaker 1: guess we're gonna get we might get geeky here, go
24:43
Speaker 1: geek absolutely go geeki has way more summed outputs on it. Like, um,
24:49
Speaker 1: let me see how I want to frame this conversation here. So,
24:51
Speaker 1: in a studio, you're primarily concerned with either getting individual
24:56
Speaker 1: microphones and sources, two tape tracks or in this case
25:00
Speaker 1: this time of the world, into pro tools tracks where
25:02
Speaker 1: you might have you know, a hundred tracks of instruments,
25:05
Speaker 1: and then you are mixing that down to a single
25:08
Speaker 1: stereo or five point one or surround. You're mixing that
25:12
Speaker 1: down to a single format, a single pair about puts
25:14
Speaker 1: out of the console. And the other thing that the
25:17
Speaker 1: live sound console does very very well is it allows
25:20
Speaker 1: you to do that and provide monitoring to the musicians
25:23
Speaker 1: in the studio right where they can hear their mixes,
25:26
Speaker 1: they can you know, they can sing, do everything that
25:28
Speaker 1: they need to do during the tracking phase. Right, So
25:32
Speaker 1: recording consoles are very adept at that. Live consoles, on
25:35
Speaker 1: the other hand, really don't aren't thinking necessarily about providing
25:40
Speaker 1: you know, you know, mixes back to the musicians at
25:44
Speaker 1: the front of house position. I'm talking here, he's really
25:46
Speaker 1: just worried about mixing. Period. In this day and age,
25:49
Speaker 1: we're multi tracking at the same time, but he's really
25:51
Speaker 1: primarily worried about mixing. But he's going to send out
25:54
Speaker 1: puts to multiple places, multiple speaker systems, He's going to
25:58
Speaker 1: have all kinds of stuff that has to do with
26:00
Speaker 1: that p A system, not just a pair of control
26:02
Speaker 1: room monitors now, so he's got a whole lot more
26:05
Speaker 1: on that console to deal with. And um, there are
26:09
Speaker 1: different types of automation, Like in the studio, you would
26:11
Speaker 1: have what's called run time automation, where we can record
26:15
Speaker 1: something into the recorder and then play it back and
26:18
Speaker 1: start doing moves on the console. That and the moves
26:21
Speaker 1: on the console are also recorded into the d A W.
26:24
Speaker 1: And now when I play back, it's not only playing
26:27
Speaker 1: bout the audio, but it's playing back all my moves.
26:29
Speaker 1: I can adjust those, I can edit those, etcetera. That's
26:32
Speaker 1: that's really rare in life. Sound. You don't see that
26:34
Speaker 1: very often in life sound unless the act is using
26:37
Speaker 1: a lot of playback. If they're relying on almost entirely
26:40
Speaker 1: on playback, then you can kind of get that going.
26:43
Speaker 1: But more often than not, live sound consoles have what's
26:46
Speaker 1: called snapshot automation, right, which is okay, for this song,
26:50
Speaker 1: I need to get the console in this state to
26:53
Speaker 1: get it ready for me to mix it right, And
26:56
Speaker 1: I might need to get it in forty different states
27:00
Speaker 1: for forty songs, depending on what instrumentation is being played
27:03
Speaker 1: at a time. So really that's kind of one of
27:05
Speaker 1: the main kind of junctions of difference there is that
27:09
Speaker 1: in the studio we're typically working on one song at
27:11
Speaker 1: a time, and live sound we're working on thirty or
27:14
Speaker 1: forty songs at a time. Right, We've got to be
27:16
Speaker 1: able to prepare to be able to mix thirty or
27:19
Speaker 1: forty sometimes really intricate songs and really intricate changes bang
27:23
Speaker 1: bang bang bang bang. That's rarely the case in the studio. Okay,
27:27
Speaker 1: when you mix on your desk, how many channels do
27:30
Speaker 1: you use? As many as I got, I'll use them
27:32
Speaker 1: all now, uh you know, I mean, I'll give you
27:35
Speaker 1: an example for and really this kind of thing is
27:38
Speaker 1: really shifted over time now with digital consoles because we
27:40
Speaker 1: have the ability to have way more inputs into the console.
27:43
Speaker 1: So for Kenny Chesney right now, which is you know,
27:46
Speaker 1: three guitars, bass, drums, keys, five vocalists. I mean, that
27:51
Speaker 1: sounds kind of simple, but by the time you really
27:53
Speaker 1: get it mapped out and do the things you want
27:55
Speaker 1: to do, that's that's approaching a hundred channels, you know,
27:57
Speaker 1: probably a hundred and ten, hundred and twelve, uh inputs. Now.
28:01
Speaker 1: Part of that is also the way we're recording, Like
28:04
Speaker 1: I record probably upwards of probably upwards of fifteen sixteen
28:08
Speaker 1: audience mis to be used in post. Like I'll record
28:11
Speaker 1: a five point one mic, I'll record spaced microphones for
28:14
Speaker 1: the audience, so that when they get it to post,
28:16
Speaker 1: if they want to mix it in five point one,
28:18
Speaker 1: they have the ability if they want to mix it
28:20
Speaker 1: in stereo, they can use the other audience mix things
28:23
Speaker 1: like that. So channel count can grow, you know, pretty
28:25
Speaker 1: dramatically based on the based on your inputs. I mean,
28:29
Speaker 1: probably the most famous you know concept of this was
28:33
Speaker 1: you know, when I was mixing Rush. I mean that
28:35
Speaker 1: was a hundred and eighteen channels for three guys, you know,
28:41
Speaker 1: but one entire console was the drum kit, you know,
28:44
Speaker 1: I mean that was that was Neil's kit. So you know,
28:47
Speaker 1: the input count group pretty pretty big there. Okay. You
28:51
Speaker 1: know the more modern recording studio boards have a lot
28:53
Speaker 1: of effects built in as opposed to outboard gear. On
28:56
Speaker 1: these Avid desks, are there any effects old in or
29:01
Speaker 1: any other digital effects? Well, it was kind of our
29:04
Speaker 1: calling card at at Avid right because you know, they
29:07
Speaker 1: were the first guys to ever really kind of you know,
29:10
Speaker 1: I dare I say invent, but you know, they brought
29:12
Speaker 1: plug in architecture to the recording market, you know, where
29:15
Speaker 1: you could have emulations of all of this really great
29:18
Speaker 1: analog gear. And you know, it's kind of when we
29:22
Speaker 1: kind of brought that. I was kind of one of
29:23
Speaker 1: the things when David was talking about bringing into the
29:25
Speaker 1: live sound that was the point where I went, okay,
29:27
Speaker 1: now wait a minute, that could be really really something
29:29
Speaker 1: here if we could do that in live sound right
29:32
Speaker 1: where you could have you know, some of these really
29:35
Speaker 1: coveted piece you know, Poltch eques and fair Child limitars,
29:39
Speaker 1: these things that you know, you can't you can't even
29:41
Speaker 1: buy them. You at the time, you couldn't even buy them.
29:43
Speaker 1: But if I could get plug in versions of that
29:45
Speaker 1: and use them in live sound, Wow, what a what
29:47
Speaker 1: an incredible thing that would be, right? So, yeah, all,
29:51
Speaker 1: at least for my shows, nearly I'll say ninety eight
29:54
Speaker 1: percent of the processing is inside the console. I don't
29:57
Speaker 1: use outboard gear anymore. And it's just such a luxury.
30:02
Speaker 1: I mean, I'm just so spoiled with it now. Where
30:04
Speaker 1: we can you know, as opposed to going out and
30:08
Speaker 1: spending thirty two dollars for a single channel of fair
30:11
Speaker 1: Child compression. Well, I can have an emulation of that,
30:15
Speaker 1: you know, sitting on the console, and I can use
30:16
Speaker 1: as many of them as I want to use if
30:18
Speaker 1: I want to use it, do it, you know? And
30:20
Speaker 1: is it exactly the same as it of what a
30:23
Speaker 1: that fair Child thing is? No, of course not. But
30:26
Speaker 1: there's a practicality that has to come with with live sound.
30:29
Speaker 1: You know, you wouldn't go out and rent, you know,
30:32
Speaker 1: a hundred thousand dollars worth of processing to take with
30:35
Speaker 1: you on the road. I mean, it's just impractical. Uh. So,
30:39
Speaker 1: you know, there's a practicality that comes with digital that
30:42
Speaker 1: is really, really enticing for life sound. So I love it.
30:45
Speaker 1: I'll never go back, honestly. Okay, so give us the
30:48
Speaker 1: old digital compared to analog wrap. Well, it's way more
30:52
Speaker 1: complex than anybody makes it. I'm telling you right now.
30:55
Speaker 1: It's not a binary argument. You know, which is better
30:57
Speaker 1: analog or digital? And I'm famous for saying it, and
31:00
Speaker 1: I totally believe it. I need them both. I need
31:04
Speaker 1: them both. We can't just say it's either one or
31:07
Speaker 1: the other. I need them both. They both have their
31:09
Speaker 1: elements that we need to go with it. And I
31:12
Speaker 1: think the argument is actually much deeper, deeper than sound quality.
31:15
Speaker 1: And I say this about the studio as well, in
31:17
Speaker 1: live sound and other elements, because I think what people
31:20
Speaker 1: miss a lot of times. I've even used albums as
31:22
Speaker 1: the example here. You know, albums compared to CDs, compared
31:26
Speaker 1: to streaming. What people miss is the analog experience, right,
31:30
Speaker 1: the workflow, you know. I mean, I'm one of those guys.
31:34
Speaker 1: As part of why I love albums, I love opening
31:37
Speaker 1: that album, I love reading credits, and all of that
31:39
Speaker 1: element is part of the experience for me. Well, it's
31:43
Speaker 1: very similar in analog recording. You know, where I want
31:47
Speaker 1: to see tape rolling. I you know, I want to
31:49
Speaker 1: work at a certain pace. You know, analog allows you
31:52
Speaker 1: to work at a much slower pace or demands that
31:54
Speaker 1: you work at a much slower pace than in digital.
31:57
Speaker 1: So you know, there's there's just all kinds of things
31:59
Speaker 1: about it, above and beyond sound quality that play into it.
32:02
Speaker 1: There's an analog aesthetic you know that works there. But
32:06
Speaker 1: you know, with with the digital technologies that are out
32:08
Speaker 1: there today, I'm on record to say in this and
32:11
Speaker 1: I stand by it, I can take a digital piece
32:13
Speaker 1: of technology and I can make it sound more analog
32:17
Speaker 1: than analog if you know how to do it. You know,
32:19
Speaker 1: you just gotta have the skill to do it, have
32:21
Speaker 1: the tools to be able to do it. It's very
32:23
Speaker 1: analogous to what we see now with film right where
32:26
Speaker 1: I can take the sterileness of video and make it
32:30
Speaker 1: look like the oldest film you ever saw in your life.
32:33
Speaker 1: You know, all of that possibility is there. And I
32:35
Speaker 1: think that argument of analog versus digital and audio is
32:39
Speaker 1: very comparable to the argument of film versus video. For
32:42
Speaker 1: a storyline, you know, if you watch something in video
32:46
Speaker 1: and you watch something in film, something that has film
32:49
Speaker 1: look on it or that looks like film. It evokes
32:51
Speaker 1: a different response. There's no if stands robuts about it.
32:54
Speaker 1: It does. And the same thing applies to analog versus digital.
32:58
Speaker 1: Analog evokes a different response. Uts it evokes it because
33:01
Speaker 1: we have been programmed to listen to it that way
33:04
Speaker 1: for the last sixty or seventy years. We're emotionally tied
33:08
Speaker 1: to that analog sound quality, and we want it. We don't.
33:11
Speaker 1: We didn't realize we wanted it until it was taken
33:13
Speaker 1: away and I was like, oh, wait a minute, that
33:16
Speaker 1: that's not what we like. Let's have some of that back.
33:19
Speaker 1: But you know, so analog is really really important. But
33:23
Speaker 1: what I trade away all the digital capability just to
33:26
Speaker 1: have an analog signal path for life sound? I would not.
33:29
Speaker 1: I would not just staying on analog digital for a second.
33:32
Speaker 1: There are some engineers say that what you're really hearing
33:35
Speaker 1: in the analog is distortion. And then there's the experience
33:39
Speaker 1: of putting on some c ds in some vinyl records
33:42
Speaker 1: and you feel a warmth in the analog that you
33:44
Speaker 1: don't feel on the c D. Tell us, from a
33:47
Speaker 1: professional viewpoint, what's going on there? It is distortion. It
33:51
Speaker 1: is it's very very well managed sometimes poorly managed distortions,
33:55
Speaker 1: but it is what we love about it, right, and
33:58
Speaker 1: most people don't realize it. And I'll just at risk
34:01
Speaker 1: of letting the cat out of the bag. You would be,
34:04
Speaker 1: I think as a consumer, would be mortified, maybe is
34:07
Speaker 1: the right word to understand and watch and see how
34:11
Speaker 1: much distortion is intentionally injected into music today to get
34:16
Speaker 1: it to have the vibe that it had thirty or
34:18
Speaker 1: forty years ago. I mean, it's it's breathtaking how much
34:21
Speaker 1: it is, you know. I mean, it's going to get
34:24
Speaker 1: maybe even drive us into this conversation of what is
34:26
Speaker 1: good audio, what is great audio? I mean, it's such
34:30
Speaker 1: an open ended palette now, especially in music. Music is
34:34
Speaker 1: such a unique animal for this discussion, you know. But
34:37
Speaker 1: you know every sense Rocket eighty eight and Ike Turner
34:40
Speaker 1: and Jackie brett Ling, brett Ling, you know, we've had
34:44
Speaker 1: distortion in play, intentional distortion in play because it evokes
34:49
Speaker 1: an emotional response. You know, it has a statement to it.
34:52
Speaker 1: Think about what rap and hip hop music would have
34:55
Speaker 1: been like in the eighties if it wouldn't have come
34:58
Speaker 1: from the boom box era, which was just horribly distorted audio,
35:02
Speaker 1: But that gave it the sense of being urban, right,
35:05
Speaker 1: that was the urban signature. That was the thing. This
35:08
Speaker 1: came from the street, right, It didn't come from a big,
35:10
Speaker 1: glossy studio. You know. There's all these sonic signatures and
35:17
Speaker 1: little tip offs to let you know where that music
35:19
Speaker 1: came from. You know, I mean so many, so many
35:22
Speaker 1: artists don't want to look shiny, you know, because there's
35:24
Speaker 1: no street cred in it from an audio perspective, I'm
35:27
Speaker 1: talking right. Okay, Let's assume an act is going on
35:29
Speaker 1: the road. Most of these acts, other than the reamplifiers
35:33
Speaker 1: and their guitars and through other instruments, rent the equipment,
35:37
Speaker 1: you know, in arena level rock at these big tours,
35:40
Speaker 1: who owns the actual avid board? The sound company. So
35:44
Speaker 1: there's an entire sound company industry now that's been rocking
35:48
Speaker 1: and rolling and going strong now for you know, thirty
35:52
Speaker 1: forty plus years now. I mean it started out certainly
35:54
Speaker 1: as a cottage industry. I mean when I got into
35:56
Speaker 1: the business, and but as a fledgling I mean, we
36:01
Speaker 1: were only ten years rood from Woodstock at that point.
36:04
Speaker 1: You know, it was amazing, you know, I was looking
36:06
Speaker 1: at a post on Facebook the other day for cal
36:07
Speaker 1: Jam Too, which I remember seeing as a kid, and
36:11
Speaker 1: you know, I had this kind of lightbulb moment. I
36:12
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, look at what's going on here technically
36:15
Speaker 1: at this thing. This is only about eight or nine
36:18
Speaker 1: years removed from Woodstock. I mean, look how far this
36:21
Speaker 1: industry has come just in that seven eight nine years,
36:24
Speaker 1: you know. And that was all just sole proprietorship people
36:28
Speaker 1: just pulling it together and getting together. You know. It's
36:31
Speaker 1: when we really started to see the emergence of JB
36:33
Speaker 1: L you know, as a professional audio company, because they
36:36
Speaker 1: provided a lot of the speaker system for that that show.
36:39
Speaker 1: You know, Meyer Sound was really really influential in in
36:42
Speaker 1: in the growth in the development of what that industry
36:45
Speaker 1: has become. So to kind of circle all the way
36:48
Speaker 1: back to your question, Yeah, there's a sound company that
36:50
Speaker 1: would provide all of that technology, all the speaker technology,
36:53
Speaker 1: all the mixing technology, etcetera. To the act. The act
36:55
Speaker 1: would lea set out for the the course of the tour,
36:58
Speaker 1: and then when they're done, they move on to another
37:00
Speaker 1: another act. You know. Okay, so do you personally own
37:03
Speaker 1: any equipment that you might use on the road. Yeah, yeah,
37:06
Speaker 1: I mean I own microphones that I use. I mean,
37:08
Speaker 1: I used to own my own consoles, and and there
37:11
Speaker 1: are artists are there are mixers out there that do
37:13
Speaker 1: own their own consoles and still use them out there today.
37:16
Speaker 1: I used to own a lot of my own effects processing.
37:18
Speaker 1: I mean, I was one of the one of the
37:20
Speaker 1: earlier guys in the eighties that was taking a lot
37:23
Speaker 1: of studio processing out on the road and trying to
37:26
Speaker 1: make that happen out there. You know, we were kind
37:28
Speaker 1: of trying to make that transition. I mean, there was
37:30
Speaker 1: a period of time in the late eighties where you know,
37:32
Speaker 1: some of the front of house positions, probably mine included,
37:35
Speaker 1: would arrivaled most studios, especially when I was mixing Rush
37:38
Speaker 1: or or Deaf Leopard for sure. You know, those were
37:41
Speaker 1: big front of house positions that were very technically complex positions. Okay,
37:46
Speaker 1: so let's assume you get hired for an act. Let's
37:48
Speaker 1: leave Chestney out because he plays stadiums, which is a
37:51
Speaker 1: whole another ball game. We'll get to that. That's adult
37:54
Speaker 1: audio there. Man, that's a whole another thing. That's right. Okay,
37:57
Speaker 1: So let's just talk and arena act. You get hired
38:00
Speaker 1: to do the gig, this is the first time you
38:02
Speaker 1: work with the act Do you go and hire all
38:05
Speaker 1: the equipment? It depends. I certainly would could. I mean,
38:08
Speaker 1: if they've brought me into the gig, then I want
38:10
Speaker 1: to have influence on what gear we're going to use. Yeah,
38:13
Speaker 1: So you know, obviously there are fine there are accountants
38:15
Speaker 1: that get involved in budgets that have to be honored, etcetera.
38:19
Speaker 1: But you know, there's certainly preferences. I certainly have preferences
38:22
Speaker 1: of speaker systems and companies to work with out there.
38:26
Speaker 1: For sure, you're gonna put me on the spot like that.
38:31
Speaker 1: Certainly with the speakers, people are always interested in that. Yeah, well,
38:35
Speaker 1: speaker and speaker development, man has really come a long way. Man,
38:38
Speaker 1: hearing about about the last twenty five years. Man, there's
38:41
Speaker 1: been some phenomenal advancement and speaker technology. But you know,
38:45
Speaker 1: I mean there's the big companies out there. I'm working
38:47
Speaker 1: with Claire Brothers for Kenny Chesney, which is you know,
38:50
Speaker 1: I'm Claire Brothers is the undisputed champ of sound companies.
38:53
Speaker 1: They are the biggest one by far. They probably they
38:55
Speaker 1: probably address sixty the clients out there in the world.
39:00
Speaker 1: To day. I've used sound image with great effect there
39:04
Speaker 1: out of Southern California down an Escondido. Really great company.
39:08
Speaker 1: Who else? I mean, there's so many good companies going now. Okay,
39:12
Speaker 1: so forget the intermediaries. You're dealing with a company. You're
39:16
Speaker 1: on an Aerweena tour forty dates. What do you need?
39:19
Speaker 1: Do I gotta know what kind of music we're trying
39:21
Speaker 1: to present? You gotta know? You know, are we going
39:23
Speaker 1: to make something that's freaking loud and impactful? Here? Are
39:26
Speaker 1: we looking for intelligibility? What is the act? Is it
39:29
Speaker 1: adell or is it a Metallica? They're going to require
39:31
Speaker 1: very very different PA systems and very different capabilities for
39:35
Speaker 1: that room. So you know, I've got to know that first,
39:37
Speaker 1: I've got to understand it musically, what what what the
39:40
Speaker 1: fans are gonna expect there, And then you do a
39:43
Speaker 1: design that you have to kind of in these in
39:45
Speaker 1: this day and age, you have to fit into lighting
39:47
Speaker 1: and video production because you're your third in line. Now.
39:50
Speaker 1: You know, the first things that get done our video
39:52
Speaker 1: production and lighting production, and then we try to squeeze
39:55
Speaker 1: in some sound in there and get it in hopefully
39:57
Speaker 1: in the right positions to address the geometry in the room.
40:00
Speaker 1: So all of that comes in place very complex formula
40:03
Speaker 1: of Okay, if it's going to need to be this,
40:06
Speaker 1: it's going to cost this much, it's got to fit
40:08
Speaker 1: in here. How does it impact the production schedule? You know,
40:12
Speaker 1: are we going to have time to put it up?
