Eric Church has a reputation for putting on rowdy, high-energy shows that were relatively simple. This time he went out with all the energy and all the frills. The country star puts on a rock act, almost like a southern Bruce Springsteen, though an encore can include just him and an acoustic guitar (at a show that spans almost two and a half hours, he doesn’t always need one).
It’s been 10 years since country music singer/songwriter Church was signed to Capitol Records, and he’s been tearing up the charts with hits from his first four studio albums ever since. His latest project — The Outsiders — was released just over a year ago and has been enormously successful, yielding two number-one singles (“Give Me Back My Hometown” and “Talladega”). This year, Church was nominated for four country Grammy Awards including best country album. (He was edged out for that honor by Miranda Lambert).
However, Church still remains firmly number one in the hearts of countless enthusiastic fans in his “Church Choir” who can’t get enough of his music. After touring to support his The Outsiders album last year, the beat goes on and on. He recently completed a second U.S. tour leg of packed arena shows, which kicked off on Jan. 8 in New Orleans’ Smoothie King Center.
This last outing wrapped up at the SAP Center in San Jose, CA on Feb. 5, just in time for Church to make it home for the birth of his second son, Tennessee “Hawk” Hawkins Church, on Feb. 15. “I’m thrilled that Hawk and his mom are doing well,” said Church. “We aren’t sleeping very much, but we are enjoying every part of this incredible journey.” There won’t be much rest this year for Church later this year, either. The Outsiders tour picks up on March 3 at the Houston Rodeo and continues on through Aug. 27 at the New York State Fair in Syracuse, followed by an appearance at the WCOL Country Jam Festival in Legend, OH on Sept. 5. But one thing is clear: Church is definitely creating a lot of work for soundco Clair Global and crew.
The arena production is set up as an end-stage at 360°, with a small number of fans behind him and some VIPs within the pits. The Clair-designed system includes Clair i-5 main enclosures in the form of main left and right arrays, with i-3 arrays flown around the stage. Front and pit fill are home to CP-218 subwoofer and CO-8 cabinets.
But the brow-raising component is the back to the future embrace of analog. FOH engineer Billy Moore is mixing old-school on a pair of Midas Heritage 3000s and a slew of… gasp… racks of the real stuff — actual outboard gear.
The Man at FOH
Moore, easy with the self-deprecating humor, says at one point he was a pursuing a career as a ballplayer when his sister married a drummer. “The rest is history,” he laughs. He mixed in clubs before hooking up with the rock-turned-country band Exile and was sliding faders for them from 1979 to 1992. Moore was on and off the road since then, and even “went postal” delivering mail. Mixed in though was a five-year stint with Trace Adkins and a 10-year one with Montgomery Gentry. “I’m one of these old boys who stays on your porch as long as you feed me and treat me right,” he drawls.
When Earp called him for the Church gig in 2013, he got on the bus. This is Moore’s second tour with him.
Welcome to Analogville
For the first tour with Church, Moore was working on an Avid Profile, which he felt was “kind of cool — load it all up with what you have on a thumb drive.” But then Church went analog for his recent album, and loved the warmth so much, he approached Moore and asked what would he think of mixing this tour on an analog board. Moore grinned and said, “What do I need to say to keep the gig?” And to off to Analogville he went.
“It’s nice to not be flipping through pages [like on a digital console], and just look at the board and see what you need to do,” he says. He takes up a lot of space with the two Heritages, though, and wrestles with more than 60 inputs.
Among the four 18-space FOH racks are plenty of tubes. Moore uses one of his three Manley VoxBox preamp/EQ/compressor/de-essers on Eric’s voice, which he says provides a rich, warm sound. He has Tube-Tech LCA-2B’s compressors on guitars, a Summit Audio DCL-200 compressor for the bass, and five Avalon VT-737SP’s on the background vocals.
The non-tube side of the FOH racks are also well-represented. Among the goodies filling out the toolbox are an API 2500 stereo bus compressor, Eventide H3000SE UltraHarmonizer, TC Electronic D2 delay line, five Yamaha SPX990 effects processors, seven Drawmer DS-201 dual gates and three vintage dbx 900A modular racks loaded with nine Model 903 compressors in each.
Cues, Lots of Cues
Moore says it’s an audio cue-heavy show, which he enjoys. “With other bands, it’s often a matter of bringing it up and adding a little reverb here and there, but Eric keeps it interesting on every song,” he says. As just one example, he mentions his song Creepin’, which he manipulates the tone downwards using a pitch shifter.
Church likes to move around on stage a lot, which keeps things interesting, and we’re talkin’ 13-vocal-mics-for-Church-alone interesting. There’s another seven for the band members who sing and a backing vocalist. All are quite fond of Heil mics, and so everything there are Heil RC35 capsules for the wireless and PR35 for the corded. Mixed in with the Heil are the Shure SM57 and SM58s, and Moore sees no reason to change those out. “I always have 57s on the snare, for example — there are certain things you don’t want to ever get away from.” There are some SM81s on the hi-hat and drum overheads and Audio-Technica shotguns to mic the crowd.