40:13
Speaker 1: And you know, all of that gets put into a
40:16
Speaker 1: hat and shake it up and hopefully come out with
40:18
Speaker 1: the answer there. You know, you work very closely with
40:21
Speaker 1: you know, the production team, meaning the lighting designer, the
40:24
Speaker 1: video designer, and the production manager, and then the accountants
40:28
Speaker 1: come in at some point and tell you that's going
40:30
Speaker 1: to cost way too much and we can't do it. Okay,
40:32
Speaker 1: you're interested most and getting the best sound. Do you
40:35
Speaker 1: ever butt heads with these people and say, well, I
40:37
Speaker 1: hear what you're You know, with the classic thing, you know,
40:40
Speaker 1: couples have a living room and one of the members
40:44
Speaker 1: of the couple doesn't want anything to show, and then
40:46
Speaker 1: the other person's well, I want the big speakers and
40:49
Speaker 1: all the equipment that lights up. So these are different
40:52
Speaker 1: considerations video and audio. So to what degree is there
40:55
Speaker 1: a battle? That's a strong term, but every every here,
41:00
Speaker 1: I mean it's a knockdown, drag out fight. I'm not
41:03
Speaker 1: exaggerating it. I mean it's a battle every tour, honestly,
41:07
Speaker 1: go into stadiums, it actually gets a little easier because
41:09
Speaker 1: the you know, the places where you're gonna be able
41:11
Speaker 1: to do things in the structure that's going to hold
41:13
Speaker 1: it is a little more forgiving than what you're going
41:15
Speaker 1: to do in an arena. But you know, you look
41:16
Speaker 1: at the complexity of some of these arena shows now
41:19
Speaker 1: and trying to get speaker systems fit into that that
41:23
Speaker 1: can actually properly address the geometry and make it where
41:25
Speaker 1: everybody can actually hear what's going on. It's in the way,
41:28
Speaker 1: it's in the way. You know, it's hanging in front
41:30
Speaker 1: of the video screen, right, so it's gotta move, we
41:34
Speaker 1: gotta go higher, whatever we gotta do, you know what
41:36
Speaker 1: I mean. There's all kinds of parameters that get put
41:38
Speaker 1: into play there to make that work, especially especially so
41:41
Speaker 1: for television. I mean Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
41:44
Speaker 1: is a great example of that, where you know, the
41:46
Speaker 1: camera shot is the whole thing. There can't be p
41:49
Speaker 1: a hanging down in the camera shot. You've got to
41:51
Speaker 1: have a p A system that can go high, aim low,
41:54
Speaker 1: cover the geometry etcetera. You know, it's there's a lot
41:57
Speaker 1: of a lot of moving parts there, like I said,
41:59
Speaker 1: that have to get into play. So I mean, I
42:01
Speaker 1: hate to give you the stock answer. Well, it depends,
42:04
Speaker 1: but it depends on what are we doing TV. I'm
42:06
Speaker 1: sure every situation is you need. But you know, videos
42:09
Speaker 1: king right now, you know, I mean, it gets all
42:11
Speaker 1: the consideration right now. So let's just go to the extremes.
42:21
Speaker 1: Adele and Metallica. Literally, what brand of speaker would you
42:25
Speaker 1: want to use and what brand of amplifier? Well, I
42:28
Speaker 1: don't know, is the honest answer. I mean I have
42:31
Speaker 1: ones that I would lean towards. I mean, you know,
42:33
Speaker 1: there are some of these very very dsp driven, very
42:37
Speaker 1: accurate speaker systems that can cover i mean to the seat.
42:41
Speaker 1: You know, you can build in these these polar patterns
42:44
Speaker 1: for these PA systems where you know the p A
42:46
Speaker 1: is the sound from the p A is literally not
42:48
Speaker 1: hitting any of the walls, it's only hitting the seats.
42:51
Speaker 1: So you know, from for Adele, I would choose something
42:54
Speaker 1: that had that capability. For Metallica, you know, you want
42:57
Speaker 1: something that has a little bit of that capability for sure.
42:59
Speaker 1: You want to be able to be precise with it.
43:01
Speaker 1: But man, it's got to have some balls to it.
43:03
Speaker 1: I mean, it's going to have to have some oomph
43:05
Speaker 1: to it because there's gonna be a volume element to that,
43:08
Speaker 1: and a punch element to that and impact element to that.
43:11
Speaker 1: That is absolutely vital for the show to succeed. Right
43:15
Speaker 1: whereas Adele that's gonna be there's gonna be some elegance
43:18
Speaker 1: to that, there's going to the vocal is going to
43:20
Speaker 1: be It's going to be all about the vocal there. Really,
43:22
Speaker 1: how do I get this beautiful, tall, elegant, highly addictive
43:27
Speaker 1: vocal that every person in the room can understand every
43:29
Speaker 1: word that she sinks? You know? Two different really agendas
43:32
Speaker 1: there to really two different agendas there. Let's talk about
43:35
Speaker 1: the speakers. Are these brands consumers would be familiar with
43:38
Speaker 1: and probably not now they're really I mean short of
43:42
Speaker 1: you know, JB. L. I'm I'm sure that's ubiquitous enough
43:44
Speaker 1: that everybody would know it. But you know these now
43:47
Speaker 1: these are very uh, you know, brands that are focused
43:52
Speaker 1: really entirely on professional sound. Not to say that they
43:54
Speaker 1: don't go down into the consumer market with some of
43:56
Speaker 1: their products, but their primary focuses on and a couple
43:59
Speaker 1: of the names us for the record uh AL Acoustics,
44:03
Speaker 1: which is a French company that kind of they really
44:05
Speaker 1: are responsible for kind of changing the whole game and
44:07
Speaker 1: going getting us to go to this thing called line
44:09
Speaker 1: Source where you here's you see speakers hanging in a
44:12
Speaker 1: straight line uh E, A, W D and B Audio
44:17
Speaker 1: Audio Technique U JB L. Of course, you know those
44:21
Speaker 1: are probably the big big players in it right now.
44:24
Speaker 1: Claire Claire Brothers makes their own proprietary boxes called Cohesion,
44:28
Speaker 1: which were very, very good. So let's talk about what
44:31
Speaker 1: was the breakthrough exactly of the French company. It's called
44:34
Speaker 1: line Source. So if you have a memory of looking
44:38
Speaker 1: back on shows and you paid any attention to speaker
44:41
Speaker 1: systems in the past up until about let's call it,
44:47
Speaker 1: I'm going to call it the mid to late nineties,
44:49
Speaker 1: was when we really started to see the shift. Previous
44:52
Speaker 1: to that, you saw a lot of speaker systems hanging
44:54
Speaker 1: in a horizontal way. We kind of called it a
44:56
Speaker 1: golf ball. Look right where you would see they would
44:59
Speaker 1: be four or five cab it's deep, and then they
45:00
Speaker 1: would kind of wrap around the corner. You know, you
45:02
Speaker 1: would see this just this I mean it was almost
45:04
Speaker 1: like looking at a whole bunch of little cabinets that
45:06
Speaker 1: made it look like one big speaker cabinet. And we
45:10
Speaker 1: generally refer to that as a horizontally arrayed p A system.
45:14
Speaker 1: You know, we're worried about it going in this direction. Now,
45:17
Speaker 1: the downside of the horizontally p A system was that
45:19
Speaker 1: it was very hard to cover steep geometry. If you
45:23
Speaker 1: had to cover very high, like you had seats that
45:26
Speaker 1: were steep or high, you didn't have enough angling in
45:30
Speaker 1: that horizontal p A to be able to get it
45:31
Speaker 1: up there and and direct energy up there. It was
45:34
Speaker 1: very difficult to do, especially for a hanging p A system.
45:38
Speaker 1: It was if it was a stacked p A system,
45:40
Speaker 1: you could kind of get it, but still that that
45:42
Speaker 1: had its own limitations as well. So in the nineties, uh,
45:47
Speaker 1: we had some development in speaker driver technology that came
45:51
Speaker 1: to play, and it allowed for us to do vertical
45:55
Speaker 1: hanging of these speaker systems and and then these vertical
45:58
Speaker 1: line sources. What's really critical to making it work is
46:02
Speaker 1: the spacing between the speaker components. So you know, if
46:06
Speaker 1: you took the grill cloth off of one of these
46:08
Speaker 1: line source speaker systems. You would see too low frequency devices,
46:12
Speaker 1: and then you would see some mid frequency devices, and
46:14
Speaker 1: then right in the center you would see a whole
46:15
Speaker 1: line of high frequency devices. And that high frequency line
46:20
Speaker 1: of devices might be thirty ft tall. Right, But what
46:23
Speaker 1: that allows for is that mathematically that line of speakers
46:28
Speaker 1: is working as one speaker. To the ear, it appears
46:32
Speaker 1: to be one speaker. That's the goal there. Now the
46:34
Speaker 1: challenge with it is how do I then how do
46:37
Speaker 1: I expand horizontal coverage? How do I get coverage around
46:40
Speaker 1: the corner where you have to hang more lines around there?
46:42
Speaker 1: So if you were to go to a show today
46:44
Speaker 1: and see it, you would probably see on either side
46:46
Speaker 1: of the stage, you know probably two maybe three line sources.
46:51
Speaker 1: And the other big advantage of line sources is very
46:54
Speaker 1: easy to cover the vertical geometry. If I need to
46:56
Speaker 1: cover high, I need to cover a steep Remember I
46:59
Speaker 1: talked about TELEVI in production when we might want to
47:01
Speaker 1: fly high but then shoot audio straight down. I can
47:04
Speaker 1: do that with a line source very effectively. Right, So
47:09
Speaker 1: that that the game really changed in the late nineties
47:11
Speaker 1: once those came to bear and we were able to
47:13
Speaker 1: amplify and have these components, these smaller components that could
47:16
Speaker 1: handle the amount of power and have the amount of
47:19
Speaker 1: output available to them. Then line source became the thing.
47:21
Speaker 1: And unlike any time I've ever seen in the history
47:24
Speaker 1: of sound reinforcement, the entire industry just kind of stopped
47:27
Speaker 1: on a dime and went, yep, we're gonna go a
47:29
Speaker 1: line source. Here we go. And you know, from that
47:31
Speaker 1: point on you hardly saw any horizontally ran pas for
47:33
Speaker 1: a long time. And what are the amplifiers that are used? Man,
47:37
Speaker 1: super super high power networkable amplifiers now where we can
47:41
Speaker 1: get audio to them off of an audio network, but
47:44
Speaker 1: you know, thousands and thousands of what's available to you
47:47
Speaker 1: because headroom is what you want there. You want to
47:48
Speaker 1: be able to do really push things up and not
47:51
Speaker 1: have it distort and and blow up the speaker component.
47:54
Speaker 1: And what are the brands used in the amplifers. Most
47:57
Speaker 1: of the companies are making their own amplifiers at this point.
47:59
Speaker 1: Alocoustic makes its own amplifiers. DNB Audio Technique makes their
48:03
Speaker 1: own amplifiers. Uh, you know, Crown Amplifiers works in conjunction
48:08
Speaker 1: with J B. L Um who else There's I'm probably
48:11
Speaker 1: missing a ton of them here U E. A W
48:14
Speaker 1: has their own amplifier package made by power Soft. I
48:17
Speaker 1: believe this Powersoft may and it might have moved to
48:18
Speaker 1: a different amplifier now for the and your riggs. But
48:22
Speaker 1: you know it's all in house, and you know they're
48:24
Speaker 1: making their owns now that you wouldn't necessarily go out
48:26
Speaker 1: and buy them off the shelf there. It's all part
48:28
Speaker 1: of the system design now. So if you go to
48:30
Speaker 1: Claire Brothers, they have all of this stuff and you
48:32
Speaker 1: pick and choose what you want. Yeah, especially Claire Brothers
48:35
Speaker 1: in in this day and age, they used to be
48:37
Speaker 1: really they've kind of changed their model now. They used
48:39
Speaker 1: to be a proprietary company where you know, in the
48:42
Speaker 1: early eighties they were one of the few companies, one
48:44
Speaker 1: of one of two or three companies really, Claire Brothers,
48:46
Speaker 1: Shoko I probably put Britannia Row in there, maybe Concert
48:50
Speaker 1: Sound over in Europe in there that we're making their
48:53
Speaker 1: own boxes because the manufacturers weren't really able to manufacturer
48:57
Speaker 1: a box that could could do that. Yet Alter Sound
49:00
Speaker 1: out of San Rafel was great. You know, that was
49:02
Speaker 1: the Grateful Sound company for the longest period of time.
49:05
Speaker 1: But they you know, they were they just decided, Hey,
49:07
Speaker 1: we're gonna make our own boxes, make our own speaker systems,
49:10
Speaker 1: you know like that. You went to that company because
49:13
Speaker 1: they had the technology and the technical infrastructure to go
49:16
Speaker 1: out and do these huge tours at the time, you know,
49:19
Speaker 1: I mean I think back to show's you know, like
49:22
Speaker 1: Live Aid and you know, the the first rock and
49:25
Speaker 1: rios down in you know, in South American stuff. I mean,
49:28
Speaker 1: there was only a couple of companies that could have
49:29
Speaker 1: even possibly pulled that off, you know, and today there's
49:33
Speaker 1: you know, you can you can go out and buy
49:35
Speaker 1: a concert sound system off the shelf and call yourself
49:39
Speaker 1: a sound company. You know. So I am old enough
49:42
Speaker 1: to remember two things. One, when the venue provided the
49:46
Speaker 1: sound reinforcement to that the only thing going through the
49:51
Speaker 1: p A was the vocal. Yeah. So at this point
49:54
Speaker 1: is every instrument might, every amplifier might what's going I'm
50:00
Speaker 1: there for rock and pop music, yeah, absolutely every I
50:03
Speaker 1: mean it's very much like studio mixing at the console,
50:06
Speaker 1: and you're just bringing it to a big p A system. Now,
50:09
Speaker 1: if you if you go all the way down into
50:10
Speaker 1: something like you know, if you get to jazz things
50:13
Speaker 1: like that, then then you're really you're not necessarily not
50:17
Speaker 1: necessarily putting everything in the p A system, you know,
50:19
Speaker 1: you're you're back to what we would kind of label
50:22
Speaker 1: a sound reinforcement methodology there right where, Okay, let me
50:25
Speaker 1: take what I can hear on the stage and then
50:27
Speaker 1: just fill in the holes with the p A you know,
50:29
Speaker 1: and try to make it very organic feeling. You know,
50:32
Speaker 1: you don't, especially for things like symphony and pops. You know,
50:36
Speaker 1: you don't really want to experience p A system there.
50:38
Speaker 1: You know, you want it to be more like I'm
50:40
Speaker 1: experiencing the orchestra here, right, So, even though you might
50:44
Speaker 1: have all the inputs and all the mike stations of
50:46
Speaker 1: an orchestra get up, you really don't want it to
50:49
Speaker 1: be a parent that it's coming out of a p
50:50
Speaker 1: A system that wants to be very invisible for the listener.
50:53
Speaker 1: There so different sensibilities depending on the music for sure.
50:56
Speaker 1: So being like Petty you worked with for forty years,
50:59
Speaker 1: or Kenny Chestney, how many mikes do you need? Well,
51:02
Speaker 1: how many instruments you got, you know, and and how
51:05
Speaker 1: many like some of the guitar players you know they
51:08
Speaker 1: may play like well, Kenny Greenberg has got two different
51:12
Speaker 1: amplifier packages that he uses. John's got a couple of
51:15
Speaker 1: different amplifier packages. Uh. You know, Uh, Danny, the stage
51:20
Speaker 1: left guitar player, is working completely on amplifier emulation. He's
51:23
Speaker 1: using these things called fractals, which are no live amplifiers.
51:26
Speaker 1: It's it's all digital. But it sounds fantastic, you know.
51:29
Speaker 1: I mean they work really really good. So you need
51:33
Speaker 1: something for every instrument. You know, on the drums, I've
51:35
Speaker 1: probably got in there fre just you know, probably upwards
51:38
Speaker 1: of sixteen eighteen microphones in play microphone channels on the drums.
51:43
Speaker 1: So it just depends on how many, how many inputs
51:46
Speaker 1: you got up there, how many instruments you got up there. Okay,
51:48
Speaker 1: once you showed up in the rehearsal room with Chestney,
51:53
Speaker 1: how long did you take you to get miked and ready?
51:55
Speaker 1: Just miked and ready? You know, we were ready the
51:58
Speaker 1: first day. And again it kind of comes out of preparation, right,
52:00
Speaker 1: I mean, before I ever got there. I mean, this
52:03
Speaker 1: is kind of where we're adding sound reinforcement these days.
52:05
Speaker 1: You know, this is uh, you know, that whole concept
52:07
Speaker 1: of virtual sound check that is in play now. You know,
52:10
Speaker 1: I took they had recorded tracks from the twenty eighteen
52:14
Speaker 1: tour En Tour, you know, pro tools sessions that were
52:17
Speaker 1: recorded right off the live sound console. I brought them
52:20
Speaker 1: into my place here. I have console and p A
52:21
Speaker 1: system set up at my place here. I brought that
52:24
Speaker 1: in and I'm mixed that show in preparation of showing
52:27
Speaker 1: up for rehearsals. And when I showed up my console,
52:30
Speaker 1: a lot of it was already set and ready to go.
52:32
Speaker 1: Is just plug in the microphones and bring in the band,
52:34
Speaker 1: let's go. You know. So, you know, the the amount
52:37
Speaker 1: that you can prepare now today compared to what what
52:40
Speaker 1: it was, you know, twenty years ago, twenty plus years ago,
52:42
Speaker 1: is dramatic now, I mean, I can, I can come in.
52:45
Speaker 1: I did the same thing with Rock and Roll Hall
52:46
Speaker 1: of Fame, even though I didn't have the bands there.
52:48
Speaker 1: You know, I could use tracks to kind of prepare
52:50
Speaker 1: the console to get ready for that show, and when
52:53
Speaker 1: the bands came in, I was way way far ahead
52:55
Speaker 1: of the game. You know. Okay, if you were a
52:56
Speaker 1: regular recording studio, setting up mike is getting the sound
53:01
Speaker 1: can sometimes take a week. So in this particular case,
53:04
Speaker 1: are you literally going on stage and setting up all
53:07
Speaker 1: the mics. Well, I have somebody do it, but I
53:09
Speaker 1: I have total providence over where those microphones get placed.
53:13
Speaker 1: Like you know, I even have some alignment procedures, some
53:16
Speaker 1: very specific alignment procedures that are used on certain microphones
53:19
Speaker 1: to get them exactly in the position I want them
53:21
Speaker 1: to be in. And you know that part of it
53:23
Speaker 1: is really not that different from the studio. That that
53:25
Speaker 1: piece of it is very similar to what I would
53:27
Speaker 1: do in the studio as well. You know where we're
53:29
Speaker 1: working on microphone choice, we're working on microphone placement. We're
53:33
Speaker 1: working on getting the right instrument into the right amplifier
53:36
Speaker 1: to get the right sound. Is that the pickups we want,
53:38
Speaker 1: is that the strings we want? Is that the guitar
53:40
Speaker 1: we want to use? For that part. I'm involved in
53:43
Speaker 1: all of that with musicians more often than not, in
53:45
Speaker 1: picking what drumheads are we going to use? Okay, are
53:48
Speaker 1: these how many PLA shells? Is this? Is that what
53:50
Speaker 1: we're gonna do there? Okay? Yeah, alright, okay, yeah, I'm
53:52
Speaker 1: good with that. On the kit, what symbols are you
53:54
Speaker 1: using and using heavy light? All of that plays into
53:57
Speaker 1: it because you're gonna mix it. You know, you're at
53:59
Speaker 1: the end of the day, you're out of the responsible
54:01
Speaker 1: for what it's gonna sound like. So, you know, the
54:03
Speaker 1: guys that I've worked with in my life. I'm not
54:07
Speaker 1: necessarily preaching that every guy needs to work this way,
54:09
Speaker 1: but I know for the guys that I've worked with
54:12
Speaker 1: and been around in my life and that that mentored me.
54:15
Speaker 1: I picked up on it very quickly that the guys
54:18
Speaker 1: that knew audio the best didn't necessarily know how to
54:21
Speaker 1: operate the console the best, but they knew how to
54:23
Speaker 1: get the sounds. They knew. Okay, you want that guitar sound.
54:26
Speaker 1: I need that guitar with that pickup and those strings
54:29
Speaker 1: on it into that amplifier through those speakers, and we're
54:32
Speaker 1: going to use one of these two microphones here, and
54:34
Speaker 1: that's probably going to do it. You know. That's the
54:36
Speaker 1: things they knew. And then once you get to to
54:38
Speaker 1: the console and it's just about mixing the thing, you know,
54:40
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just about getting it together. Okay, tell
54:42
Speaker 1: us about virtual sound check. Yeah, that's kind of my
54:47
Speaker 1: pride and joy there. You know, I've been kind of
54:49
Speaker 1: credited as you know, developing this whole concept and and
54:53
Speaker 1: bringing it to bear. Um. I mean I'll give you
54:56
Speaker 1: the reader's digest version of the story. So you know,
55:00
Speaker 1: one of the things, one of the challenges we have
55:02
Speaker 1: in life sound previous to virtual sound check is the
55:06
Speaker 1: only time you, as the mixer, ever get to work
55:09
Speaker 1: on the audio like practice, work on sounds, make changes, experiment.
55:14
Speaker 1: The only time you ever get to do that is
55:17
Speaker 1: when the band is on stage or the audiences in
55:20
Speaker 1: the room, and the band is on stage, so you
55:22
Speaker 1: know it. It makes it where there was a whole
55:25
Speaker 1: lot of guesswork. I mean, you could kind of hear
55:27
Speaker 1: instruments and stuff, but you couldn't really mix anything until
55:31
Speaker 1: the band was on stage and playing. And you know,
55:34
Speaker 1: to ask a band who's getting ready to a concert, Hey,
55:37
Speaker 1: I need you to do this song about ten times
55:39
Speaker 1: for me to get it ready, It's not gonna happen.
55:43
Speaker 1: It's not going to happen. So you know the reality
55:45
Speaker 1: of what happened with that, I mean, there's two realities,
55:49
Speaker 1: stark realities that happen as results of that. One is
55:54
Speaker 1: previous to virtual sound check. You were gonna learn the
55:56
Speaker 1: show on the road during the SARTs. The show that
56:02
Speaker 1: I mixed two weeks from the first date is going
56:04
Speaker 1: to be infinitely better than the first show because I'm
56:07
Speaker 1: still learning it. I'm still understanding what to do on
56:10
Speaker 1: the console still. You know, any experiments I gotta do,
56:13
Speaker 1: I'm gonna have to do showtime and figure it out
56:15
Speaker 1: and get it going right, so that happens over course
56:18
Speaker 1: of time. Now, add to that, you may have people
56:21
Speaker 1: that are very inexperienced mixers in life sound. They're gonna
56:25
Speaker 1: learn their craft in front of the audience. It's going
56:29
Speaker 1: to happen over time. I mean, I think it's part
56:31
Speaker 1: of why live sound kind of got a got a
56:33
Speaker 1: bad rap over a period of time and is considered
56:36
Speaker 1: not very good because you have a lot of very
56:38
Speaker 1: inexperienced people in there, you know. I mean, you know,
56:41
Speaker 1: when I've taught mixing clinics and you know, things like that,
56:44
Speaker 1: I've always tried to get across people. Look, you want
56:46
Speaker 1: to learn how to mix, Get in the studio and
56:49
Speaker 1: learn how to mix when there's nothing at stake, right,
56:52
Speaker 1: get in there and learn how to do all the
56:54
Speaker 1: ear training and learn all the audio cues that you
56:56
Speaker 1: need to learn to get out and then do it
56:58
Speaker 1: under pressure live. You don't come out live and just
57:01
Speaker 1: learn the craft over five or six years of really
57:03
Speaker 1: bad mixing right and put the audience through it. So
57:06
Speaker 1: all of this to say, we needed another way to
57:09
Speaker 1: do this right, And this really all came to bear.
57:12
Speaker 1: You know, it's all down to timing of technologies. So
57:15
Speaker 1: I got invited into mixed Petty live around Wildflowers. They
57:20
Speaker 1: had just finished Wildflowers and we were going to do
57:22
Speaker 1: the the Dogs with Wings tour. This was well, as
57:28
Speaker 1: luck would have it. I'll give the little sidebar here,
57:30
Speaker 1: as luck would have it. Right about that time, these
57:33
Speaker 1: small modular digital multi track recorders came out. They were
57:37
Speaker 1: called a DAT right, which was a VHS cassette that
57:40
Speaker 1: did eight tracks of digital recording and you could cascade
57:44
Speaker 1: them together to make forty eight tracks, sixty four tracks
57:47
Speaker 1: of digital recording, whatever you wanted to do, right. So
57:49
Speaker 1: I had those in my studio already, had been using them,
57:53
Speaker 1: been recording bands. You know. That was around the time
57:55
Speaker 1: I was trying to get my label together and and
57:57
Speaker 1: get that whole part of my my my empire one.
58:01
Speaker 1: But I got invited to do the Petty thing. Now,
58:03
Speaker 1: you know, Petty has already been together at that point,
58:05
Speaker 1: you know, about you know, fifteen years maybe, and the
58:09
Speaker 1: band knows each other, you know. I'm in rehearsals and
58:12
Speaker 1: I'm kind of set up in another little room because
58:14
Speaker 1: it's a pretty small rehearsal space, and I'm kind of
58:16
Speaker 1: set up in another room with my consoles and some
58:17
Speaker 1: control room monitors, and I'm just gonna work on mixes
58:20
Speaker 1: in there while they're rehearsing to get ready for the
58:23
Speaker 1: first show. Well, and you probably know this from you know,
58:26
Speaker 1: being around the Heartbreakers and that stuff. This was Petty
58:29
Speaker 1: and the Heartbreakers. I mean we we did five days
58:32
Speaker 1: of rehearsals. I never heard one Petty song, not one.
58:37
Speaker 1: It was all covers. It was just like, oh, hey,
58:39
Speaker 1: let's do uh, let's do this Johnny Cash thing, you know.
58:42
Speaker 1: And they would dig into that, so, you know it.
58:44
Speaker 1: It became kind of the treehouse where they would just
58:46
Speaker 1: go hang out and play music. It wasn't really rehearsals
58:49
Speaker 1: per and I kind of had this moment of abject
58:54
Speaker 1: fear of thinking, oh my gosh, I'm going to get
58:57
Speaker 1: to the first show having never heard Tom Petty song
59:01
Speaker 1: through this console. You know, it's I'm gonna get to
59:03
Speaker 1: that show and it's going to be nothing like what
59:05
Speaker 1: I'm doing. Right now. So this was like on a
59:08
Speaker 1: Thursday Friday, and again just kind of as luck kind
59:11
Speaker 1: of have it. You know, I was working on a
59:12
Speaker 1: particular style of console at that time that would allow
59:15
Speaker 1: for this kind of thing to happen, and I had
59:17
Speaker 1: this kind of lightbulb moment of just thinking, you know what,
59:20
Speaker 1: I've got to create a studio workflow here. I've got
59:22
Speaker 1: to be able to record this because I'm gonna bet
59:25
Speaker 1: next week before we leave, they're going to run through
59:28
Speaker 1: the set once just to kind of make sure everybody's
59:31
Speaker 1: on point and make sure everybody's okay. And you know,
59:34
Speaker 1: not not the least of which that was Steve Ferroni's
59:36
Speaker 1: first time with the Heartbreakers, so he was panicking the
59:39
Speaker 1: same way, you know, thinking I'm gonna get to the
59:40
Speaker 1: first show, we're not playing any of these songs. So
59:43
Speaker 1: I literally called my wife and I said, Honey, I
59:46
Speaker 1: need you to go grab a screwdriver, and I need
59:49
Speaker 1: to go in the studio and I'm gonna have you
59:51
Speaker 1: pull out all these digital recorders and I'm gonna even
59:53
Speaker 1: send them to me. So over the course of the weekend,
59:56
Speaker 1: she sent those to me and we were able to
59:57
Speaker 1: interface them to the console in a way that it
1:00:00
Speaker 1: was very much like a studio workflow, where I could
1:00:03
Speaker 1: the band could play, I could record it literally, rewind,
1:00:07
Speaker 1: put the machines in play, and practice mixing that audio
1:00:11
Speaker 1: through the console without the band playing there right. So
1:00:15
Speaker 1: we didn't we didn't know it was called virtual sound
1:00:17
Speaker 1: check at the time. The name for it didn't come
1:00:19
Speaker 1: along until years and years later. But I spent the
1:00:22
Speaker 1: next probably six eight years developing that process, you know,
1:00:28
Speaker 1: with analog consoles and digital recorders. At some point I
1:00:30
Speaker 1: switched over to pro tools and all kinds of things,
1:00:33
Speaker 1: and you know, I knew we were onto something at
1:00:36
Speaker 1: the first gig because you know, I mean, I don't
1:00:40
Speaker 1: know how much your listeners or anything you know about
1:00:41
Speaker 1: this kind of process. But for years of the process
1:00:43
Speaker 1: for getting the p A system to sound right in
1:00:46
Speaker 1: the room, would will play some prerecorded music, We'll play
1:00:49
Speaker 1: our favorite CD, try to get the p A system
1:00:52
Speaker 1: sound right, and then we'll mix and try to make
1:00:53
Speaker 1: it sound right. And especially as the nineties war on,
1:00:57
Speaker 1: you know, mastering and equalization of recorded music changed dramatically.
1:01:03
Speaker 1: I mean it's way brighter, way more compressed, way less
1:01:06
Speaker 1: dynamic range than anything you're ever going to be able
1:01:09
Speaker 1: to make happen in the p A system with live microphones, right,
1:01:12
Speaker 1: So those two worlds kind of diverged where you could
1:01:15
Speaker 1: get get the PA to sound really good and then
1:01:17
Speaker 1: have the microphones come online and wouldn't sound very good,
1:01:20
Speaker 1: wouldn't be representative of it at all. But the thing
1:01:23
Speaker 1: I noticed with virtual sound check right away was, oh
1:01:25
Speaker 1: my gosh, we've got the most relevant source for the show. Now.
1:01:28
Speaker 1: If I hit rewind and hit play here and get
1:01:31
Speaker 1: that to sound really good in the p A when
1:01:33
Speaker 1: the band walks on stage, it's going to sound really
1:01:35
Speaker 1: close to that, right because now we're just trading tracks
1:01:39
Speaker 1: for microphones. We're just trading them off and saying which
1:01:41
Speaker 1: one are you listening to right now? Tracks or microphones? Now?
1:01:44
Speaker 1: So you know, I'm I'm really oversimplifying it. But that
1:01:47
Speaker 1: developed over a period of years and really the I
1:01:51
Speaker 1: think for me, the validation came one day, and this
1:01:54
Speaker 1: was about two thousand five. This was after the first
1:01:57
Speaker 1: you know, once I got to digit design, I remember
1:01:59
Speaker 1: started thinking, okay, we could actually make this a valid
1:02:02
Speaker 1: product feature and really kind of completely reshape the industry here.
1:02:07
Speaker 1: So we released the ability to do that and called
1:02:09
Speaker 1: it virtual sound check with the one of the first
1:02:12
Speaker 1: digit design consoles. And we were sitting in rehearsals in
1:02:15
Speaker 1: Sony or it was actually on the Paramount lot, I think,
1:02:19
Speaker 1: full production, the whole nine yards and Tom and the
1:02:22
Speaker 1: band had been in the day previous, and I had
1:02:24
Speaker 1: recorded the entire set and was going to come in
1:02:27
Speaker 1: the next morning and just go into virtual sound check,
1:02:31
Speaker 1: tear it all apart and see what I wanted to
1:02:33
Speaker 1: do with it. And I haven't mentioned it, but keep
1:02:36
Speaker 1: it up in mind. Tom had no idea I had
1:02:38
Speaker 1: this ability to do this. I mean I kind of
1:02:41
Speaker 1: kept it secret for the longest amount of time. He
1:02:43
Speaker 1: had no inkling that we could do this. I would
1:02:45
Speaker 1: always virtual sound check, then the band would come in
1:02:47
Speaker 1: and do their actual sound check, and then we would
1:02:49
Speaker 1: do the show. So he I came in the next
1:02:52
Speaker 1: morning and again was going to break it all down
1:02:54
Speaker 1: and try to get, you know, really dig in and
1:02:56
Speaker 1: see what I needed to do on this. And I
1:02:59
Speaker 1: didn't realize that as time, but he was in the
1:03:00
Speaker 1: building and he was sitting on a couch about thirty
1:03:03
Speaker 1: ft behind me, off in the corner, waiting to do
1:03:05
Speaker 1: some interviews and he tells the story way funnier than
1:03:10
Speaker 1: I could ever tell it. He said he was sitting
1:03:12
Speaker 1: there on the couch and kind of had this panic
1:03:14
Speaker 1: moment of, well, wait a minute, that is that my
1:03:16
Speaker 1: band sound checking right now? Why am I not? Why
1:03:19
Speaker 1: am I not there? And then he heard his voice
1:03:22
Speaker 1: come through the p A and he was like, Okay, now,
1:03:23
Speaker 1: wait a minute, here's what's actually happening right now. You know,
1:03:27
Speaker 1: there was this kind of pause moment. So he kind
1:03:30
Speaker 1: of came up to the console and we were talking
1:03:33
Speaker 1: about it, and I kind of revealed what I was
1:03:35
Speaker 1: going on, and you know, I mean, he was he
1:03:37
Speaker 1: was such a smart guy. I mean, he just he
1:03:39
Speaker 1: just got it. You know. He was like, Okay, wait
1:03:42
Speaker 1: a minute now, so you're telling me that for the
1:03:45
Speaker 1: first time ever in my life, right now, I'm going
1:03:47
Speaker 1: to be able to sit here and listen to how
1:03:48
Speaker 1: my show sounds in the in the venue, just like
1:03:52
Speaker 1: when we're playing. I said, yeah, you want to hear it?
1:03:54
Speaker 1: Here we go, you know, and sorry, and and we
1:03:57
Speaker 1: sat there and had this just incredible bonding moment of
1:04:00
Speaker 1: you know, he was just like, I I've never heard
1:04:03
Speaker 1: it sound like this. He goes, this is just the
1:04:05
Speaker 1: greatest thing I've ever experienced in my life, you know,
1:04:07
Speaker 1: I mean he was just over the moon about it,
1:04:09
Speaker 1: and it changed our relationship from that moment on. I mean,
1:04:12
Speaker 1: you know, he I think he understood where I was
1:04:14
Speaker 1: coming from in terms of what I was trying to
1:04:16
Speaker 1: accomplish with it, and you know, all of a sudden
1:04:18
Speaker 1: he was married to it. He was like, oh, this
1:04:20
Speaker 1: is great. And then he had the ultimate epiphany of well,
1:04:22
Speaker 1: wait a minute, can you do this for monitors to
1:04:24
Speaker 1: for the monitor console. I was like, yeah, of course
1:04:27
Speaker 1: we can. So that was in two thousand five, and
1:04:32
Speaker 1: from that point forward to the end of our time
1:04:35
Speaker 1: together in two thousand and seventeen, that bend. That band
1:04:38
Speaker 1: was never in the building again for a sound check.
1:04:41
Speaker 1: We only used virtual sound check to get ready for shows.
1:04:45
Speaker 1: And you know, of course I didn't see all the
1:04:49
Speaker 1: the positives from it at the time, but I actually
1:04:52
Speaker 1: think that process actually extended the life of the band
1:04:56
Speaker 1: over a period of that over that period of years,
1:04:58
Speaker 1: because you know, Tom is famous for saying it, you know,
1:05:00
Speaker 1: we don't sound check. It can only break up the band,
1:05:02
Speaker 1: you know, because everybody's in you know, three o'clock in
1:05:06
Speaker 1: the afternoon, they're in a horrible mood, and then when
1:05:08
Speaker 1: they're done, they gotta go sit in some danky dressing
1:05:10
Speaker 1: room and listen to a horrible opening act and then
1:05:12
Speaker 1: come on stage. You know. I mean it just grinds
1:05:15
Speaker 1: on you, absolutely grinds on you. Over the course of
1:05:18
Speaker 1: a tour, well, that all went away now. I mean
1:05:21
Speaker 1: there were nights where we would be at the set
1:05:24
Speaker 1: change between the opening act and tim going on, and
1:05:27
Speaker 1: they still weren't in the building. I mean they would
1:05:29
Speaker 1: literally walk off the bus, walk up on stage and
1:05:32
Speaker 1: start the show. And I noticed it really really early on.
1:05:35
Speaker 1: It was like, wow, these guys are so focused right now,
1:05:38
Speaker 1: like they're just playing on fire now, you know. It
1:05:42
Speaker 1: changed the dynamic of the show. Everything, everything just became
1:05:45
Speaker 1: a positive as a result of it. It was just
1:05:48
Speaker 1: such an amazing time and an amazing experience, you know.
1:05:52
Speaker 1: So that that to me was the ultimate validation of
1:05:54
Speaker 1: that process. Does everybody do this now? A lot of
1:05:57
Speaker 1: people do? I mean it it really changed the industry.
1:06:00
Speaker 1: It changed the mindset of a lot of people. Yeah,
1:06:02
Speaker 1: I don't think as many people do it as should.
1:06:04
Speaker 1: I'll be honest about it. I think more people should
1:06:07
Speaker 1: do it because I think it's a the ultimate way
1:06:10
Speaker 1: to get your arena or your club or whatever it
1:06:13
Speaker 1: is ready for your show. Like I said, it's the
1:06:15
Speaker 1: most valid thing you can play through the p A
1:06:18
Speaker 1: because it's gonna be if it sounds like that way
1:06:20
Speaker 1: with the tracks, it going down that way with your band. Okay,
1:06:30
Speaker 1: So let's see you're doing rehearsals with Chestney. How many
1:06:33
Speaker 1: rehearsals are there? Well, I mean when you get ready
1:06:35
Speaker 1: for something like this. And we had some unique circumstances
1:06:37
Speaker 1: with Chesney this year because he's got two new band members,
1:06:40
Speaker 1: Like they replaced the drummer and they replaced one of
1:06:42
Speaker 1: the guitar players, so they extended the rehearsal time to
1:06:45
Speaker 1: make sure that the new guys were going to be,
1:06:47
Speaker 1: you know, up to speed with the songs, et cetera.
1:06:50
Speaker 1: So I took full advantage of that. But we had about,
1:06:54
Speaker 1: oh gosh, I'm gonna say about three weeks of what
1:06:57
Speaker 1: we would call band rehearsals, right, which is in a
1:06:59
Speaker 1: smaller place where just the band is set up with
1:07:01
Speaker 1: their band gear and everybody's just learning the songs and
1:07:04
Speaker 1: getting familiar with them. And then we had about two
1:07:08
Speaker 1: maybe three weeks of what I would call production rehearsals,
1:07:11
Speaker 1: which we moved to a much bigger facility. Excuse me.
1:07:15
Speaker 1: We have a p A system, we have the lighting system,
1:07:17
Speaker 1: the video systems up, and then all the production elements
1:07:20
Speaker 1: are working on the songs at that point in rehearsing
1:07:22
Speaker 1: their pieces of it. You know, Obviously, lighting guys got
1:07:24
Speaker 1: to know other cues. I've got to know how to
1:07:27
Speaker 1: run the set and you know, make all my changes
1:07:30
Speaker 1: song to song to solong. Excuse me. Video guys have
1:07:34
Speaker 1: to have all their content together, etcetera. So that's the
1:07:36
Speaker 1: production rehearsal, and then we're gonna go down to Tampa
1:07:39
Speaker 1: next week and do the two about three or four
1:07:42
Speaker 1: days in the stadium to get everybody acclimated to that,
1:07:45
Speaker 1: and then after that we just go, you know, and
1:07:47
Speaker 1: then after that there's no more rehearsal periods. Okay. I
1:07:49
Speaker 1: guess what I'm asking is what recording do you use
1:07:52
Speaker 1: for the virtual sound check last rehearsal or you're recording
1:07:56
Speaker 1: all along the way. I'm recording every day, and I
1:08:00
Speaker 1: always use the most recent version of the songs, so um,
1:08:05
Speaker 1: you know, like every day of rehearsal, if I was
1:08:07
Speaker 1: coming into work on my on what I would need
1:08:09
Speaker 1: to do on the console, I was using yesterday's audio,
1:08:12
Speaker 1: and the same thing will apply on the tour. I'll
1:08:14
Speaker 1: always use the most recent version. So when I get
1:08:17
Speaker 1: to Tampa, I'll be using on the first day of rehear,
1:08:20
Speaker 1: so I'll be using audio from the first day of
1:08:22
Speaker 1: rehear or the last day of rehearsals, and then the
1:08:25
Speaker 1: second day in Tampa, I'll be using the first day
1:08:27
Speaker 1: of rehearsals in Tampa as that basis. And then it
1:08:29
Speaker 1: just keeps leap frogging as you go along. And the
1:08:32
Speaker 1: beauty that you get out of all this this this
1:08:34
Speaker 1: is the other head of benefit as you create an
1:08:36
Speaker 1: archive then, right, I mean this this was one of
1:08:39
Speaker 1: the once I once I got Petty to buy off
1:08:41
Speaker 1: on this one and his management to buy off on it,
1:08:43
Speaker 1: then the light bulb really came off. It came on.
1:08:46
Speaker 1: It was like, guys, you know, we don't have to
1:08:48
Speaker 1: erase this every day. Let's keep these multi tracks and
1:08:51
Speaker 1: put them in your archive, right because you can remix
1:08:54
Speaker 1: any of this and and put it out for product,
1:08:58
Speaker 1: especially now, you know, I mean, Kenny's got no Shoes radio,
1:09:02
Speaker 1: you know, Tom had serious you know, you know the
1:09:04
Speaker 1: Tom Petty Show. On Tom Petty Radio Show. You can
1:09:07
Speaker 1: just you're just gonna be so flush with fresh material
1:09:10
Speaker 1: if you want it, you know, And I'll tell you something, Bob,
1:09:14
Speaker 1: I mean really. One of the underlying agendas for me,
1:09:16
Speaker 1: this was a personal one for me, was being able
1:09:18
Speaker 1: to do this because the technology allowed us to do
1:09:21
Speaker 1: it right. The technology allows us to do this inexpensively. Now,
1:09:24
Speaker 1: this concept of multi tracking our shows and archiving it.
1:09:28
Speaker 1: One of the things for me was I love live music.
1:09:31
Speaker 1: I love live recorded music. I mean I grew up
1:09:35
Speaker 1: I had every live album known to man, you know,
1:09:37
Speaker 1: from nineteen Let's let's start for one second. What are
1:09:41
Speaker 1: is the best or the two best live recordings in
1:09:44
Speaker 1: your book? Oh, you're gonna put me on this, Okay,
1:09:46
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say Allman Brothers at the film wore that
1:09:49
Speaker 1: that is got to be right up at the top
1:09:51
Speaker 1: of the heap because it's just such a magical set
1:09:54
Speaker 1: of performances and recording. I mean, Tom doubt but just
1:09:56
Speaker 1: just killed it. And then I'm going to say, because
1:10:00
Speaker 1: the thing you have to put with live recordings is
1:10:03
Speaker 1: there's an audience capture that needs to take place as well,
1:10:06
Speaker 1: So you know, the audience recording is a big piece
1:10:09
Speaker 1: of it. And I still to this day say Frampton
1:10:12
Speaker 1: Comes Alive is the best audience engaged recording I've ever
1:10:16
Speaker 1: heard today. Now there's one that's close to that, and
1:10:19
Speaker 1: it's Buck Owens Live at Carnegie Hall. That's an incredible
1:10:24
Speaker 1: audience recording there. But you know that that is what
1:10:28
Speaker 1: makes live albums work for me, is when you can
1:10:31
Speaker 1: tell that's the actual audience that's recorded and they are
1:10:34
Speaker 1: fully engaged with that artist. You can hear it. They're
1:10:36
Speaker 1: just hanging on every word. And I've yet to hear
1:10:39
Speaker 1: anything that matches that with Frampton Brampton Comes Alive. You know,
1:10:42
Speaker 1: next time you listen to it, just pay attention to
1:10:44
Speaker 1: the audience. It's just incredible. I guess for a long
1:10:46
Speaker 1: time people said that Live It Leads was the best
1:10:49
Speaker 1: live album, but I didn't hear the audience, so it
1:10:51
Speaker 1: didn't work for me, And there's some truth to that.
1:10:53
Speaker 1: Although that's very high on my list. I mean, I
1:10:55
Speaker 1: mean that one kind of set the bar for me
1:10:57
Speaker 1: for a long time. I'm I wore out multiple opies
1:11:00
Speaker 1: of that one, but the other one, and I know
1:11:02
Speaker 1: you worked with this band, Tesla five Me and Acoustical Jam.
1:11:06
Speaker 1: I was piste off because I didn't get to mix that.
1:11:08
Speaker 1: But that's a whole another story. We'll save that for
1:11:10
Speaker 1: another episode. But you recorded that, No, I didn't. I didn't.
1:11:14
Speaker 1: I was on that tour and kind of mixed a
1:11:16
Speaker 1: bunch of the tour that was radio great, radio controversy.
1:11:19
Speaker 1: And then they went off and did that. Oh, forgive me,
1:11:22
Speaker 1: I'm going to forget. The guy who recorded it's Dan.
1:11:25
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, guys, forgive me. I'm spacing his last name.
1:11:29
Speaker 1: But he worked with the band for a long long
1:11:30
Speaker 1: time and he recorded it and mixed it and did
1:11:32
Speaker 1: a phenomenal job on it. And you know, I'm sorry
1:11:35
Speaker 1: to say he's not with us anymore, but he was great.
1:11:38
Speaker 1: He was one of the you know, he's one of
1:11:39
Speaker 1: those long time guys that have been with the band
1:11:40
Speaker 1: for a long time, and they let him do it
1:11:42
Speaker 1: and it came out great. Okay, let's go back a chapter.