“The set list is different every night — no night is the same,” Moore says. “He’ll pick someone in the audience and ask them what song they want to hear, and suddenly you’re doing that song … Eric is unique, a different breed, a bit wild. He cares about all of it, and makes sure it’s always about the crowd.”
“The changing set list keeps us on our toes!” agrees monitor engineer/production manager Marc Earp. “It’s a fun band to mix — a rock band, very straightforward. I do a stereo pan mix for everybody in the band and mix Eric live the whole show.”
The band has five people on stage in addition to Church: two guitarists, bass, drums and a utility player.
“Where’s the Gear?”
Earp has 30 years of touring on his resume, having caught the audio bug doing sound for local and regional bands from his hometown of Lebanon, PA. He would pursue the vocation at the Institute of Audio Research in New York City, and then took a call from the Santa Fe Opera House in New Mexico when they needed a recording engineer. Earp would end up in Nashville, where he worked for Tracy Byrd for more than 15 years.
Earp says he kept crossing paths with Church’s tour manager, Todd Bunch, and since 2009, he’s been part of the family, usually wearing both the monitor mixer and production manager hats.
“This is a big show,” Earp says. “The last tour, we had six trucks. Now we’ve got 13 trucks and nine buses and long 20-hour days. I thought we were in this business to stay up late and drink! Here I am getting up at 6:30 in the morning,” he laughs.
He says they need the big Clair rig they have, and it’s a 105-point rig. The stage is a Butch Allen design and consists of a pair of octangles. “Allen rocks it,” he says. The stage by design is clean as a whistle — no wedges, as everyone is using Ultimate Ears IEMs. Church and Earp himself are on the 18s, but some of the band members prefer the Pro 11s.
“Wedges would destroy the look of the stage,” Earp says. Even the drums are on an elevator stage that drops out of the video scoreboard. “When Eric first walks out, it’s like, ‘where’s the gear?’”
Despite the conversion to analog at FOH, Earp is on is the side of the stage with his Avid Profile, partly due to space constraints. He says there’s no way he could fit a pair of analog boards into what they have designated as monitorworld. The Profile has everything Earp needs and uses very little outboard gear.
“The band guys are great — very competent musicians; some of the best I’ve ever worked with, and very consistent on the tone they get from their rigs,” Earn says. “There’s not a lot of fiddling around, and these guys are low-maintenance.” He gives Church a straight fader mix mixing in the four crowd mics. “Every arena is different, and I just try to keep him in the moment without things getting too out of control.”
Church rarely comes up for a sound check, though Earp notes with a laugh, “if he started coming in often, I’d start to worry!”
Dedication
A certain gig in Salt Like City on Feb. 1 showed what Church and the team were made of, as a terrible flu bug bit hard.
Church got on stage and said, “Here’s the deal. Yesterday, we had the stomach flu strike — our band, our crew, everyone. We had no one to hang video or lights, nothing. But I’m still standing. There’s nobody left, it’s just me. I’m going to give everything I have.”
“Yes, we got the flu, about 30 of us,” Moore confirms. “But everybody who could just picked up and went on with the show.” A couple members of the band were able to help out a bit, and Moore got himself to FOH, as “I’d have to be on my deathbed not to make it.
“Everybody watches everyone’s back out here — it’s a great camp,” he adds. “I like to tell people I go to Church and I get a sermon — it’s a good feeling. I’ve been working with a few good bands in my time, but this band has everything I need.”
Eric Church The Outsiders World Tour
Crew
- Soundco: Clair Global
- Tour Manager: Todd Bunch
- Production Manager/Monitor Mixer: Marc Earp
- FOH Engineer: Billy Moore
- System Engineer: Jared Lawrie
- Monitor Tech: Rachael Aull
- P.A. Techs: Matt Patterson, Bryce Beauregard
- Lead Guitar Tech: Michael Joe Sagraves
P.A. System
- Main Hangs: Clair i-5’s
- Side/Rear Hangs: Clair i-3’s
- Subwoofers: Clair 2×18 Subs
- Amplification: Lab.gruppen PLM 20000Q
FOH Gear
- Consoles: (2) Midas Heritage 3000
- Outboard: (3) Manley VoxBox preamp/EQ/compressor/de-essers; (27) dbx Model 903 dynamics in three 900A modular racks; (5) Avalon VT-737SP preamp/compressor/EQs; (2) Tube-Tech LCA-2B compressors; Summit Audio DCL-200 compressor; (7) Drawmer DS-201 dual gates; API 2500 stereo bus compressor.
- Effects: (5) Yamaha SPX990 multieffects; TC Electronic D2 delay; Eventide H3000SE UltraHarmonizer.
Monitor Gear
- Monitor Console: Avid VENUE Profile
- IEM Earpieces: Ultimate Ears
- IEM Hardware: Shure PSM 600 and Sennheiser SR300
- Wireless Mics: Shure UR4D with Heil RC35 capsules
- Mics: Shure (6) SM57, (6) SM58, (4) KSM-32, (4) KSM-27, (2) Beta 91, (2) Beta 52, Beta 98, (4) SM81, KSM-313 ribbon; Royer R-121L ribbon; Heil PR31 BW; Audio-Technica (2) AT4050, (2) ATM61-HE/S.
- Direct Boxes: (10) Countryman DT85