1:11:46
Speaker 1: I have been at the venue. I know the people
1:11:48
Speaker 1: at the venue, and they were there at sound check
1:11:51
Speaker 1: and one act I don't want to mention the specific
1:11:54
Speaker 1: name here, they said that guy can't sing it all yeah,
1:11:57
Speaker 1: and it's all effects or there's another household being I'm
1:12:00
Speaker 1: good friends with these people and they say, all the
1:12:03
Speaker 1: backup vocals are on hard rock. Okay, how do you
1:12:07
Speaker 1: do that? Do you want to know how you do
1:12:09
Speaker 1: it or why you do it? Both? Yeah? Well this
1:12:13
Speaker 1: is a well and it's going to play into what
1:12:14
Speaker 1: I was going to promote here. You know what I'll
1:12:17
Speaker 1: get to this. Just hang with me, bear with me
1:12:19
Speaker 1: here one second. You know, one of the things I like,
1:12:22
Speaker 1: I love about live music and live albums was this
1:12:25
Speaker 1: sense of, you know, kind of getting to hear what
1:12:27
Speaker 1: the band could do before you go see them live.
1:12:29
Speaker 1: I mean, that was always the thing for me. But
1:12:31
Speaker 1: as I matured and I got older, you know, I
1:12:35
Speaker 1: started to realize, you know, and I got exposed to
1:12:38
Speaker 1: production techniques, etcetera, that some of these live recordings that
1:12:41
Speaker 1: I grew up loving, we're actually just completely redone in
1:12:45
Speaker 1: the studio with audience added to him. And I was like, well,
1:12:48
Speaker 1: wait a minute, that's that's not live. That's not live.
1:12:53
Speaker 1: I don't want I don't want my live record to
1:12:55
Speaker 1: be you going in and singing perfect vocals over it. Now,
1:12:59
Speaker 1: you know, because the thing that happens with that from
1:13:01
Speaker 1: production point of view, and I've experienced this, you know,
1:13:04
Speaker 1: mixing some of these products, is that, well, the audience
1:13:08
Speaker 1: mix that are out there are also picking up what's
1:13:11
Speaker 1: coming out of the p A to some degree, so
1:13:13
Speaker 1: they can hear those audience mikes can actually hear you're
1:13:16
Speaker 1: very poor vocal. So now if you go in the
1:13:19
Speaker 1: studio and you record a perfect vocal and we tried
1:13:21
Speaker 1: to add the audience, you can hear the bad vocal
1:13:24
Speaker 1: behind it. So what ends up happening is we start
1:13:27
Speaker 1: to pull the audience farther and farther away off of
1:13:29
Speaker 1: the record and maybe even putting canned audience on it.
1:13:32
Speaker 1: So now it's not even the live audience anymore. It's
1:13:35
Speaker 1: not the live performance or the live audience. I was like, well,
1:13:39
Speaker 1: and and I mean, you've got to keep it in context.
1:13:41
Speaker 1: Right at that point in music history, you know, live
1:13:45
Speaker 1: records were kind of throwaway kind of they were Sometimes
1:13:49
Speaker 1: they were done to complete record contracts so I could
1:13:52
Speaker 1: move on to another label, you know, all those kinds
1:13:54
Speaker 1: of things. So and you know, it was very expensive
1:13:57
Speaker 1: at that point in history to record. So you know,
1:13:59
Speaker 1: if the truck your two thousand dollar a day, you know,
1:14:03
Speaker 1: plus crew, plus expenses. If that showed up and recorded
1:14:06
Speaker 1: a really bad show, well guess what you were keeping
1:14:08
Speaker 1: it and you were going to go fix it. So
1:14:10
Speaker 1: part of my agenda, I promise you, part of my
1:14:13
Speaker 1: agenda with kind of developing this whole multi track archive
1:14:16
Speaker 1: thing was what that's going to allow us to do
1:14:18
Speaker 1: is record every night, not just certain nights, record every
1:14:22
Speaker 1: night and then go pick the performances that are worthy
1:14:26
Speaker 1: of being mixed and released. And that's you know, with
1:14:29
Speaker 1: Petty's Anthology, that's what happened there. You know, we had
1:14:32
Speaker 1: enough recordings where we could kind of go through and go, wow,
1:14:35
Speaker 1: we don't have to fix anything there. Let's let's release
1:14:37
Speaker 1: that sucker, mix it up and let's go you know,
1:14:40
Speaker 1: and then it becomes very pure, right, I mean, then
1:14:42
Speaker 1: it becomes really what you're stating that it is right
1:14:46
Speaker 1: and that that's always been my goal on it. And
1:14:48
Speaker 1: you know, one of the other sidebars I would give
1:14:50
Speaker 1: you on that is and I watched this happen with
1:14:53
Speaker 1: every act I've ever worked for. I don't care how
1:14:57
Speaker 1: proficient they are. I have seen this happen in the
1:15:00
Speaker 1: days before multi track archiving, like I've tried to develop here.
1:15:04
Speaker 1: If you had the truck show up and say, okay,
1:15:06
Speaker 1: we're gonna do Los Angeles next week and we're going
1:15:08
Speaker 1: to record it, hopefully get a live album out of it.
1:15:10
Speaker 1: You could we do with the band where you've done
1:15:12
Speaker 1: sixty shows together just overall, just great shows. And the
1:15:17
Speaker 1: minute that truck shows up and that red recording light
1:15:20
Speaker 1: goes on, they turned into a different band. They're just
1:15:24
Speaker 1: a different band. They're playing different, they're they're over trying
1:15:28
Speaker 1: all kinds of things, and you just walk away on that,
1:15:32
Speaker 1: ain't it? That ain't the one we wanted. Well, multi
1:15:36
Speaker 1: track archive eliminates that process because they don't they don't
1:15:39
Speaker 1: have red light fever. Then the red lights on every night,
1:15:41
Speaker 1: they get used to it, and you get the smoking performances.
1:15:45
Speaker 1: You know, you just gotta be able to go in
1:15:46
Speaker 1: and mind them out of there and find them right.
1:15:49
Speaker 1: It's it's awesome, it's absolutely awesome. Well that's the live then,
1:15:53
Speaker 1: but let's go to the acts on the other end.
1:15:55
Speaker 1: You want to cover. Yeah, we were gonna get back
1:15:57
Speaker 1: to that, right, Sorry, I promise you we get back
1:15:58
Speaker 1: to that. So, I mean, I'm so I'm so mixed.
1:16:02
Speaker 1: About this and and got to keep it in context
1:16:05
Speaker 1: at times, I think, right, I mean, I'm okay, I
1:16:11
Speaker 1: I promise you I'm okay with using tracks with backing tracks.
1:16:16
Speaker 1: What I'm not okay with is people miming to backing tracks. Now,
1:16:20
Speaker 1: I want to keep this in context here. I want
1:16:22
Speaker 1: to keep TV out of it and talk about only
1:16:25
Speaker 1: the concert hall we're paying to go see the band perform,
1:16:31
Speaker 1: right when that is all tracks and just sit people
1:16:35
Speaker 1: lip sing it, sinking to it so that they can
1:16:37
Speaker 1: do other things or what are maybe they can't sing
1:16:39
Speaker 1: and they feel like they're insecure, I have to sing
1:16:42
Speaker 1: to the track, etcetera. I'm really uncomfortable with that as like,
1:16:46
Speaker 1: I mean, that just feels really really misrepresented to me.
1:16:50
Speaker 1: You know, it feels very phony to me, and you know,
1:16:54
Speaker 1: there's it's like and I just am uncomfortable with that.
1:16:58
Speaker 1: But by the same token, I look it and go, well,
1:17:00
Speaker 1: that's a function of the industry that we have right now,
1:17:02
Speaker 1: the record business that we have right now. Right think
1:17:05
Speaker 1: about this now. The record industry is upside down. It's
1:17:08
Speaker 1: completely backwards. Now. The first thing we do as an
1:17:12
Speaker 1: artist now is make a record and then go out
1:17:16
Speaker 1: and learn how to perform it. You know, artists today
1:17:20
Speaker 1: don't have that crucible of performance in front of an
1:17:23
Speaker 1: audience where they have where they learn how to sing
1:17:26
Speaker 1: with nerves and in front of people, they learn how
1:17:29
Speaker 1: to develop their charisma, all of these sorts of things,
1:17:32
Speaker 1: and then go make the record that's completely upside down.
1:17:35
Speaker 1: Now they just don't have to go through that crucible anymore.
1:17:39
Speaker 1: And we see it all the time where you know,
1:17:42
Speaker 1: people make their record at home, whatever they the thing
1:17:44
Speaker 1: blows up, they do really big, and now they're playing
1:17:47
Speaker 1: in front of Lollapaloosa and they don't have the chops.
1:17:51
Speaker 1: They don't have the chops to do it live. But
1:17:52
Speaker 1: on a technical level, you're working with an act they
1:17:56
Speaker 1: want to use canned backup vocals. How do you literally
1:17:59
Speaker 1: do it? It's done in a digital audio workstation, which
1:18:02
Speaker 1: is like pro Tools. There's lots of other ones out
1:18:04
Speaker 1: there like Ableton and etcetera. Where they bring in the
1:18:06
Speaker 1: tracks from the record, put them in there. Whoever the
1:18:10
Speaker 1: band is playing to a click track, and at the
1:18:13
Speaker 1: proper time in the song, those backing vocals come up
1:18:15
Speaker 1: and they come into your console. You turn them up
1:18:17
Speaker 1: and they sound just like the record coming through the
1:18:19
Speaker 1: p A system. Okay, I know what a click track is,
1:18:21
Speaker 1: but from my OEMs, explain how it works live. A
1:18:24
Speaker 1: click track is I mean another word for it is
1:18:27
Speaker 1: a metronome, right, But in our world we have recorded
1:18:30
Speaker 1: versions of that where you know, it's recorded as a
1:18:32
Speaker 1: specific tempo. Everybody knows where the the first beat of
1:18:37
Speaker 1: the song is and it just starts clapping. It just
1:18:40
Speaker 1: starts ticking, right, So the song is going along and
1:18:42
Speaker 1: it's going this is the tempo that we're playing the
1:18:47
Speaker 1: song too. And at the you know, at bar or
1:18:52
Speaker 1: whatever it is, here come our backing vocals. You know.
1:18:54
Speaker 1: So Petty played the super Bowl. Were you involved in that? Ye?
1:18:57
Speaker 1: So how did you do that? Dude? It's the scariest
1:19:00
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes of your life. It's it's the most intense pressure.
1:19:03
Speaker 1: I think I may have ever felt that a gig,
1:19:05
Speaker 1: you know. So the way you do that is honestly
1:19:08
Speaker 1: very similar, you know, and they do it in a
1:19:11
Speaker 1: really cool way there. I like how the super Bowl,
1:19:13
Speaker 1: at least I'm assuming they're still doing it the same
1:19:14
Speaker 1: way where you you prerecorded on the day, the day's
1:19:19
Speaker 1: leading up to the event, and then the band plays
1:19:21
Speaker 1: along with the tracks, and you have the choice of
1:19:23
Speaker 1: using as the mixture. You have the choice of using
1:19:26
Speaker 1: the actual mix or the tracks. And you know, the
1:19:29
Speaker 1: lead vocal can be all live, it can be partially live.
1:19:32
Speaker 1: You have the choice of doing it because they know
1:19:34
Speaker 1: that that. You know, if the lead singer forgets the
1:19:36
Speaker 1: lines or whatever, you know, the guitar player misses the
1:19:39
Speaker 1: part mrs the solo, you just lean on the track
1:19:42
Speaker 1: and finish out the song. So again, it's it's down
1:19:45
Speaker 1: to that thing. It's so time driven and so like
1:19:49
Speaker 1: the brackets have got to be perfect around that. It
1:19:52
Speaker 1: can only last this long. We cannot have any mess
1:19:55
Speaker 1: ups here, etcetera. You know that is about predictability, etcetera.
1:19:59
Speaker 1: So I you know, I don't. I don't think it's
1:20:00
Speaker 1: a huge secret what goes on there. But you know
1:20:03
Speaker 1: that said, there have been live performances on there, you know,
1:20:05
Speaker 1: I mean a lot of part of the Petty thing
1:20:07
Speaker 1: was live, for sure, part of the Prince thing was live.
1:20:10
Speaker 1: You know, I'm playing guitar. Were you literally control or
1:20:13
Speaker 1: was one of their engineers in control for the broadcast?
1:20:16
Speaker 1: Is one of their engineers for the house? I was, well,
1:20:18
Speaker 1: I was, it was a similar sort of thing where
1:20:20
Speaker 1: you have a house engineer who's doing it, who's a
1:20:22
Speaker 1: union guy, and you're sitting right next to him saying, yeah,
1:20:24
Speaker 1: let's do that. Yeah, you're you're guiding there. Okay. One
1:20:28
Speaker 1: thing about live sound is every building is different. Indeed
1:20:32
Speaker 1: it is. Okay, so are you saying now? With virtual
1:20:37
Speaker 1: sound check, it makes it so much easier, whereas before
1:20:39
Speaker 1: you were just on the flaw. Yeah, because you can
1:20:42
Speaker 1: take actual band audio that's played at the right dynamic everything,
1:20:46
Speaker 1: send it through the p A system and really take
1:20:48
Speaker 1: your time and figure out how good is my PA coverage?
1:20:52
Speaker 1: Am I actually getting all the way up to those seats?
1:20:54
Speaker 1: You know, what does it sound like up there? What
1:20:56
Speaker 1: is what does my band sound like sitting over in
1:20:58
Speaker 1: these seats? Right now? I can go evaluate it and
1:21:01
Speaker 1: adjust it. You know. The biggest piece of positive I
1:21:06
Speaker 1: think for virtual sound check is it gives you the
1:21:08
Speaker 1: ability to practice when nothing's at stake. You can experiment,
1:21:12
Speaker 1: You can try things, all kinds of things without the
1:21:15
Speaker 1: band sitting on stage, you know, being freaked out by
1:21:17
Speaker 1: a bunch of weird sounding audio or the audience not
1:21:20
Speaker 1: not having to do it in front of an audience.
1:21:22
Speaker 1: It's very very analogous to a studio workflow where you're
1:21:25
Speaker 1: working on mixes, you know, like in virtual sound check.
1:21:28
Speaker 1: I'm no use kidding as an example, because the most
1:21:30
Speaker 1: recent thing, you know, I might I might spend one
1:21:32
Speaker 1: entire day of rehearsals working on one song, you know,
1:21:35
Speaker 1: for the set, trying to get it to be what
1:21:37
Speaker 1: I wanted to be. So you know, you could never
1:21:38
Speaker 1: do that that was not just simply not possible in
1:21:42
Speaker 1: pre virtual sound check. Okay. In an arena show, how
1:21:45
Speaker 1: long we'll it take you to set up depends on
1:21:47
Speaker 1: the size of the production, but usually usually you'll start
1:21:51
Speaker 1: at six in the morning and bring in that entire
1:21:54
Speaker 1: production that day and be ready for a Show'll be
1:21:56
Speaker 1: ready for the doors to open by six pm. How
1:21:58
Speaker 1: much of the time are you there, Well, I'm usually
1:22:01
Speaker 1: in there in the morning, working out early in the morning,
1:22:03
Speaker 1: so I'm available, but my my process doesn't start until probably,
1:22:09
Speaker 1: you know, somewhere between eleven and one o'clock. And it
1:22:13
Speaker 1: also depends on how many bands we have on the bill.
1:22:16
Speaker 1: You know. Stadiums is a very very different thing. You
1:22:18
Speaker 1: have about a week to load in for a stadium.
1:22:20
Speaker 1: There's a lot of steel build that has to take place,
1:22:24
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff has to go into place in
1:22:26
Speaker 1: the stadium, a lot of delay speakers, etcetera that go
1:22:29
Speaker 1: out in the far reaches of the stadium. All kinds
1:22:32
Speaker 1: of stuff. Is very like I said earlier, it's adult audio.
1:22:34
Speaker 1: It's very very complex, very challenging. So let's assume it's
1:22:37
Speaker 1: an arena thing. You're there, you're working out. Once you
1:22:40
Speaker 1: stit in behind the board, how long does it take
1:22:43
Speaker 1: you to get it right? If I've done my job
1:22:45
Speaker 1: in the process called system tuning, which is kind of
1:22:48
Speaker 1: equalizing the p A and make sure the distribution of
1:22:51
Speaker 1: it right, It'll usually take me about I don't know,
1:22:54
Speaker 1: maybe thirty minutes thirty forty minutes to just kind of
1:22:57
Speaker 1: check things and make sure they are where I want
1:22:58
Speaker 1: them to be, because you know, the the cool thing
1:23:01
Speaker 1: at least this is my approach. Once I get the
1:23:03
Speaker 1: console kind of set and and know all the moves
1:23:06
Speaker 1: that are going to take place during the show, that's
1:23:08
Speaker 1: kind of a constant, right, So like you know, if
1:23:12
Speaker 1: we start that process and I'm on song three and
1:23:14
Speaker 1: it sounds right to me and everything is responding that way,
1:23:16
Speaker 1: then I'm confident that the rest of the show is
1:23:18
Speaker 1: going to work as well, you know, unless I need
1:23:20
Speaker 1: to go really dig in on something and work on
1:23:22
Speaker 1: it and say, oh and I need to get that better,
1:23:25
Speaker 1: you know whatever. So yeah, forty minutes. Tell me about
1:23:28
Speaker 1: the equalization. Well, we have all kinds of possibilities now
1:23:31
Speaker 1: with equalization, I mean, and really it's just I mean,
1:23:35
Speaker 1: it sounds like a big flute word, but it's just
1:23:36
Speaker 1: really trying to get this thing totally balanced so that
1:23:40
Speaker 1: it sounds like the music you're trying to present, right.
1:23:43
Speaker 1: So you know, if it's I mean, if it's Metallica,
1:23:45
Speaker 1: you can bet there's going to be a huge based
1:23:47
Speaker 1: drumb element, a huge bottom end element, along with some
1:23:50
Speaker 1: very loud, bright guitars and you know, a big vocal.
1:23:55
Speaker 1: I mean, it's going to be in your face, you know,
1:23:57
Speaker 1: whereas I mean, we'll just keep using it as the
1:24:00
Speaker 1: example here. If I was mixing Adele, very very different
1:24:02
Speaker 1: profile through the p A system, they're much more focused
1:24:05
Speaker 1: on intelligibility and elegance, you know. Needless to say, in
1:24:16
Speaker 1: the days of your you would go to the gig
1:24:20
Speaker 1: and the sound was bad, okay in the arena, in
1:24:24
Speaker 1: the stadium, if you knew the songs, you knew what
1:24:27
Speaker 1: they were playing, you'd fill in. And it has certainly
1:24:30
Speaker 1: got better. You certainly have the Forum in l A
1:24:32
Speaker 1: which is dedicated solely to music, but generally speaking that
1:24:37
Speaker 1: is not the case. I mean, I've certainly been at
1:24:40
Speaker 1: gigs where the front of hall mixer, you know, and
1:24:43
Speaker 1: it sounds good right where he is or she is,
1:24:46
Speaker 1: and then the rest of the room sounds terrible. Yeah,
1:24:48
Speaker 1: that can happen, although I'll say that happens way less
1:24:50
Speaker 1: today than I think it's ever happened. I mean, we've
1:24:53
Speaker 1: gotten that so much better now. Certainly the Petty, the
1:24:57
Speaker 1: p A system that I had on Petty, I think
1:24:59
Speaker 1: was the best ample of that where I was really
1:25:02
Speaker 1: really confident that however it sounded where I was sitting
1:25:04
Speaker 1: was pretty much how it sounded everywhere else in the house.
1:25:07
Speaker 1: You know, from a tonal point of view, it may
1:25:09
Speaker 1: not be the same volume everywhere, but tonally it sounded
1:25:12
Speaker 1: that way up there. You know, the things I was
1:25:14
Speaker 1: doing on the on the console would translate to big
1:25:16
Speaker 1: pieces of the audience, you know. So that was that
1:25:19
Speaker 1: was a big move forward. That that PA system was
1:25:21
Speaker 1: a big jump forward. Well, actually, I know. I saw
1:25:23
Speaker 1: that gig on the final weekend and I was very
1:25:26
Speaker 1: close and I was astounded how good it sound, because
1:25:29
Speaker 1: I go to a lot of gigs at the Hollywood
1:25:31
Speaker 1: Bowl and you know, you know that the act is there,
1:25:34
Speaker 1: but it's not crystal clear if you're sitting fifteen rows back.
1:25:39
Speaker 1: You know, I remember you. I remember reading one of
1:25:42
Speaker 1: your letters where you commented on this, Bob, and I
1:25:45
Speaker 1: actually wrote you back. I don't know if you hear this,
1:25:48
Speaker 1: well I do. That was all around the time that
1:25:50
Speaker 1: you know, Tom died and then Tony used what I
1:25:53
Speaker 1: wrote at the memorial service. But moving on from that,
1:25:57
Speaker 1: you were talking about the speakers that can direct lead
1:26:00
Speaker 1: point someone. Have you heard the demonstration for the sphere,
1:26:04
Speaker 1: the Madison Square Gardens sphere. I haven't heard the demonstration yet,
1:26:08
Speaker 1: but I understand the concepts behind it and irrelevant of
1:26:11
Speaker 1: the finance. Some people think the venue is too large
1:26:14
Speaker 1: or whatever. Does it work? I mean it works in
1:26:16
Speaker 1: the demonstration, you know, but that's a small scale thing. Well,
1:26:20
Speaker 1: you know, I think it can work, certainly, you know,
1:26:23
Speaker 1: but I think it's gonna be how do I want
1:26:26
Speaker 1: to say this? And you kind of say it the
1:26:28
Speaker 1: right way. It is all gonna come. It's gonna work
1:26:32
Speaker 1: better for certain styles of music than others, no doubt
1:26:35
Speaker 1: about it. I can't foresee certain styles of music actually
1:26:39
Speaker 1: benefiting from that. But the technology in and of itself
1:26:42
Speaker 1: and the functionality of it and the capability of it
1:26:45
Speaker 1: is super impressive. I mean, it's super impressive. It's going
1:26:49
Speaker 1: to get used in lots and lots of places. But
1:26:52
Speaker 1: you know, live music is a it's a particular animal,
1:26:54
Speaker 1: you know, especially live rock music, lave pop music. You know,
1:26:58
Speaker 1: it demands sir and things. And I'll be very interested
1:27:03
Speaker 1: to see how that translates in that style of venue,
1:27:06
Speaker 1: you know, with that kind of kind of approach, because
1:27:08
Speaker 1: they're making a lot of claims there where I kind
1:27:10
Speaker 1: of where I kind of brace myself a little bit
1:27:11
Speaker 1: and go, wait a minute, I'll be sure about this here. Okay,
1:27:14
Speaker 1: I need to hear that before I'm gonna sign off
1:27:17
Speaker 1: on that, you know. Okay, for those out of the loop,
1:27:19
Speaker 1: this is a concept where every seat gets to their
1:27:23
Speaker 1: own individual sound. Just reference why different types of music
1:27:27
Speaker 1: would be better or worse under those situations, you know,
1:27:31
Speaker 1: I mean, if I read the thing correctly, you know,
1:27:33
Speaker 1: the idea is that I can have a set of
1:27:36
Speaker 1: speakers that are focusing one thing into a zone of
1:27:40
Speaker 1: the audience, while you can be sitting a couple of
1:27:43
Speaker 1: seats away and not hear it at all. Right, I
1:27:45
Speaker 1: mean you can do this, I mean abject localization of audio.
1:27:50
Speaker 1: So that's where I kind of come from it as well.
1:27:52
Speaker 1: That's a very very powerful concept. I mean, I can
1:27:55
Speaker 1: see where that can be used very handily for a
1:27:57
Speaker 1: lot of things. But is that really what we want
1:28:00
Speaker 1: for concert sound? Right? I mean I I you know,
1:28:04
Speaker 1: I want the audience to have dare I say a
1:28:08
Speaker 1: unified experience here? Right? I want them all to be
1:28:12
Speaker 1: relating to the music that's kind of the same way.
1:28:14
Speaker 1: And it's you know, I mean, we we're never gonna
1:28:16
Speaker 1: get it. I don't think where every scene in the
1:28:18
Speaker 1: house sounds exactly the same. And I don't even know
1:28:21
Speaker 1: if I would want that. It's like, not every seat
1:28:22
Speaker 1: in the house looks the same. Why would I want
1:28:25
Speaker 1: it to sound exactly the same over there? I don't know.
1:28:27
Speaker 1: I'm a little I'm a little iffy with that at times.
1:28:29
Speaker 1: But you know, what I want is consistency. I want
1:28:32
Speaker 1: I want, you know, the engagement from the audience to
1:28:34
Speaker 1: be really, really good. And I can tell you as
1:28:36
Speaker 1: a concert sound mixer, I spend the night looking around
1:28:39
Speaker 1: that a building, and you can tell whether people are
1:28:42
Speaker 1: having a good show where they can hear a good
1:28:43
Speaker 1: show up there or not. You can tell but just
1:28:45
Speaker 1: by their engagement whether it's right. I don't need any
1:28:48
Speaker 1: microphones or any instruments to tell me whether the coverage
1:28:50
Speaker 1: is good. All I gotta do is watch the people.
1:28:53
Speaker 1: They'll tell me whether it's good. So how do you
1:28:55
Speaker 1: place the audience microphones in our arena? Well, typically they're
1:29:00
Speaker 1: placed there's a set that are placed up along the
1:29:03
Speaker 1: front plane of the play of the stage. You know.
1:29:05
Speaker 1: I'll typically have four to six microphones spaced out to
1:29:08
Speaker 1: kind of pick up the front field of the audience,
1:29:11
Speaker 1: and then I have some other ones out where I'm at. Like,
1:29:13
Speaker 1: I'll usually put a five point one mic which is
1:29:16
Speaker 1: a kind of a head, you know, it looks kind
1:29:19
Speaker 1: of like a head that's sitting right in the middle
1:29:21
Speaker 1: of the arena, and it picks up left, center, right,
1:29:24
Speaker 1: and surround in the rear, all in one microphone, and
1:29:27
Speaker 1: then I'll kind of support it with some other microphones
1:29:29
Speaker 1: out there so because it's it's one of the harder
1:29:32
Speaker 1: things to do in big arena sounds, get a good
1:29:35
Speaker 1: crowd capture, you know, a good crowd recording. Okay, let's
1:29:37
Speaker 1: go back to the beginning. You know, you sent me
1:29:39
Speaker 1: an article talking about an influential experience with Russell Pope,
1:29:43
Speaker 1: who was mixing Super Trip. I mean that album, you know,
1:29:47
Speaker 1: and there's a half speed Master version trying the entry,
1:29:49
Speaker 1: and that album is just, oh man, unbelievable what it says,
1:29:52
Speaker 1: what it sounds. It changed me. I mean, I mean
1:29:55
Speaker 1: the record changed me, and then the concert absolutely changed me.
1:29:58
Speaker 1: So was that really the lightbulb moment? Yeah, yeah, no
1:30:03
Speaker 1: doubt about it. Like I said that, that was the
1:30:05
Speaker 1: moment where because again you gotta keep it in context, right,
1:30:09
Speaker 1: this was V four Now, I mean I was a
1:30:12
Speaker 1: freshman in high school. Is at the Fox Theater in St. Louis,
1:30:16
Speaker 1: and you know, I mean I was a kid. I
1:30:19
Speaker 1: mean I was a kid who wanted to be a
1:30:20
Speaker 1: musician at that point. I mean I wanted to be
1:30:22
Speaker 1: Mitch Mitchell and the Jimmy Hendrix experience at that point,
1:30:24
Speaker 1: you know, that's who I wanted to be. And I
1:30:26
Speaker 1: didn't really know anything about production other than kind of
1:30:29
Speaker 1: what I've been able to kind of glean from, you know,
1:30:31
Speaker 1: pop rags and Rolling Stone and things like that. I mean,
1:30:34
Speaker 1: he just had no sense of really what it took
1:30:36
Speaker 1: to do that. And by that chance meeting with Russell,
1:30:40
Speaker 1: I got to see an actual mixer and you know,
1:30:43
Speaker 1: understand that there's a p A system up there. Now
1:30:46
Speaker 1: you know it's not you know, it's not just the
1:30:48
Speaker 1: guitar amps up there playing. We're actually miking it and
1:30:51
Speaker 1: mixing it back to the PA. So you know, it
1:30:53
Speaker 1: was this huge, huge awakening moment. And you know, kind
1:30:57
Speaker 1: of like I said in the article, I walked there
1:30:58
Speaker 1: and walked out of that thing and just going, oh,
1:31:00
Speaker 1: I know what I want to do, no question about it.
1:31:02
Speaker 1: I don't want to be a musician anymore. That's what
1:31:05
Speaker 1: I want to do right there. So how did you
1:31:07
Speaker 1: fulfill that dream? Well, that's a that's an interesting story
1:31:12
Speaker 1: for a night, you know, because by the time night
1:31:14
Speaker 1: rolled around when I was graduating, uh you know, I
1:31:18
Speaker 1: mean I remember going to my high school counselor and saying, Okay,
1:31:21
Speaker 1: this is what I want to do. I think I
1:31:22
Speaker 1: brought in some recording magazine It wasn't even a recording magazine.
1:31:25
Speaker 1: It was a magazine that was talking about right, had
1:31:27
Speaker 1: a recording console on it or something. I was like,
1:31:29
Speaker 1: this is what I want to do right here. And
1:31:31
Speaker 1: you know, at that time, you know, there were no
1:31:33
Speaker 1: recording schools, there was no there was none of that.
1:31:36
Speaker 1: I mean, it was truly truly cottage industry at that point.
1:31:39
Speaker 1: And he kind of looked at me and goes, well,
1:31:41
Speaker 1: it looks technical. Maybe should go in the army. You know.
1:31:46
Speaker 1: I was like, Nah, I'm not gonna in the army, dude, No, No.
1:31:51
Speaker 1: And you know, funny enough, you know, around that time,
1:31:53
Speaker 1: I mean this was eight, This was right at at
1:31:56
Speaker 1: the time that Boston came out with their first record, right,
1:31:59
Speaker 1: and all the mags we're running the story of Tom Schulz,
1:32:02
Speaker 1: which I just recently kind of rediscovered him here again recently,
1:32:06
Speaker 1: and you know, I for some reason, I got on
1:32:08
Speaker 1: fire with that. I was like, oh, this is so cool.
1:32:10
Speaker 1: I mean, here's a guy who was really technically adept.
1:32:13
Speaker 1: He's also a musician, you know, kind of a renaissance man,
1:32:16
Speaker 1: really right, you know, technically adept musician made this incredible record.
1:32:20
Speaker 1: And I remember when that record came out. There was
1:32:23
Speaker 1: two records that came out kind of that year or
1:32:25
Speaker 1: that era. It was that one and the first man
1:32:27
Speaker 1: Halen record, where it you know, really crystallized in my brain.
1:32:32
Speaker 1: At some point I was like, Wow, these records don't
1:32:34
Speaker 1: sound like any other record, Like, what is the deal here? Man?
1:32:38
Speaker 1: I mean, these things sound amazing, you know. And you
1:32:41
Speaker 1: know at that time, you have a stereo, right, I
1:32:42
Speaker 1: mean I remember just cranking that stereo up and listening
1:32:46
Speaker 1: to those those albums and just being the greatest thing,
1:32:49
Speaker 1: you know. So it was like, I've got it. I
1:32:51
Speaker 1: got to know how to do this. This is what
1:32:53
Speaker 1: I want to do, you know. And you know, as
1:32:57
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just you know, an episode of incidents,
1:33:01
Speaker 1: you know that that transpires. So we decide, and I
1:33:06
Speaker 1: think this is partly based on the Tom Schuls thing.
1:33:08
Speaker 1: We decide, Okay, what we need to do is go
1:33:09
Speaker 1: to an electronics institute and get you a degree there.
1:33:12
Speaker 1: That's what we need to do, right. So I signed
1:33:15
Speaker 1: up for this electronics place called Missouri Institute of Technology
1:33:19
Speaker 1: is one of the varie institutes, and I was going
1:33:22
Speaker 1: to go get a double E and electronic engineering, right,
1:33:25
Speaker 1: And I figured, well, this is the way you get in.
1:33:28
Speaker 1: So I'm I'm there for a good year. I mean,
1:33:30
Speaker 1: I went right out of high school. I was seventeen.
1:33:33
Speaker 1: I was in college by the time that summer even started,
1:33:36
Speaker 1: and you know, I was probably I don't know, maybe
1:33:41
Speaker 1: just a few months away from my bachelor's degree. And
1:33:43
Speaker 1: remember thinking this ain't it. I mean, I'm not doing
1:33:47
Speaker 1: I'm not learning anything about recording or live sound or
1:33:50
Speaker 1: any of this kind of stuff. I mean, this is
1:33:52
Speaker 1: this is not it. And it just so happened. On
1:33:56
Speaker 1: the bulletin board of the school, a local sound company
1:33:58
Speaker 1: in Kansas City, a company called Superior Sound, posted a
1:34:02
Speaker 1: one ad for people to come down and help out
1:34:04
Speaker 1: with these big concerts that they were doing down in
1:34:06
Speaker 1: this place called Brush Creek, which was right down in
1:34:08
Speaker 1: the high end district of Kansas City shopping district down there,
1:34:12
Speaker 1: and they would have ten, twelve, fourteen thousand people on
1:34:15
Speaker 1: a weekend for a free concert down there. So they
1:34:17
Speaker 1: needed help putting up the p a system, stage, everything.
1:34:20
Speaker 1: I was like, Okay, yeah, I'll go do this. So
1:34:22
Speaker 1: I go down there and I show up for the
1:34:24
Speaker 1: first gig, and you know, they they were excited about
1:34:28
Speaker 1: having me there because they was like, oh, electronics guy, Okay,
1:34:31
Speaker 1: he'll be good, he'll be able to help us out.
1:34:33
Speaker 1: I was horrible. It was absolutely horrible. I blew up
1:34:36
Speaker 1: a couple of amplifiers, all kinds of stuff, and they
1:34:39
Speaker 1: didn't invite me back. I wanted to go back the
1:34:41
Speaker 1: next weekend, and I was like, they didn't invite me back.
1:34:44
Speaker 1: And I was just heartbroken, you know. I was like,
1:34:47
Speaker 1: I've blown it, you know, that was my shot. So
1:34:49
Speaker 1: I just kept showing up. They wouldn't call me, but
1:34:52
Speaker 1: I would show up every weekend. And I did that
1:34:54
Speaker 1: entire summer series, just showing up. And by the end
1:34:57
Speaker 1: of it, you know, it was me and two or
1:34:59
Speaker 1: three other guys. We were the guys that were there
1:35:00
Speaker 1: every week and I knew the sound system as good
1:35:02
Speaker 1: as anybody by the end of the summer. And they
1:35:04
Speaker 1: ended up giving me a job after that and and
1:35:07
Speaker 1: going to work for them, and and it's luck have
1:35:09
Speaker 1: it would have it. I mean, I worked with an
1:35:11
Speaker 1: incredible set of mentors there. They were just those guys
1:35:14
Speaker 1: were really really knowledgeable. They understood how audio worked and
1:35:18
Speaker 1: really bread that into me. Thank god. Uh And and
1:35:22
Speaker 1: then then the next step of that was you know, uh,
1:35:25
Speaker 1: this band called Shooting Star out of Kansas City and
1:35:27
Speaker 1: you might remember, and they were did four or five
1:35:30
Speaker 1: records for Virgin Virgin Atlantic. Um Gus Dudgeon produced their
1:35:34
Speaker 1: first record. Ron Nevison produced one of the records. Anyway,
1:35:38
Speaker 1: I got hooked up with them, uh you know, from
1:35:41
Speaker 1: doing demos and all kinds of other stuff, and ended
1:35:43
Speaker 1: up going on the road with them, and we went
1:35:45
Speaker 1: out our first tour together. I mean I was nineteen
1:35:48
Speaker 1: twenty years old, barely I wouldn't even old enough to
1:35:51
Speaker 1: drink yet. You know. We were opening for Journey, we
1:35:53
Speaker 1: were opening Razizi Top. We wrote in a Jefferson starship,
1:35:57
Speaker 1: et cetera. And I was lucky enough to part lay
1:36:00
Speaker 1: that into a career. I mean I met everybody and
1:36:02
Speaker 1: and got exposed to a very big, high level concert
1:36:06
Speaker 1: experience at a really really young age. I mean I
1:36:08
Speaker 1: didn't really come up through the clubs. I mean I
1:36:11
Speaker 1: started out at that level, you know. So I was
1:36:13
Speaker 1: very very fortunate, very lucky. What'd your parents say about
1:36:16
Speaker 1: your dreaming career choice? They were not too impressed. You know.
1:36:22
Speaker 1: It's funny, you know, my mom and dad were not
1:36:24
Speaker 1: impressed until there was two things that made it kind
1:36:28
Speaker 1: of okay. I went off to do some shows with
1:36:30
Speaker 1: Tammy Wynett. It was like, well, anyway, you're working with Tammy. Okay,
1:36:35
Speaker 1: wait a minute, and I'll tell us more about this,
1:36:37
Speaker 1: you know. Then all of a sudden it was it
1:36:39
Speaker 1: was kind of okay. And then my dad was you know,
1:36:42
Speaker 1: he was kind of an engineer guy, mechanical engineer. I
1:36:45
Speaker 1: mean he was really kind of a savant mechanically, uh,
1:36:48
Speaker 1: and worked on all these this heavy equipment, all this
1:36:50
Speaker 1: kind of stuff. And I invited him. He never got
1:36:53
Speaker 1: to go see a show until I was working for
1:36:55
Speaker 1: Deaf Leopard, which was in the late you know, mid
1:36:58
Speaker 1: in the late eighties, and he showed up one day
1:37:00
Speaker 1: and once he saw all the semi trucks and all
1:37:04
Speaker 1: the all the chain motors, you know, putting all this
1:37:07
Speaker 1: style of stuff out and play, then he was all in.
1:37:10
Speaker 1: He was like, oh my gosh, this is the coolest
1:37:11
Speaker 1: thing I've ever seen. Can you get me some of
1:37:13
Speaker 1: those chain motors? I need some of those. It was
1:37:16
Speaker 1: pretty cool and where they were great with it from
1:37:19
Speaker 1: then point on. Obviously, Okay, if you're working with Shooting
1:37:22
Speaker 1: Star and you're cutting demos, was there ever a time
1:37:25
Speaker 1: you said, well, maybe I should work in the studios
1:37:27
Speaker 1: sup post to live. Well, I did a lot of
1:37:29
Speaker 1: studio work during that time because I needed to make
1:37:31
Speaker 1: a living. So there was studios in town that I
1:37:33
Speaker 1: was working in at the time, and kind of moonlighting
1:37:36
Speaker 1: in the studios, kind of moonlighting at the sound company, etcetera.
1:37:40
Speaker 1: But you know, I mean it was a great learning experience,
1:37:42
Speaker 1: and that's why I always promoted you know, it's like,
1:37:44
Speaker 1: hey man, you want to get in and learn how
1:37:46
Speaker 1: to listen and learn how to hear because you know,
1:37:48
Speaker 1: I'll say it right here, I say this all the
1:37:49
Speaker 1: time I'm mixing clinics. Mixing is not a technical skill.
1:37:54
Speaker 1: It's a listening skill. It's not a technical skill. You're
1:37:57
Speaker 1: just using the the technology to present a vision that
1:38:01
Speaker 1: you have in your head. You know, you have to
1:38:04
Speaker 1: if you want to mix music, You've got to understand music,
1:38:06
Speaker 1: not technology. You've gotta have music sensibilities. You gotta understand
1:38:11
Speaker 1: why I go for this sound in that genre music,
1:38:13
Speaker 1: and I go for this sound in the genre music.
1:38:15
Speaker 1: You have to be well studied in music, not technology.
1:38:18
Speaker 1: I mean, you still have to understand how to operate
1:38:19
Speaker 1: it don't get me wrong, But the guy that are
1:38:21
Speaker 1: guys that are really really excellent edit understand music and
1:38:25
Speaker 1: understand how to present it, you know. So, uh, that's
1:38:29
Speaker 1: what the studio will do for you, you know, you
1:38:31
Speaker 1: because you're digging in at such a finite level there,
1:38:34
Speaker 1: you know, at such a detailed level there you you
1:38:36
Speaker 1: understand what makes music tick. You have to in that situation.
1:38:40
Speaker 1: And if you can go out and start applying that
1:38:41
Speaker 1: in live sound, you're you're going to be good. You're
1:38:44
Speaker 1: gonna be really good. The guys, the best guys that
1:38:46
Speaker 1: I see that do this job usually start out as
1:38:48
Speaker 1: musicians and that builds their music sensibility, and then it's
1:38:51
Speaker 1: a matter of expanding and broadening your taste into production techniques,
1:38:55
Speaker 1: you know, which speaks to your ears and your hearing,
1:38:58
Speaker 1: you know, just jically, everybody loses a certain amount as
1:39:02
Speaker 1: they get older. To what degree are you conscious of that?
1:39:06
Speaker 1: Protect yourself? Worried about it? Well, I've had this discussion
1:39:10
Speaker 1: a couple that I actually didn't had this discussion on
1:39:12
Speaker 1: another podcast with another group of mixers where we were
1:39:15
Speaker 1: talking about this. And you know, when I was living
1:39:17
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles, I used to get my hearing checked
1:39:19
Speaker 1: every year. I mean, and I still get it checked regularly.
1:39:21
Speaker 1: I'm I'm probably about two years away from my last check.
1:39:26
Speaker 1: But what I in doing that, I had a regular
1:39:29
Speaker 1: audiologist and he really explained a lot of things to
1:39:31
Speaker 1: me and set me up for really great success with
1:39:34
Speaker 1: my hearing. And I've put this on other people as well,
1:39:36
Speaker 1: and his his his take on it was really interesting
1:39:39
Speaker 1: because he was also a guy who did audiology for
1:39:41
Speaker 1: a lot of mixing engineers around town, like he did
1:39:44
Speaker 1: a lot of scoring engineers and a lot of other
1:39:46
Speaker 1: like rock mixer guys. I just have to ask this
1:39:48
Speaker 1: at the house clinic, where'd you find this guy? And
1:39:51
Speaker 1: my tax guy referred to me believe it or not,
1:39:54
Speaker 1: because you know, if he knew all the all these
1:39:56
Speaker 1: other people from doing their taxes, but you know, the
1:39:59
Speaker 1: thing pointed out to me. He says, Look, you know,
1:40:01
Speaker 1: everybody's worried about you concert guys, you know, and the
1:40:04
Speaker 1: volume and everything. He said, I'm not worried about you guys.
1:40:07
Speaker 1: He says, your hearing is going to be fine because
1:40:09
Speaker 1: you're only exposed to it for short amount of short
1:40:11
Speaker 1: amounts of time. Even though it's high volume, it's not high.
1:40:15
Speaker 1: You know, it's not at these deafening volumes entirely for
1:40:19
Speaker 1: two hours at a time. It's it's in peaks and valleys,
1:40:22
Speaker 1: he said. The guys that have the most trouble are
1:40:24
Speaker 1: the guys that are sitting in fair of a in
1:40:26
Speaker 1: front of a pair of small speakers for eight ten
1:40:30
Speaker 1: twelve hours a day, he says. You know, he says,
1:40:34
Speaker 1: I got, I know. Scoring guys that are doing symphony,
1:40:36
Speaker 1: he said, that are working, you know, eight ten twelve
1:40:38
Speaker 1: hours a day, he says. You would not believe how
1:40:40
Speaker 1: bad they're hearing is he said, And they're listening in
1:40:42
Speaker 1: just at moderate levels. But it's repetitive, he says, it's worried,
1:40:45
Speaker 1: it's just constantly working. So one of the things he
1:40:49
Speaker 1: advised to me was that try to stay away from headphones.
1:40:52
Speaker 1: So that's the first thing, uh, he said, at the
1:40:55
Speaker 1: end of the night. If you know, if your ears
1:40:57
Speaker 1: are tired, put in some of your plugs so you
1:41:00
Speaker 1: average in some really really quiet time and give your
1:41:03
Speaker 1: ears a chance to recover, he says, And you're you're
1:41:05
Speaker 1: gonna be fine over time, he says, if you can
1:41:07
Speaker 1: just stay away from high impulse things. He says, if
1:41:10
Speaker 1: you go to the shooting range, make sure you double protect,
1:41:13
Speaker 1: he said, do twice as much protection as you think,
1:41:16
Speaker 1: because that impulse is the one that's that's going to
1:41:18
Speaker 1: kill your hearing. For sure. It's a gunshot. That kind
1:41:21
Speaker 1: of impulse would do you in. It's about drummers have
1:41:23
Speaker 1: a really typically have a bad time with with hearing,
1:41:27
Speaker 1: you know, because it's very high impulse, high impact audio
1:41:30
Speaker 1: a little bit slower. How did you get from Shooting
1:41:33
Speaker 1: Star up the ladder? Well? Uh, like I said, Shooting
1:41:37
Speaker 1: Star was opening for all these acts, and uh, you
1:41:41
Speaker 1: know in those days, I mean, you know, you kind
1:41:43
Speaker 1: of had to be a little bit of a jack
1:41:44
Speaker 1: of all trades. So not only was I mixing, I
1:41:46
Speaker 1: was also the drum road on the tour, you know,
1:41:49
Speaker 1: set up the drums and tune him everything. Uh. And
1:41:51
Speaker 1: that got me a job because I think we had
1:41:54
Speaker 1: done some some um tour, some shows with John Mellencamp
1:41:58
Speaker 1: at that point early eighties there. Uh, right when John
1:42:02
Speaker 1: was getting ready to go out and do the Pink
1:42:03
Speaker 1: Houses tour, one of the guys that I knew from
1:42:06
Speaker 1: that tour called me and said, Kenny Arnolfs looking for
1:42:08
Speaker 1: a drum guy. You want to come out and do it.
1:42:10
Speaker 1: I said, yeah, I'll come out and do it. So
1:42:12
Speaker 1: I was Kenny Arnolf's drum tech for about a tour.
1:42:16
Speaker 1: And during that period, you know, there was a sound
1:42:19
Speaker 1: company working on the thing, and you know, what am
1:42:22
Speaker 1: I gonna do when I'm when the drums are set up?
1:42:24
Speaker 1: I got nothing to do until we get ready to
1:42:25
Speaker 1: go back. So I started working with this SA guys
1:42:28
Speaker 1: on the sound crew and helping him put up the
1:42:29
Speaker 1: p A every day, you know, blah blah blah blah.
1:42:32
Speaker 1: And that led to a job with that sound company,
1:42:34
Speaker 1: and then from there, you know, convinced them a little bit,
1:42:38
Speaker 1: a little bit slower. In your legacy information, it says
1:42:42
Speaker 1: you were the monitor mixer and you got fired by
1:42:44
Speaker 1: Melon cap Oh. I did, Yeah, I mean that was
1:42:47
Speaker 1: that was a watershed moment for me. I mean, no
1:42:50
Speaker 1: doubt about it. I mean, and so, how did you
1:42:52
Speaker 1: become the monitor mixer? Was that just after you were
1:42:55
Speaker 1: the drum roady? Yeah? So I did drum roading on
1:42:57
Speaker 1: the Pink Houses tour and then the next door they
1:42:59
Speaker 1: were going to move to another monitor engineer, and I
1:43:01
Speaker 1: lobbied for that position. I said, I can do that.
1:43:04
Speaker 1: Let me do that right, And technically, I mean I
1:43:09
Speaker 1: was more than capable of doing it without a doubt.
1:43:11
Speaker 1: But you know, I actually had a guy and go
1:43:14
Speaker 1: through a little bit of a crucible there, and I
1:43:16
Speaker 1: learned something about myself there, because I mean, John's reputation
1:43:20
Speaker 1: kind of precedes him. You know, everybody knows he's a
1:43:21
Speaker 1: very very difficult guy to work with. And you know, honestly,
1:43:25
Speaker 1: of all honesty, I was not mature enough for that gig.
1:43:28
Speaker 1: I was not mature enough to handle him as if
1:43:30
Speaker 1: you're going to handle him, but just not mature enough
1:43:32
Speaker 1: to deal with him properly. And he saw it. I
1:43:36
Speaker 1: mean he saw me as being a little weak and
1:43:38
Speaker 1: he was going to go out and do a big
1:43:39
Speaker 1: tour there, and he was just like, I can't have
1:43:41
Speaker 1: this guy sitting on the side of the stage. I
1:43:42
Speaker 1: gotta have somebody I know has it together here and
1:43:45
Speaker 1: can and can deal with me. And I wasn't that guy.
1:43:48
Speaker 1: I just wasn't mature enough yet to do it. And
1:43:51
Speaker 1: you know, I had to kind of have a little
1:43:54
Speaker 1: look in the mirror there and kind of go, Okay, dude,
1:43:56
Speaker 1: if you're gonna do this work, you know, there's more
1:44:00
Speaker 1: to it. Then just being able to technically do it.
1:44:01
Speaker 1: You've got to be able to interface with people and
1:44:05
Speaker 1: work with them and deal with them on their levels,
1:44:07
Speaker 1: you know, and that is not a technical level. That's
1:44:09
Speaker 1: a personality thing. You've got to learn to hang and
1:44:11
Speaker 1: and be able to do it. So, you know, it
1:44:13
Speaker 1: kind of reshaped my thinking and what I was watching
1:44:16
Speaker 1: and what I was doing from that point forward. I
1:44:18
Speaker 1: used it to great effect when I went to work
1:44:19
Speaker 1: for Prince said that all came right around and I
1:44:23
Speaker 1: used every lesson I learned on that tour on that
1:44:25
Speaker 1: Prince Store. Okay, if you go to a recording studio,
1:44:28
Speaker 1: the engineer, generally speaking, is quiet and a yes man.
1:44:33
Speaker 1: He is not an individual with character saying no. That
1:44:38
Speaker 1: might be the producer. So as a front of fall engineer,
1:44:42
Speaker 1: you know, what kind of personality do you need? Do
1:44:45
Speaker 1: you know that, Hey, I can't push too much. That's
1:44:47
Speaker 1: just not my role. You've gotta be able to read it.
1:44:50
Speaker 1: You gotta be able to read the person and see
1:44:52
Speaker 1: where you can go with it, you know. I mean
1:44:54
Speaker 1: where I ended up with Tom Petty versus where I
1:44:56
Speaker 1: started with Tom Petty were two very very different places.
1:44:59
Speaker 1: You Yeah, it's it's earned, it's not given. You know,
1:45:02
Speaker 1: you have to you have to earn that voice in
1:45:05
Speaker 1: that room for sure. Well, you tell the story in
1:45:07
Speaker 1: one of your publications about telling Tom to change his
1:45:11
Speaker 1: money and he says, the last guy who said that
1:45:14
Speaker 1: it's no longer here right before he was gone. Yeah,
1:45:18
Speaker 1: So you know, luckily I was smart enough when that
1:45:20
Speaker 1: happened to go, you know what, Tom, We're just gonna
1:45:22
Speaker 1: give that mike another try for a little bit. We're
1:45:23
Speaker 1: gonna we're just gonna work with that one for a
1:45:25
Speaker 1: little bit. But I mean it's a perfect example of
1:45:27
Speaker 1: what I'm talking about. You know, I tried to come
1:45:28
Speaker 1: in probably a little too heavy handed there, and but
1:45:32
Speaker 1: but over time, you know that that completely turned around
1:45:34
Speaker 1: where you know, Tom was very reliant on me for
1:45:38
Speaker 1: what we were going to do, and you know he
1:45:40
Speaker 1: was I mean, I'm very proud to say he was
1:45:42
Speaker 1: on record as saying, I'll never do it without that guy.
1:45:44
Speaker 1: So if he's not available, I'm not available to go
1:45:47
Speaker 1: on the road. So that was probably the highest compliment
1:45:50
Speaker 1: I've ever gotten in my life, that's for sure. Okay,
1:45:52
Speaker 1: so you ultimately got him to change the mike. How
1:45:55
Speaker 1: did you do that, well, you know, again, you have
1:45:59
Speaker 1: to get a you end up having to have some
1:46:01
Speaker 1: credibility at some point. And uh, I mean, I'll tell
1:46:05
Speaker 1: the story. So we were that first tour had finished
1:46:09
Speaker 1: and we had stayed on the particular microphone. I won't
1:46:13
Speaker 1: name names here, so but it was just the wrong
1:46:16
Speaker 1: mac phone for the application. So we come around to
1:46:19
Speaker 1: the next tour now and we're in production rehearsals, et cetera.
1:46:22
Speaker 1: And I was like, Okay, it's either going to be
1:46:24
Speaker 1: the mic or me. I'm not going to survive another
1:46:26
Speaker 1: tour with that microphone. So I had another microphone that
1:46:29
Speaker 1: I thought was gonna be a really good choice for him.
1:46:30
Speaker 1: So I just went up and put it on the
1:46:32
Speaker 1: stand and plugged it in, and I said, to the
1:46:33
Speaker 1: monitor guy, do what you need to do. This is
1:46:36
Speaker 1: going to be this way until he tells me that
1:46:39
Speaker 1: we need to change it. All right, I'm just gonna
1:46:40
Speaker 1: see where we're gonna go here. So he came in
1:46:44
Speaker 1: and he, you know, immediately was like, wow, what what
1:46:47
Speaker 1: the heck is this? You know? And I came walking
1:46:49
Speaker 1: from the front of house up to him and I said, look,
1:46:51
Speaker 1: I want I want you just to try this, I said,
1:46:53
Speaker 1: we're really in early in rehearsals here. Just give it
1:46:56
Speaker 1: a try, see what you think. If it starts to
1:46:59
Speaker 1: feel good, then I want you to give it a try.
1:47:01
Speaker 1: If you hate it, then we'll go back to the
1:47:02
Speaker 1: end of micro alright, So but just give it a try.
1:47:05
Speaker 1: So the band kicks in. They do two or three songs,
1:47:08
Speaker 1: and I can see he's still kind of processing, you know,
1:47:10
Speaker 1: he's I can see his head kind of working, going
1:47:13
Speaker 1: is this really as good as I think it is
1:47:14
Speaker 1: right now? You know what's going on here? Can I
1:47:17
Speaker 1: really trust this? And luckily, I mean I think it's
1:47:20
Speaker 1: what saved me and the whole thing almost as it
1:47:24
Speaker 1: was happening, you know Howie and Scott Thurston both chimed
1:47:28
Speaker 1: in together at the same time and said, wow, we
1:47:31
Speaker 1: can hear you really really clearly over here right now,
1:47:35
Speaker 1: like it's so easy to sing to your voice right now.
1:47:38
Speaker 1: I mean, they were and it was totally imprompted and unscripted.
1:47:41
Speaker 1: I didn't ask him to do it. It just came
1:47:43
Speaker 1: out of, you know, organically, out of the conversation. And
1:47:46
Speaker 1: from that moment on we were on that microphone. We
1:47:48
Speaker 1: didn't change that microphone for years. You know, Okay, let's
1:47:51
Speaker 1: go back. So you're with the Sound company. You know,
1:47:54
Speaker 1: you you finished Smith Mellot Camp, you go with the
1:47:56
Speaker 1: sum company. What's the next step after that? Next step
1:47:59
Speaker 1: after that was really going to work for the Sound company.
1:48:02
Speaker 1: I went to work for this company called Electrotech, which
1:48:04
Speaker 1: was kind of uh an after version of t f
1:48:07
Speaker 1: A Electro Sound, one of the more famous stalwart companies
1:48:11
Speaker 1: that kind of started this industry. They were out of
1:48:13
Speaker 1: Canoga Park, California. So I moved to California. I went
1:48:16
Speaker 1: to work for the Sound Company and was just taking
1:48:18
Speaker 1: gig any gig I could get my hands on at
1:48:20
Speaker 1: that point. And then another gig came up to mix
1:48:23
Speaker 1: for the Go Goes, So I took that I and
1:48:27
Speaker 1: had a really great time on that. It was very
1:48:28
Speaker 1: successful on that. And then the next thing that came
1:48:31
Speaker 1: my way mixing wise, let's say I did Rick Springfield
1:48:35
Speaker 1: in there for a period of time, and then really
1:48:38
Speaker 1: the next the next kind of big opportunity that came
1:48:40
Speaker 1: my way, and it really just kind of fell in
1:48:41
Speaker 1: my lap because nobody else wanted to take it. Ironically,
1:48:43
Speaker 1: at the time, I was mixing Alice Cooper and this
1:48:47
Speaker 1: was right when Alice was trying to make her comeback.
1:48:49
Speaker 1: You know, this was he had been down and you know,
1:48:52
Speaker 1: out of the business really for a period of years there.
1:48:54
Speaker 1: This was I think something like that at eight five
1:48:58
Speaker 1: it was you know, Nightmare Returns where it was his
1:49:00
Speaker 1: first time back, and I jumped all over it. I
1:49:02
Speaker 1: wanted to mix that so bad. I was a huge
1:49:04
Speaker 1: Alice Cooper fan when I was a kid. It was
1:49:07
Speaker 1: one of one of the very first concerts I ever
1:49:09
Speaker 1: got to go see. My mom took me to go
1:49:10
Speaker 1: see it when I was a young teenager and I
1:49:13
Speaker 1: was totally hooked on him. I just thought they were
1:49:15
Speaker 1: the greatest records and still do to this day. There
1:49:18
Speaker 1: were just those those early bob Ezrian records were just
1:49:21
Speaker 1: sensational from him. I read a review that raved I
1:49:24
Speaker 1: didn't know if it was a joke and Rolling Stone,
1:49:26
Speaker 1: So I bought the record. I dropped the needle and
1:49:29
Speaker 1: I heard under my wheels. I was closed instantly, Am
1:49:34
Speaker 1: I right? So absolutely? I mean it was just and
1:49:38
Speaker 1: I can go back and listen to those records today
1:49:40
Speaker 1: and relive them. So long story short, I mean I
1:49:42
Speaker 1: jumped all over it. I was like, oh, I will
1:49:44
Speaker 1: do anything to mix that tour, you know, and okay,
1:49:48
Speaker 1: so you'll get the whole DNA here. So on that tour,
1:49:52
Speaker 1: one of the opening acts was Tesla. So that's my
1:49:55
Speaker 1: first interaction with Peter Mention and Cliff Bernstein, right, So
1:49:59
Speaker 1: they're out hearing me mix on this tour, and you know,
1:50:02
Speaker 1: I mean it was pretty kind of a low rent production.
1:50:04
Speaker 1: I mean, it was tough to make it sound really big,
1:50:07
Speaker 1: and we didn't have very much PA system, etcetera. But
1:50:11
Speaker 1: you know, I in those days and I still do
1:50:13
Speaker 1: it to to this day. You know, I'm always recording
1:50:16
Speaker 1: what I'm doing on the console. At that point, I
1:50:18
Speaker 1: was recording to cassettes, and you know, i'd go back
1:50:20
Speaker 1: and listen to it at the end of the night
1:50:21
Speaker 1: and kind of review what I was doing and go, Okay,
1:50:23
Speaker 1: I know what I need to do there now. And
1:50:25
Speaker 1: so it was just study tapes. You know. Well, during
1:50:28
Speaker 1: this period, somehow, and I've said this before and I
1:50:31
Speaker 1: still don't know how, but somehow, during this period, Joe
1:50:36
Speaker 1: Elliott got ahold of one of my desk tapes, one
1:50:39
Speaker 1: of my board tapes. It might have been through Ross Halfen.
1:50:42
Speaker 1: The photography was after shooting Tesla. It might have been
1:50:45
Speaker 1: I don't know, I swear to you, I don't know.
1:50:47
Speaker 1: It might have been through Brian Wheat. He might have
1:50:49
Speaker 1: gotten it to him. I don't know. But you know,
1:50:53
Speaker 1: the tour ends and I'm kind of working on thinking
1:50:57
Speaker 1: about what's going to be my next move. You know,
1:50:59
Speaker 1: Deaf Leppard is in working on Hysteria now for god
1:51:02
Speaker 1: knows how long. You know, it's getting ready to release.
1:51:04
Speaker 1: But you know, I'm not really visible to that, and
1:51:07
Speaker 1: but I know that Cliff and Peter are also doing
1:51:09
Speaker 1: They also managed Docking at the point at that point,
1:51:12
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking, you know what I'd love to
1:51:13
Speaker 1: mix doing. Maybe I'll call Peter and see if you,
1:51:15
Speaker 1: you know, consider me for Docking. In the meantime, in
1:51:18
Speaker 1: the background, there's this conversation going on between Joe and
1:51:22
Speaker 1: Peter where Joe is going, that's our guy, whoever mixed
1:51:26
Speaker 1: this tape, that's the guy we need to mix our tour,
1:51:29
Speaker 1: that's the guy we want. And he is really all
1:51:32
Speaker 1: about the vocal performances on it. He was like, the
1:51:34
Speaker 1: vocal sound unbelievable on this tape. You have to get
1:51:36
Speaker 1: this guy, and Peter was kind of going, are you
1:51:39
Speaker 1: sure this is the guy. I'm not listening to this
1:51:41
Speaker 1: every night. I'm not. Are you sure this is the
1:51:43
Speaker 1: guy we want? And Joe God love him. I mean
1:51:45
Speaker 1: I owe him a dead of gratitude like nobody's business.
1:51:47
Speaker 1: And he was like, Yeah, that's our guy, that's the
1:51:49
Speaker 1: guy we want. So I get home a week later
1:51:52
Speaker 1: and there's a message on my machine from C Prime,
1:51:55
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm thinking, fan fuckantastic. Carry this. I'm
1:51:59
Speaker 1: going to get docking. I know they're going to give
1:52:00
Speaker 1: me the dock and kid, hey, we think we want
1:52:04
Speaker 1: you to do Deaf Leppardy interested in doing Deaf Leopard
1:52:06
Speaker 1: And I was like, yeah, okay, I'll do deaf Leppard.
1:52:10
Speaker 1: So off we go to London and the rest is history,
1:52:14
Speaker 1: as they said, Just so I know where does Tesla
1:52:16
Speaker 1: fit in this game? They were the opening act for
1:52:18
Speaker 1: Alice Cooper on that But you worked for Tesla too.
1:52:21
Speaker 1: That was afterwards. That was after Okay, I gotta ask, Okay,
1:52:26
Speaker 1: you are the front of whole Guy, but especially on
1:52:29
Speaker 1: that Deaf Leopard tour, there are a lot of shenanigans.
1:52:34
Speaker 1: You're gonna put me in the TMZ zone here, aren't you.
1:52:38
Speaker 1: I don't really need that level of detail. I want
1:52:42
Speaker 1: to know to what degree did you participate. Oh my gosh, dude,
1:52:47
Speaker 1: I'll just say I met my wife on that tour.
1:52:48
Speaker 1: Maybe we'll just leave it there. Actually I met her
1:52:51
Speaker 1: on air supply. I shouldn't say that I was mixing
1:52:53
Speaker 1: air supply at that Okay. The other thing is very
1:52:57
Speaker 1: hard to be part of a traveling entourage with raw.
1:53:01
Speaker 1: It's worse for the performers themselves. They played for twenty
1:53:05
Speaker 1: thousand people. They can't calm down there with the same
1:53:09
Speaker 1: five assholes they've known since they were twelve, and a
1:53:13
Speaker 1: lot of them, you know, turned to substances to cope.
1:53:17
Speaker 1: How did you cope? Well, I mean, I'm not impervious
1:53:19
Speaker 1: to the partying that happened in the eighties. I mean,
1:53:22
Speaker 1: I mean that was just a different time. I mean,
1:53:25
Speaker 1: you know, sex, drugs, and rock and roll was in.
1:53:27
Speaker 1: It was going ten miles an hour during the eighties
1:53:29
Speaker 1: and the very early nineties, and until you know, the
1:53:32
Speaker 1: AIDS epidemic, put the cope, put the cabbage on it.
1:53:34
Speaker 1: I mean, that kind of shut the whole thing down
1:53:37
Speaker 1: there for your period of time. But you know, again,
1:53:40
Speaker 1: I'm I'm always stressed in this, man, You've got to
1:53:42
Speaker 1: put it in context. This is not rationalizing it, but
1:53:45
Speaker 1: you just have to put it in context. That was
1:53:47
Speaker 1: an accepted piece of the puzzle out there. I mean,
1:53:50
Speaker 1: if you were going to be out there, you were
1:53:52
Speaker 1: going to be a part of that lifestyle. I mean,
1:53:54
Speaker 1: it's just and you know, I mean I still say
1:53:57
Speaker 1: this about touring to this day. You know, you've got
1:54:00
Speaker 1: to be able to hang. You know, you're not going
1:54:03
Speaker 1: to survive on these tours as the outlier very often,
1:54:06
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, you've got to be able to hang.
1:54:07
Speaker 1: And it doesn't mean you've got to give in and
1:54:09
Speaker 1: participate on everything, but you've got to be able to
1:54:11
Speaker 1: survive out there from a cultural point of view and
1:54:15
Speaker 1: you know, kind of a social point of view. I mean,
1:54:17
Speaker 1: you've got to have a personality that fits into that
1:54:19
Speaker 1: lifestyle out there. And it's not for everybody. It is
1:54:22
Speaker 1: just not for everybody. And it's a I mean, we're
1:54:26
Speaker 1: starting to see all the statistics come in now. You know,
1:54:28
Speaker 1: it's a stressful lifestyle. Traveling for a living is stressful
1:54:32
Speaker 1: and it takes its toll on people. Man, it's that
1:54:35
Speaker 1: bill starting to come do. Now we're starting to see
1:54:37
Speaker 1: it in our industry. Now, okay, let's just go through
1:54:39
Speaker 1: the litany. You work for Death Leopard, then you go
1:54:42
Speaker 1: to Tesla to take us through the acts. Actually I
1:54:45
Speaker 1: went from I went from Death Leopard to Rush, and
1:54:49
Speaker 1: you know I got that through Peter. You know, Peter
1:54:51
Speaker 1: introduced me to Getty one of the Death Leopard shows
1:54:54
Speaker 1: and we kind of hit it off. And that was
1:54:56
Speaker 1: the dream gig for me. If there was every one
1:54:58
Speaker 1: gig that I always want, it was mixing Rush. That
1:55:01
Speaker 1: was I was the Rush fan that got to mix
1:55:03
Speaker 1: the show. I've said that many times. So that was
1:55:06
Speaker 1: that was the brass ring for me during that period,
1:55:08
Speaker 1: no doubt about it. But I mean in terms of
1:55:11
Speaker 1: the time frame, yeah, I think it was Deaf Leppard hysteria,
1:55:16
Speaker 1: then onto Rush for a little bit, and then to
1:55:18
Speaker 1: to some testless stuff, and then back to def Leopard
1:55:22
Speaker 1: and then back to Rush. I mean it was it
1:55:24
Speaker 1: was just just constant. I mean I was always on
1:55:27
Speaker 1: the road during those pretty years. And at what point
1:55:29
Speaker 1: did you go independent stopped working for the Canoga Park Company. Oh,
1:55:33
Speaker 1: that was with def Leppard. Right right after def Leppard
1:55:36
Speaker 1: was my first truly truly independent gig where I was
1:55:40
Speaker 1: not working for the company, so from night late night on,
1:55:44
Speaker 1: I've been independent. So how did you end up working
1:55:48
Speaker 1: with Prince? You said, Yeah, that was just the you know,
1:55:52
Speaker 1: the phone rang one day and you know, one of
1:55:55
Speaker 1: the guys that I had worked with on Petty Uh,
1:55:58
Speaker 1: he was one of my systems engineers, was out on
1:56:00
Speaker 1: prints and kind of just said, Hey, I were in Phoenix,
1:56:04
Speaker 1: you want to come down and see the show. I
1:56:05
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, coming and see the show. So I'd
1:56:07
Speaker 1: love to see Prince. So I go down there, and
1:56:10
Speaker 1: I mean, not for nothing, man, I mean it it
1:56:12
Speaker 1: sounded bad. I mean it was just like who I
1:56:16
Speaker 1: mean it was, but you know, I mean you got
1:56:18
Speaker 1: to kind of know all the again, all the ins
1:56:20
Speaker 1: and outs of this, but I mean it was just like, Wow,
1:56:22
Speaker 1: this is not working. Whatever they're trying to do right here,
1:56:26
Speaker 1: this is not working. I mean I left after about
1:56:28
Speaker 1: six seven songs, and after I left the place, I
1:56:32
Speaker 1: kind of went out for a couple of drinks whatever.
1:56:34
Speaker 1: By the time I got home, there was a message
1:56:35
Speaker 1: on my machine from UH, from the tour manager saying, Hey,
1:56:40
Speaker 1: Charlie tells me you're available right now. Is there any
1:56:43
Speaker 1: chance you would want to come out and mix this
1:56:44
Speaker 1: for a while, you know. And I was like, oh boy,
1:56:48
Speaker 1: I mean, the dude's reputation kind of precedes himself. I
1:56:51
Speaker 1: mean I kind of heard what was going on. I
1:56:52
Speaker 1: was like, I don't know, it's like, I'm right in
1:56:55
Speaker 1: the middle of a record project right now. Said I
1:56:58
Speaker 1: don't think so, man, I'm you know, blah blah blah.
1:57:01
Speaker 1: And then they started throwing out money. You know. I
1:57:03
Speaker 1: was just like, Okay, that's a lot of money. I
1:57:07
Speaker 1: was like, okay, all right, well here's the deal. You know,
1:57:10
Speaker 1: I'll do it, but you know, I mean again, you know,
1:57:14
Speaker 1: Prince was known for just churning through engineers. And I said,
1:57:18
Speaker 1: I want all the money up front. I said, I'll
1:57:20
Speaker 1: come out, but I want all the money up front.
1:57:21
Speaker 1: I'll take a break from this project for two or
1:57:23
Speaker 1: three weeks, kind of bail water off the ship out
1:57:25
Speaker 1: there and get everything squared away, and then we can
1:57:27
Speaker 1: turn it over to somebody else if you want to
1:57:29
Speaker 1: do it. And he fully he goes, okay, be in
1:57:31
Speaker 1: San Antonio tomorrow. I was like, oh my god, but
1:57:37
Speaker 1: a long story short on it. You know. I got
1:57:39
Speaker 1: out there and really just the mixer and the p
1:57:43
Speaker 1: A system was a mess. I mean, really, that's what
1:57:45
Speaker 1: it was all about. Because the performances, the music, and
1:57:48
Speaker 1: the musicians were off the freaking chain. I mean, it
1:57:51
Speaker 1: was so good, you know, I just I had that
1:57:54
Speaker 1: kind of moment at the show, just thinking, Wow, look
1:57:56
Speaker 1: at these players. Why does this sound like this? And
1:58:00
Speaker 1: I mean, I want you know, it's not an effort
1:58:03
Speaker 1: to talk ill of the dead or anything like that,
1:58:05
Speaker 1: but you know, between the engineers that were there kind
1:58:08
Speaker 1: of mean and a yes man for Prince and his
1:58:11
Speaker 1: input on the console and his input on the p
1:58:13
Speaker 1: A systems, things were just just completely out of whack.
1:58:17
Speaker 1: And I it took me about three or four shows
1:58:18
Speaker 1: to get him to really trust what I wanted to
1:58:20
Speaker 1: do on the console and with the p A system, etcetera.
1:58:23
Speaker 1: But after a period of time I got him to
1:58:25
Speaker 1: trust it and we ended up having some really really
1:58:28
Speaker 1: great shows. We you know, we went from having three
1:58:31
Speaker 1: and four hour sound checks that were holding the doors
1:58:34
Speaker 1: to doing, you know, one song, two songs, Okay, that's great,
1:58:37
Speaker 1: let's go, you know, get it going on. So you know,
1:58:39
Speaker 1: he and I actually at the end of by the
1:58:41
Speaker 1: end of it hit it off pretty good. We it
1:58:43
Speaker 1: was to the point where I could go talk to
1:58:44
Speaker 1: him when I needed to talk to him. You know,
1:58:47
Speaker 1: I didn't have to go through his bodyguard or anything
1:58:49
Speaker 1: like that. And you know, it convenient to say it now,
1:58:53
Speaker 1: but you know, if I had to go back and
1:58:54
Speaker 1: work for him again, I would have gone back in
1:58:56
Speaker 1: the heartbeat. You know. We we we got to a
1:58:58
Speaker 1: point where we got some mutual respect built and then
1:59:01
Speaker 1: then it then it went swimmingly. It was really really
1:59:04
Speaker 1: good and a fantastic show man. My goodness, what a
1:59:07
Speaker 1: set of players. And how long did you end up
1:59:09
Speaker 1: working with them? It was only about three or four weeks.
1:59:11
Speaker 1: Wasn't long. Like I said, I was right in the
1:59:13
Speaker 1: middle of a record project I needed to get back to.
1:59:15
Speaker 1: So it's like I kind of bailed water on it
1:59:17
Speaker 1: for a little bit, got it all kind of sorted
1:59:19
Speaker 1: back out, and and really it's not even like we
1:59:22
Speaker 1: turned it over to somebody else. The the tour was
1:59:24
Speaker 1: coming to a close, so I just went in and
1:59:25
Speaker 1: closed it out and then we moved on. Okay, if
1:59:27
Speaker 1: you look at your CV, you work with certain acts
1:59:30
Speaker 1: for like three or ten years and then it ends.
1:59:34
Speaker 1: So you know, you work with Alice Cooper for six years,
1:59:36
Speaker 1: worked with Jackson Brown for three or four years. Why
1:59:39
Speaker 1: did these relationships end? Well, I mean sometimes it's just
1:59:43
Speaker 1: a matter of scheduling, you know, where you can't. I
1:59:45
Speaker 1: mean I was really fortunate to be able to really
1:59:49
Speaker 1: kind of buttressed together two or three acts there during
1:59:52
Speaker 1: the nineties, where I was if I wasn't working with Rush,
1:59:55
Speaker 1: I was working with Petty. If I wasn't working with Petty,
1:59:57
Speaker 1: I was working with Matchbox twenty, and just the round
2:00:00
Speaker 1: robin just continued. But at some point, you know, especially
2:00:03
Speaker 1: after Rush shut down for a little bit and then
2:00:06
Speaker 1: they were going to come back, that's I had a
2:00:08
Speaker 1: scheduling collision then, and I couldn't do both. I just
2:00:13
Speaker 1: they just was going to be impossible to do both.
2:00:14
Speaker 1: So I had to pull the record on one of them.
2:00:16
Speaker 1: And it was heartbreaking to do it. I mean, I
2:00:20
Speaker 1: I felt like I could have retired mixing Rush. I
2:00:22
Speaker 1: just loved that organization and those guys so much and
2:00:25
Speaker 1: loved that music so much. But it wasn't to be,
2:00:28
Speaker 1: you know, it wasn't to be. Okay if also, you're
2:00:31
Speaker 1: known for being an exercise junkie, and the thing that
2:00:35
Speaker 1: stuck out to me was the swim from Alcatraz to
2:00:40
Speaker 1: the shore, so illuminate that. Yeah, well this all kind
2:00:44
Speaker 1: of you know, this whole thing kind of started. You know,
2:00:48
Speaker 1: when you turn fifty, you know, weird things happened in
2:00:50
Speaker 1: your brain, you know. I mean, you know, when when
2:00:53
Speaker 1: I was growing up, when I was a kid, I
2:00:54
Speaker 1: was I always struggled between two things. Don't want to
2:00:56
Speaker 1: be an athlete? Who want to be a musician? I
2:00:57
Speaker 1: want to be an athlete. I wanna be a musician,
2:00:59
Speaker 1: and I you know, going through that as a teenager.
2:01:02
Speaker 1: And finally, you know, rightly, so it settled on music
2:01:05
Speaker 1: than goodness, because I'm not an athlete. I mean, if
2:01:08
Speaker 1: you looked at me, you were just going, yeah, not
2:01:09
Speaker 1: an athlete. But that said, you know, touring in and
2:01:13
Speaker 1: of itself is a physical activity. I mean, it is
2:01:17
Speaker 1: something that requires I mean, if you're gonna do it
2:01:19
Speaker 1: well and stay on top of it, you know, there's
2:01:21
Speaker 1: a physical element to it. And it's part of what
2:01:23
Speaker 1: I love about it. It's part of what I love
2:01:24
Speaker 1: about it more than being in the studio, which is
2:01:27
Speaker 1: very sedentary. But I like me and moving. I like
2:01:30
Speaker 1: my windshield changing every day, all of that kind of stuff.
2:01:33
Speaker 1: But It's physically very, very demanding. And I got kind
2:01:37
Speaker 1: of turned onto this by a friend of mine here
2:01:39
Speaker 1: in town. You know, a neighbor friend of mine who
2:01:41
Speaker 1: was doing this. I was at a party. We were
2:01:42
Speaker 1: just chatting one night, and I was just about to
2:01:45
Speaker 1: turn fifty, and somehow this subject came up of swimming Alcatraz,
2:01:51
Speaker 1: and I was like, hang on, hang on a minute,
2:01:52
Speaker 1: hang on, you're telling me that they actually let you
2:01:55
Speaker 1: do that. And he was like, yeah, yeah, they hold
2:01:58
Speaker 1: a race every year. They they do it as a biathlon,
2:02:01
Speaker 1: and then they do this thing called the Escape from
2:02:03
Speaker 1: Alcatraz where you swim from the island into Golden Gate
2:02:06
Speaker 1: Park and or down to the Aquatic Center down there.
2:02:10
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, I'm all in. I am all in.
2:02:13
Speaker 1: I want to do this right now. I've never been
2:02:15
Speaker 1: a competitive swimmer, never been anything even remotely like that.
2:02:20
Speaker 1: I thought, okay, I'm going to train to do this,
2:02:21
Speaker 1: and and sure enough went and got a trainer and
2:02:24
Speaker 1: started doing it and did the swim. I mean it
2:02:27
Speaker 1: was you know, if you kind of read this, I
2:02:30
Speaker 1: kind of revealed this a little bit in my CB.
2:02:32
Speaker 1: So I've always been this way in my life where
2:02:36
Speaker 1: I've and I think it served me well in my
2:02:39
Speaker 1: in my job as a mixer as well as I've
2:02:41
Speaker 1: never backed down from anything. Right, if you put it
2:02:43
Speaker 1: in front of me and tell me I can't do it,
2:02:45
Speaker 1: I'm probably gonna find a way to do it. I
2:02:47
Speaker 1: like running at challenges, and all of the events like
2:02:53
Speaker 1: that that I do are like that. They're just things
2:02:55
Speaker 1: where you go, why would anybody do that? And it's like, well,
2:02:57
Speaker 1: I want to do it, because I don't I'm going
2:02:59
Speaker 1: to be uncomfortable doing it. You know that whole concept
2:03:02
Speaker 1: of get comfortable being uncomfortable. Man, that's that's concert life
2:03:07
Speaker 1: in a nutshell right there. You know, you've got to
2:03:09
Speaker 1: be able to manage your emotions and and get comfortable
2:03:12
Speaker 1: being uncomfortable. Right. Okay, so we've all seen the movies, etcetera.
2:03:16
Speaker 1: Supposedly you couldn't escape from Alcatraz. So how hard was
2:03:20
Speaker 1: the swim? Well, it's freaking hard, but you know you're
2:03:23
Speaker 1: doing it in a wet suit. I mean, you've got
2:03:25
Speaker 1: all the things in your favor there as opposed to
2:03:28
Speaker 1: be in a prisoner. You know, some malnutrition prisoner who's
2:03:31
Speaker 1: gonna try to swim and those I mean freezing cold
2:03:35
Speaker 1: water to try to get there, you know, try to
2:03:38
Speaker 1: do that without a wet suit. Although I mean, I'll
2:03:40
Speaker 1: tell the story because I love telling the story for
2:03:42
Speaker 1: some reason. You know, when you go out there, like
2:03:44
Speaker 1: you you march down the street and you get on
2:03:46
Speaker 1: a big barge and they take you out, you know,
2:03:48
Speaker 1: to the southwest portion of the island and you jump
2:03:52
Speaker 1: off into the water and you tread water there for
2:03:54
Speaker 1: you know, fifteen twenty minutes until the race starts. So
2:03:57
Speaker 1: we're on the we're on the barge and everybody's in
2:04:00
Speaker 1: full wet suit everything, you know, because it's I mean
2:04:02
Speaker 1: it's cold water. And there are three girls on the
2:04:05
Speaker 1: barge with us, and we're looking at them, going, well,
2:04:08
Speaker 1: they're wearing one piece bathing suits. What the heck is
2:04:11
Speaker 1: this all about? These girls aren't gonna last five minutes
2:04:13
Speaker 1: in the water. They were Olympic swimmers. They were Olympic swimmers.
2:04:19
Speaker 1: They did the swimming about twenty five minutes, you know,
2:04:21
Speaker 1: I mean, they just beat the hypothermia. It's like, yeah,
2:04:25
Speaker 1: I feel like such a man right now. This is
2:04:27
Speaker 1: this is great. How long did it take you? And
2:04:29
Speaker 1: how bad are the currents? The currents are for real,
2:04:32
Speaker 1: and you've got to know where they are and and
2:04:34
Speaker 1: know how the currents because they do the race two
2:04:36
Speaker 1: times a year and the currents are different for each one,
2:04:38
Speaker 1: so you've got to study the currents a little bit
2:04:40
Speaker 1: and know it. And there's a guide boat out there,
2:04:41
Speaker 1: so you can kind of stay focused on the guide boat,
2:04:44
Speaker 1: but you know, you you kind of site toward the
2:04:46
Speaker 1: Transamerica building in the city and then let let the
2:04:49
Speaker 1: current kind of help you. But you you've gotta gotta swim.
2:04:51
Speaker 1: You kinda kind of edge against the current because if
2:04:54
Speaker 1: you miss the entrance to um the Aquatic Park down there,
2:04:58
Speaker 1: it takes you down underneath the ridge and you're out
2:05:01
Speaker 1: to see and have to go get rescued, you know.
2:05:03
Speaker 1: So you gotta pay really close attention to it. But
2:05:06
Speaker 1: it's hard, man, especially if the wakes are up there.
2:05:08
Speaker 1: That is a that is a challenging swim. It's just
2:05:11
Speaker 1: just under two miles, so you gotta you've got trained
2:05:14
Speaker 1: for it. You gotta be ready. So how long does
2:05:16
Speaker 1: it take you? I I did really well. I did
2:05:18
Speaker 1: surprisingly well. I mean I was right. I think I
2:05:21
Speaker 1: have on the wall out here somewhere. I know, I
2:05:23
Speaker 1: think I was something like forty nine minutes. So I
2:05:26
Speaker 1: finished in the It was a thousand people in the
2:05:29
Speaker 1: water for the start, which that in and of itself
2:05:32
Speaker 1: is just pure survival. But once they get started, you know,
2:05:35
Speaker 1: and you get going. But I finished, you know, top
2:05:38
Speaker 1: three hundred, top four hundred in it, which was really
2:05:40
Speaker 1: I was thrilled. I was like, there's no way I'm
2:05:42
Speaker 1: going to finish that high in this, but did great
2:05:44
Speaker 1: with it. So how often do you do with challenge?
2:05:47
Speaker 1: What's the hardest challenge you've done. I've been doing them
2:05:51
Speaker 1: every year since I turned fifty. I mean I've probably
2:05:53
Speaker 1: done in that time, I don't know, maybe fifty triathlons
2:05:58
Speaker 1: something like that, and I you know, I love doing
2:06:01
Speaker 1: these for periods of time. I was really into doing
2:06:02
Speaker 1: these tough mutter events, so I've done. In seventeen, I
2:06:07
Speaker 1: did this thing called World's Toughest Mutter, which is a
2:06:09
Speaker 1: twenty four hour race where you do I think it
2:06:13
Speaker 1: was twenty two obstacles on a five mile course. Uh,
2:06:18
Speaker 1: you know, all kinds of water, all kinds of really
2:06:20
Speaker 1: crazy obstacles, you know, electro shock, all kinds of things
2:06:22
Speaker 1: like that, and you do as many lapses as you
2:06:24
Speaker 1: can do of that in twenty four hours, so uh,
2:06:28
Speaker 1: and get as high on my allege as you can get.
2:06:30
Speaker 1: So I've done that twice. Those are really challenging. I
2:06:33
Speaker 1: think probably one of the most challenging things I did,
2:06:35
Speaker 1: probably short of Iron Man. Iron Man is really really
2:06:37
Speaker 1: a challenging event. But it was probably the Great Wall Marathon.
2:06:41
Speaker 1: I did the marathon on the Great Wall, and man,
2:06:45
Speaker 1: that was as close as I've ever come to not
2:06:47
Speaker 1: being able to finish a race because it's it's a
2:06:50
Speaker 1: full on marathon and within the marathon itself, you have
2:06:53
Speaker 1: essentially two two hundred and ten hundred fifteen story stair
2:06:58
Speaker 1: climbs inside a marathon. One happens at mile five and
2:07:02
Speaker 1: the other happens at about mile te and man, I
2:07:06
Speaker 1: didn't think I was going to finish it, but any
2:07:07
Speaker 1: it's a time limit, you have so much amount of
2:07:10
Speaker 1: time to finish that. But that was the hardest, probably
2:07:11
Speaker 1: the hardest thing mentally I ever had to tackle. Okay,
2:07:15
Speaker 1: So at this point in time, what are all the
2:07:17
Speaker 1: activities you're working on. I am currently well working for
2:07:21
Speaker 1: Chesney obviously, and you know we're really only doing about
2:07:24
Speaker 1: two shows a week on that we do a stadium
2:07:26
Speaker 1: every Saturday, and sometimes they'll throw in a shed show
2:07:28
Speaker 1: on you know, a Thursday or something like that, so
2:07:31
Speaker 1: it's not a terribly demanding schedule. And then the other
2:07:33
Speaker 1: times I'm working for avid Um, you know, doing the
2:07:36
Speaker 1: console design and development for them. So I've been you know,
2:07:40
Speaker 1: that's been kind of my stability gig, which I really love.
2:07:43
Speaker 1: I love working for the company and and love being
2:07:45
Speaker 1: able to contribute that piece of it to the industry,
2:07:48
Speaker 1: so that that's a lot of fun. And then you know,
2:07:51
Speaker 1: the rest of the time is just picking up other
2:07:52
Speaker 1: odd jobs. I love doing the award shows now, those
2:07:55
Speaker 1: are really fun to do. I recorded my first opera
2:07:57
Speaker 1: this past year. I did opera called The Copper Queen
2:08:02
Speaker 1: recorded that here in Phoenix, the Phoenix Eymphony. That was
2:08:05
Speaker 1: really fun to do. So, you know, there's no lack
2:08:08
Speaker 1: of work. Okay, So in the old days, you're going
2:08:10
Speaker 1: from tour to tour to tour. How much do you
2:08:13
Speaker 1: want to work now on the road as much as
2:08:15
Speaker 1: you can or you have a limit. I certainly don't
2:08:18
Speaker 1: want to work at the schedule I was working at
2:08:20
Speaker 1: in the late eighties and nineties. I mean, you know,
2:08:22
Speaker 1: I just I just don't want to work that much.
2:08:24
Speaker 1: I'm very selective about what I want to take and
2:08:26
Speaker 1: go out and do on tour. I mean part of
2:08:29
Speaker 1: the I mean I I really enjoyed the Kinney Chesch
2:08:31
Speaker 1: has anything. I really do. It's an incredible band. I mean,
2:08:34
Speaker 1: what an incredible group of players. I mean it's like,
2:08:37
Speaker 1: you know, mixing a studio band every night who is
2:08:40
Speaker 1: also a really good live band. But you know, the
2:08:43
Speaker 1: thought of getting out and doing trying to conquer all
2:08:46
Speaker 1: the stadiums. I really wanted to get out and do that.
2:08:48
Speaker 1: You know, I've done that. I've done a lot of
2:08:49
Speaker 1: stadium work in the past, but not to this level
2:08:53
Speaker 1: where I have my hands on it every single night
2:08:55
Speaker 1: for a stadium. That's like I said, that's I said
2:08:58
Speaker 1: it multiple times here. That's adult audio, really challenging to
2:09:01
Speaker 1: do really, really well. So I I was looking forward
2:09:05
Speaker 1: to take that on. Just to stop there one second.
2:09:07
Speaker 1: When Kenny play stadium, there's a retinue of acts. Do
2:09:11
Speaker 1: you mix all those acts? No? Just Kenny, just Kenny.
2:09:14
Speaker 1: I have done that in the past, like for one
2:09:16
Speaker 1: Tom Petty tour where Jackson was opening, I mixed both
2:09:18
Speaker 1: Jackson and Tom for the show. But that's that's pretty rare.
2:09:21
Speaker 1: You don't get a chance to do that very often. Okay,
2:09:23
Speaker 1: so you pick and choose. So at this point in time,
2:09:26
Speaker 1: you're on the road. How much of a year. I
2:09:28
Speaker 1: granted we've had COVID, but generally speaking, yeah, well, I mean,
2:09:31
Speaker 1: you know, Petty, you know, worked at a really civilized schedule.
2:09:35
Speaker 1: I mean, he wouldn't do more than you know, really
2:09:38
Speaker 1: rarely did more than three shows a week, four shows
2:09:41
Speaker 1: at the outside, So you know, that was a really
2:09:43
Speaker 1: civilized schedule. It was really civilized travel. I could do
2:09:47
Speaker 1: my I could do all the avid work while I
2:09:49
Speaker 1: was on the road because I'm an remote employee for
2:09:50
Speaker 1: them anyway, So it doesn't matter whether I'm working from
2:09:53
Speaker 1: my office or I'm working for the bus or working
2:09:55
Speaker 1: from a hotel room, and just doesn't matter. It's all
2:09:57
Speaker 1: kind of task based, you know, as long as I
2:09:59
Speaker 1: can get the work done, doesn't matter where I do it. Uh.
2:10:02
Speaker 1: As far as touring itself, you know, I'm a lot
2:10:04
Speaker 1: more picky about who I work for now, and you know,
2:10:08
Speaker 1: what the show is going to be, what the setting
2:10:10
Speaker 1: is going to be. So I'm I mean, I'm very
2:10:13
Speaker 1: blessed to be able to kind of be a little
2:10:14
Speaker 1: picky about who I choose to work for now. I
2:10:17
Speaker 1: mean the Chesney. Part of the attraction to the Chesney
2:10:20
Speaker 1: camp is it's just the greatest group of people. It's
2:10:24
Speaker 1: very much like the Petty camp in that regard, where
2:10:27
Speaker 1: you know, these are people you would hang out with
2:10:29
Speaker 1: off tour, you know, not just on tour. So you know,
2:10:32
Speaker 1: they're very enjoyable people to hang around with. So that
2:10:34
Speaker 1: that makes the whole thing even better and even more easy,
2:10:37
Speaker 1: you know. And do you have any children and what
2:10:40
Speaker 1: have you sacrifice being on the road all those years.
2:10:43
Speaker 1: I have three children who are all grown now. I
2:10:46
Speaker 1: have a twenty six year old daughter who is doing
2:10:49
Speaker 1: fantastic and fashion uh and designed. She I actually had
2:10:53
Speaker 1: her out on the last Tom Petty tour. She was
2:10:55
Speaker 1: one of the wardrobe stylists for Tom Petty for the
2:10:58
Speaker 1: last tour. But she's gone on to do other photography
2:11:01
Speaker 1: and styling work for commercials, etcetera, just doing fantastic. I
2:11:05
Speaker 1: have a middle son who's twenty three, who is completely
2:11:10
Speaker 1: wrapped up in the skateboard world. He is an incredible
2:11:13
Speaker 1: skater and a videographer now, him and a buddy have
2:11:15
Speaker 1: started a company called Liquid Chicken where they do all
2:11:19
Speaker 1: these I really just fantastic skate videos. He's got a
2:11:22
Speaker 1: really cool thing going on there. And then my youngest
2:11:25
Speaker 1: is probably the most musically inclined to the bunch. He's drummer,
2:11:28
Speaker 1: bass player. He'll end up being a producer by the
2:11:31
Speaker 1: time it's all said and done. But he's actually thinking
2:11:34
Speaker 1: about getting into folly work. He wants to do fully.
2:11:36
Speaker 1: I think he's kind of gotten the bug from doing
2:11:37
Speaker 1: all the gaming and everything. He's you know, he's kind
2:11:40
Speaker 1: of come to me and said, tell me about tell
2:11:43
Speaker 1: me about fully. How do you get into that? So
2:11:46
Speaker 1: that's that's pretty cool. He's he's just out of high school.
2:11:48
Speaker 1: He graduated last year. And you're still married to the
2:11:51
Speaker 1: same woman I am thirty five plus years now something
2:11:55
Speaker 1: like that. Yeah, we're kind of an outlier there. We've been.
2:11:59
Speaker 1: We've been together since day one, since we met, and
2:12:03
Speaker 1: I mean it feels as strong now as it's ever felt.
2:12:05
Speaker 1: She's actually looking forward to be going on the road
2:12:07
Speaker 1: because she's an empty nester now and she can come
2:12:09
Speaker 1: out and and to her now, so she wants to
2:12:12
Speaker 1: come out, you know, which was what we did in
2:12:14
Speaker 1: the early days. You know, we kind of you know,
2:12:17
Speaker 1: I think we were as a couple. I look back
2:12:19
Speaker 1: on it now, ago we were smart enough to do
2:12:21
Speaker 1: some really smart things there with our relationship, Like we
2:12:24
Speaker 1: were smart enough to know that, you know, if we
2:12:26
Speaker 1: were physically apart from more than two weeks, three weeks,
2:12:29
Speaker 1: three weeks was really outside, then it was just cost
2:12:32
Speaker 1: of business. She has to come out, we have to
2:12:34
Speaker 1: be together, continue bonding, etcetera. So that was kind of
2:12:39
Speaker 1: the rule up until the time we had, you know,
2:12:41
Speaker 1: until we got up to two kids, and then she
2:12:43
Speaker 1: was pretty homebound. From that point on. It was hard
2:12:46
Speaker 1: to bring the kids out on tour, and I'd end
2:12:48
Speaker 1: up in Arizona, you know. You know, I was in
2:12:50
Speaker 1: l A for the longest time, working there, you know, again,
2:12:53
Speaker 1: doing studio work and life sound work there. Uh, you know,
2:12:57
Speaker 1: working out a did a fair amount of work out
2:12:59
Speaker 1: of Keith Olsen's place good Night l A. You know,
2:13:02
Speaker 1: working with a bunch of people there, excuse me. And
2:13:07
Speaker 1: then at some point, you know, I started realizing, you
2:13:09
Speaker 1: know what, I don't need to live in l A
2:13:10
Speaker 1: to work in l A. So, uh, you know, we decided,
2:13:14
Speaker 1: you know, I was going to live somewhere else, someone
2:13:15
Speaker 1: that was less expensive, that's for sure. And both me
2:13:19
Speaker 1: and my wife were really big fans of the Southwest.
2:13:21
Speaker 1: I mean we looked at we looked at Taos for
2:13:23
Speaker 1: a little bit, and you know, places in New Mexico,
2:13:26
Speaker 1: and but at some point it was just like, Wow, Scottsdale,
2:13:28
Speaker 1: it's just such a great fit. I mean, it's so
2:13:30
Speaker 1: easy to get in and out of Los Angeles if
2:13:32
Speaker 1: I want to do it. You know, I had a
2:13:34
Speaker 1: I just kept my phone number, uh my l a
2:13:37
Speaker 1: phone number for the longest time, but lived in Arizona.
2:13:40
Speaker 1: And you know, if somebody called me up and said, hey,
2:13:42
Speaker 1: we got session brewining, you want to come in and
2:13:43
Speaker 1: do it, I'd said, give me a couple of hours
2:13:45
Speaker 1: and I go jump down on jump in Southwest Airlines
2:13:48
Speaker 1: and get there and and go do the work. So
2:13:51
Speaker 1: but you know, one of the things that drew me
2:13:53
Speaker 1: here at the time was, you know, like I kind
2:13:56
Speaker 1: of mentioned earlier, at one point, I was trying to
2:13:57
Speaker 1: put together my own studio and my own label. And
2:14:00
Speaker 1: you know, at that time, this was around the time
2:14:02
Speaker 1: I guess the gin blossoms were breaking out of here
2:14:04
Speaker 1: and some of the other people were coming out of Phoenix,
2:14:07
Speaker 1: and there was a lot of metal bands coming out
2:14:09
Speaker 1: of Phoenix. Um, I think Megadeth. Think. I think Dave
2:14:13
Speaker 1: was still here and he was doing a lot of
2:14:15
Speaker 1: Megadeth stuff out of here. And I was looking to
2:14:17
Speaker 1: come here and really cultivate some talent out of this
2:14:19
Speaker 1: area and start a label here. That was my goal. Uh,
2:14:22
Speaker 1: And I did okay with it. I did okay with it.
2:14:25
Speaker 1: I got probably five six bands signed to the label
2:14:28
Speaker 1: and then was trying to move them up. I had
2:14:30
Speaker 1: some inroads into Atlantic. I was trying to get them
2:14:32
Speaker 1: signed in there. But you know, at the end of
2:14:34
Speaker 1: the day, it was a lot of money spent, and
2:14:37
Speaker 1: you know, I just kind of had this epiphany at
2:14:39
Speaker 1: some point. It's like, you know, this is not my thing.
2:14:40
Speaker 1: As much as I wanted to believe I could be
2:14:42
Speaker 1: a producer, I just didn't really have the right chops
2:14:45
Speaker 1: for it. I mean, I didn't have enough musical acumen
2:14:48
Speaker 1: to really be a good producer. And the whole role
2:14:51
Speaker 1: even of a producer was changing during that period. The
2:14:54
Speaker 1: music industry was kind of upside down at that point,
2:14:57
Speaker 1: and it just kind of pushed me away. I just thought,
2:14:59
Speaker 1: you know what my thing is going to be live,
2:15:00
Speaker 1: and I know I have some things to contribute to
2:15:03
Speaker 1: the life sound world that are going to shape it
2:15:06
Speaker 1: and change it a little bit. I could just feel
2:15:08
Speaker 1: that coming, you know, So I really just kind of
2:15:10
Speaker 1: pulled the record on the studio and that whole kind
2:15:13
Speaker 1: of thing. Even though I was I was still mixing
2:15:15
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff there, I stopped tracking. I mean,
2:15:17
Speaker 1: I had a little mobile recording trailer that I would
2:15:20
Speaker 1: pull around and do events and stuff here and and
2:15:22
Speaker 1: do some mixing and stuff. But really I kind of
2:15:25
Speaker 1: got away from the label dream and just focused entirely
2:15:28
Speaker 1: on live sound. And you know, as as it's turned out,
2:15:30
Speaker 1: it served me very very well. How lucrative is it
2:15:33
Speaker 1: being a front of the house engineer depends on how
2:15:35
Speaker 1: good you are. Bob, Well, you're an elite player. I
2:15:39
Speaker 1: make more than I ever dreapt. I would make at it,
2:15:41
Speaker 1: I'll tell you that. I mean, I remember in the
2:15:43
Speaker 1: very early days of this, in the early eighties, just thinking, man,
2:15:47
Speaker 1: if I could just make if I could just make
2:15:50
Speaker 1: seven fifty bucks, maybe a thousand dollars a week, I
2:15:53
Speaker 1: could do this forever. You know. Needless to say, we've
2:15:59
Speaker 1: we've moved on past that figure. So yeah, no, I
2:16:01
Speaker 1: I've lived very comfortably. I mean, I'm not a high
2:16:04
Speaker 1: maintenance guy. Not I don't require a lot in my life.
2:16:07
Speaker 1: I can. I think I could actually live very simply,
2:16:09
Speaker 1: and I think that comes from living on the road.
2:16:11
Speaker 1: You learn how to live simple and and entertain yourself,
2:16:15
Speaker 1: you know. So, I mean I have a beautiful home here, etcetera.
2:16:17
Speaker 1: Don't get me wrong, but I don't think I have
2:16:19
Speaker 1: to have that to survive. So you've achieved so much.
2:16:23
Speaker 1: Any dreams left, goals left, people you want to work with.
2:16:28
Speaker 1: I mean, so many of the bands that I dreamt
2:16:29
Speaker 1: about working with, you know, I really don't exist anymore, etcetera.
2:16:34
Speaker 1: You know, there are still bands that I would I
2:16:35
Speaker 1: would love to go out and do and really try
2:16:37
Speaker 1: to put a really interesting spin on doing it, like
2:16:41
Speaker 1: do it really unique. I mean, there's there's this whole
2:16:44
Speaker 1: movement now and p A systems and and mixing consoles
2:16:47
Speaker 1: to do immersive work in in the life sound space.
2:16:50
Speaker 1: I'm really excited about trying to do some of that.
2:16:53
Speaker 1: I mean, I would love to go out and mix
2:16:54
Speaker 1: somebody like tool uh, you know, and do that kind
2:16:57
Speaker 1: of thing. Um. I mean, certainly in my heyday, I
2:17:00
Speaker 1: would have loved to mix Queen. I would have loved
2:17:03
Speaker 1: to mix the who you know, any of those bands
2:17:06
Speaker 1: that would have been just my dream gigs. But like
2:17:09
Speaker 1: I said earlier, I really got to mix my dream gig.
2:17:11
Speaker 1: Brush was my dream gig. That's the one I always
2:17:14
Speaker 1: clamored after to do. You know, what is this immersive
2:17:16
Speaker 1: thing you're talking about, Well, think of it like, although
2:17:20
Speaker 1: this is gonna probably confuse the issue more than than
2:17:23
Speaker 1: actually explain it, but think of it like atmost but
2:17:27
Speaker 1: for a live sound that's that's what it's gonna end
2:17:29
Speaker 1: up being. It's this thing called object mixing versus bus
2:17:32
Speaker 1: mixing for a live sound, and it stands to really
2:17:35
Speaker 1: really do some amazing things in sound production live sound
2:17:40
Speaker 1: production for sure, because you know, at risk of going
2:17:42
Speaker 1: into all the geeky part of it again. You know, stereo,
2:17:45
Speaker 1: as we've known it is great really for the majority
2:17:49
Speaker 1: of things that we do in our world. You know,
2:17:51
Speaker 1: we listen to almost everything in stereo still to this day,
2:17:55
Speaker 1: but large format stereo by the time you get up
2:17:57
Speaker 1: to arenas and by the time you get to stadium
2:18:00
Speaker 1: where you have these very large distance between the left
2:18:02
Speaker 1: and the right of the stereo can cause lots of
2:18:05
Speaker 1: problems in terms of coverage and consistency in sound stereot
2:18:09
Speaker 1: large format stereo is is really not the ideal thing
2:18:13
Speaker 1: to do in large format live sound, and the concept
2:18:17
Speaker 1: of doing it uh in an immersive speaker format is
2:18:22
Speaker 1: highly desirable, highly desirable. But we again this is again
2:18:26
Speaker 1: where the technology and we're just at that point in
2:18:28
Speaker 1: history where the technology is going to allow us to
2:18:30
Speaker 1: actually do it. The consoles have the capability of doing it.
2:18:34
Speaker 1: We have the ability in in these big DSP processors
2:18:37
Speaker 1: to build an immersive environment. We have the speaker system
2:18:40
Speaker 1: capabilities to do it. You know, all the pieces are
2:18:43
Speaker 1: falling in place to do it, and certainly the music
2:18:45
Speaker 1: is lending itself to it, you know, so it could
2:18:48
Speaker 1: be it could be very cool. Before that, when you mix,
2:18:51
Speaker 1: you're essentially mixing mono or are you mixing stereo? I
2:18:54
Speaker 1: call it kind of a wide modo. I mean, it's
2:18:57
Speaker 1: it's not mono in the sense really model by definition
2:19:01
Speaker 1: should be one speaker cluster, right, So stereo with everything
2:19:06
Speaker 1: pan to the center is kind of model, but it's
2:19:09
Speaker 1: not really model. So you know, I kind of for
2:19:13
Speaker 1: large format concerts, I'm kind of doing what I call
2:19:15
Speaker 1: wide model. Sure, there are things panned out left and
2:19:18
Speaker 1: right to do things, but for the most part, the
2:19:20
Speaker 1: most important information is at the center and is modeled
2:19:23
Speaker 1: because you want with the entire room to be able
2:19:25
Speaker 1: to read it right. You don't want people on one
2:19:27
Speaker 1: side of the room not hearing other things on the
2:19:29
Speaker 1: other side of the room. Just to go back a chapter,
2:19:31
Speaker 1: if there's twenty thousand people in the arena, actually most
2:19:34
Speaker 1: of them are a little bit smaller, but let's use
2:19:36
Speaker 1: twenty thousand, and you're using the sphere concept. Everybody there
2:19:41
Speaker 1: is getting a different sound. But if you're using the
2:19:43
Speaker 1: immersive concept, are I going to hear something completely different?
2:19:47
Speaker 1: If I'm you know, up in the rafters as opposed
2:19:51
Speaker 1: to on the floor, you could. I mean, in that
2:19:53
Speaker 1: situation you're gonna do, You're gonna have areas of seating
2:19:58
Speaker 1: that are going to be optimized for the immersive. Right,
2:20:01
Speaker 1: they're gonna this section of seats, maybe this is the
2:20:04
Speaker 1: floor seats, and the first bowl might be optimized for
2:20:07
Speaker 1: immersive where they get the immersive experience, and then people
2:20:11
Speaker 1: up in the upper things still can hear the show,
2:20:13
Speaker 1: they would hear what would be we would term a
2:20:16
Speaker 1: folded down version of the show. Right, they wouldn't experience
2:20:19
Speaker 1: the spatial element of the immersive, but they would still
2:20:22
Speaker 1: still hear all the elements. Right, So it just becomes
2:20:25
Speaker 1: phil speakers in that part of the arena, and they
2:20:28
Speaker 1: still hear the show and still hear every element of it,
2:20:31
Speaker 1: they just don't experience it immersively. Right. And your favorite buildings?
2:20:35
Speaker 1: Who favorite buildings? Um? I think my favorite sounding building
2:20:42
Speaker 1: that I've mixed in in the past ten years is
2:20:45
Speaker 1: probably the new FedEx Place, FedEx Dome or whatever you
2:20:48
Speaker 1: wanna call it in Memphis. I think the place in
2:20:49
Speaker 1: Memphis just sounds absolutely fantastic. Whatever they've done to it,
2:20:54
Speaker 1: you know what, have treated it however, they've done it
2:20:56
Speaker 1: absolutely fantastic. Um. I love me in the Gorge. I
2:21:01
Speaker 1: love Red Rocks. I love mixing at Red Rocks. I
2:21:05
Speaker 1: like the Hollywood Bowl. I'm actually fine at the Hollywood Bowl.
2:21:07
Speaker 1: I like I like how it sounds there, and I
2:21:09
Speaker 1: like the PA installed they got there. So um, I
2:21:13
Speaker 1: mean there's there's a lot of good places now, you know.
2:21:16
Speaker 1: I mean the architects are doing really good jobs with
2:21:20
Speaker 1: the places. That. Honestly, the places I hate the most
2:21:23
Speaker 1: are the places that are actually designed to do performance,
2:21:26
Speaker 1: which are the indoor outdoor sheds, you know, I think
2:21:28
Speaker 1: those are the those are some of the most challenging
2:21:31
Speaker 1: places to do, which is really unfortunate because they're designed
2:21:34
Speaker 1: to handle performance, you know, just because their indoor outdoor
2:21:37
Speaker 1: and there's a roof, low roof, yeah, just the well,
2:21:39
Speaker 1: you know, you would you would be tempted to think, well,
2:21:42
Speaker 1: it's outdoors, there's no acoustics, blah blah blah. You know,
2:21:45
Speaker 1: but yeah, there is lots of acoustics because of the
2:21:48
Speaker 1: coverage of the audience. It's usually all very hard material,
2:21:53
Speaker 1: very reverberant down under the under the roof. So then
2:21:57
Speaker 1: you have you have to address both worlds. You have
2:21:59
Speaker 1: to addres us a world that is outside the roof,
2:22:02
Speaker 1: which is outside, no reflections, no ambience, no anything, and
2:22:06
Speaker 1: then a very reverberant space down where all the seats are,
2:22:09
Speaker 1: and usually a stage area that sounds less than optimum,
2:22:14
Speaker 1: we'll put it that way. So to me, they're very,
2:22:16
Speaker 1: very challenging to do and very challenging to get speakers
2:22:19
Speaker 1: in the right places, in those right positions, in those places.
2:22:22
Speaker 1: So those are the most disappointing places to me. It's like, gosh, man, Fellas,
2:22:26
Speaker 1: if you're going to design it to do performance, how
2:22:28
Speaker 1: about we take these things into consideration. You know. Well, Robert,
2:22:32
Speaker 1: I want to thank you for taking so much time.
2:22:35
Speaker 1: I could listen to you all day. This is all
2:22:36
Speaker 1: really interesting stuff, because you know, you go to the
2:22:39
Speaker 1: show and you want to know what's behind the Other
2:22:41
Speaker 1: thing I want to say is you sent me the
2:22:44
Speaker 1: article that you wrote about Russell Pope. Yeah. I was
2:22:47
Speaker 1: stunned how well written it was. Oh well, thank you
2:22:50
Speaker 1: that seriously. I mean, I read for a living and
2:22:55
Speaker 1: most people can't write. I mean, so when someone writes, well,
2:22:58
Speaker 1: and this is not blowing smoke because it didn't have it.
2:23:01
Speaker 1: I'm literally reading, I'm shocked because most of this stuff
2:23:04
Speaker 1: is unreadable. Oh my gosh, thank you. I mean, that's
2:23:07
Speaker 1: that's really kind. I mean, I I kind of pride
2:23:09
Speaker 1: myself on it. I mean I've written, you know, dozens
2:23:11
Speaker 1: and dozens of articles and you know, obviously been featured
2:23:14
Speaker 1: in quite a few. But I mean I enjoy writing.
2:23:16
Speaker 1: I do. I I mean I enjoy putting blogs together
2:23:19
Speaker 1: things like that. So yeah, thank you. That's that's very kind.
2:23:22
Speaker 1: I'm very appreciative that you said it's hard felt. In
2:23:24
Speaker 1: any event, I want to thank you taking for the time.
2:23:26
Speaker 1: You've just been fantastic, so thanks again, Well, thank you.
2:23:29
Speaker 1: I mean it's you know, I was a little uh,
2:23:32
Speaker 1: you know when when I was asking to be on
2:23:34
Speaker 1: your show, I was just thinking, oh my gosh, what
2:23:36
Speaker 1: is this sound guy going to talk about on the
2:23:37
Speaker 1: Bob left Side Show. I was like, what are we
2:23:40
Speaker 1: going to cover? Man? But you know, thank you for
2:23:43
Speaker 1: making it so easy. And well, I say, there's so
2:23:45
Speaker 1: much we didn't cover. They go deep in the weeds,
2:23:47
Speaker 1: but I think we got a pretty good s mortgage
2:23:50
Speaker 1: board of what's going on. So Robert, thanks again. Hey,
2:23:54
Speaker 1: thank you and thanks for your letters. I mean, I
2:23:56
Speaker 1: enjoy your your thing. And before this I didn't even
2:23:58
Speaker 1: know you had a podcast. So now I'm really glad
2:24:01
Speaker 1: I can I can listen to you while I'm working
2:24:03
Speaker 1: out now, so it would be good. Absolutely until next time.
2:24:06
Speaker 1: This is Bob left Sex m