Brian Ruggles’ Scenes from a Lifetime with Billy Joel
Billy Joel is a Long Islander, from the tips of his ivory-tickling fingers down to his sustain-pedaling right foot, and likes to surround himself with similars. So our story begins with a young Brian Ruggles kicking around those same stomping grounds in the late 1960s. The two grew up in neighboring towns, though “I was more middle class compared to Billy, who, as he puts it, was lower middle class,” Ruggles says. As Joel was cycling through several bands, so was Ruggles who, although a drummer and guitarist, was principally a lead vocalist.
Although Ruggles’ bands “were going nowhere,” it became increasingly noted that he was technically adept. When Joel was finishing up his first album as a soloist, Cold Spring Harbor (infamous in that it was released at the wrong speed, and thus a disappointment on every level), Joel pitched the idea of Ruggles joining him on the road. “You have a great ear for music, and you’re so musical,” Joel said. Ruggles shrugged, postponed going to college for graphic arts, and hit the road.
He has not looked back since.
Although Ruggles’ gig with Joel is the unifying tie that binds his career, along the way he’s also tweaked the knobs for other top acts including Fleetwood Mac, Stevie Nicks’ solo shows, Boz Skaggs, The Eagles, Don Henley’s solo shows and Heart. He’s had a special relationship with Paul Simon who, in addition to mixing live, got to work on his semi-biographical film, One Trick Pony. The late, great engineer/producer Phil Ramone, who in the late 1970s and 1980s was working with both Joel and Simon, brought Ruggles in to mix the movie’s semi-fictional band to make sure it sounded “live.” Part of the movie was the last performance of the Lovin’ Spoonful’s original makeup, which is another aspect of pop music history Ruggles has been a part of.
Scenes from a Pop Star’s Career
The early days of mixing for Joel were the epitome of the dark ages that preceded modern pro audio. “Billy was playing a lot of clubs, and we were working with whatever club system they had at the time, which was almost always pretty antiquated,” he says, adding he can still almost smell the stench of spilled beer that permeated those old boards. “After a while, we took out a little Altec Lansing system for occasions when we needed sound reinforcement,” playing obscure venues including school cafeterias.
The Piano Man has come full circle on what keys he’s tickling. In those early days, they couldn’t carry a piano, so they were causalities to whatever was sitting in the corner backstage. “Yes, there was often a lot of tuning issues, but Billy was, and is, such a showman, even at that time, under whatever circumstances, he made it work,” Ruggles recalls.
“He would take that audience and just make a great show happen no matter what gear or instruments we had. To this day, nothing freaks him out. It’s always about him and the audience.”
Today, though, it’s a Kawai digital hidden in the shell of piano marked “Long Island Piano Company.” Ruggles says that dealing with an acoustic piano became too difficult, as the more Joel rocked out, the more the instrument bled into everything else (and vice-versa). “It became a sound engineer’s nightmare, so when you go digital, it’s so much easier to mix.” He has six console inputs devoted to just that digital piano, splitting them up, and enhancing certain lines to brighten it up, or augment a specific EQ for a solo, or to make it suddenly sound nice and round for that ballad. “I can move it around this way, and really cut it to make it sound nice and soft as needed.”
Ruggles has cycled through his share of gear as well. Currently he’s using the DiGiCo D5. “Digital boards have come a long way, and some of them, I just don’t like the way they sound,” he says. “But the DiGiCo sounds really good, and I use a lot of their preamps.”
Clair Global — also with a long association with Billy Joel — is the sound company supporting the tour. “Clair has some of the best gear in the world, and is always increasing the quality of it,” Ruggles says. “We’re using their new CM system, and they are the latest, greatest, hottest thing out there.”
There’s a lot for Ruggles to mix. For the last few years, Joel has been traveling with two horn players who also play percussion, and drummer, bass, keyboardist and two guitarists. Four of those musicians also handle background vocal duties.
Asked if the set list stays more or less the same, he laughs and says, “we always have a game plan, but Billy doesn’t always stick with the game plan. Sometimes he goes off script.” He’ll skip a song, or try to give a hint to the band and crew that he’s throwing in a different song by softly tapping the first few notes. “Me and Steve [Cohen, longtime LD] have to listen to every little thing because he’ll switch gears in a second. Sometimes it’s like, ‘oh sh**, he’s going someplace else!’ and we’ll go scrambling.” But he says it keeps it all interesting, as it’s not the same “boring show” every night.
A Little Old-School Miking
Ruggles says he’s gone through a lot of different vocal mics to come around to pretty much where he started. He dabbled with Audio-Technica mics, then different condensers, before returning to the old-school Shure SM58s both hardwired and as a capsule on his wireless mics. “I find them to be the best sounding mic, period.” Background vocals are a mixture of Shure Beta 58s and SM58s.
For a pianist, drums have always played a key part in Joel’s music: loud, aggressive, busy. His philosophy of mics is based on his belief that the sound engineer shouldn’t have to reach too hard for a good drum sound when working with a good drummer.
“Drums are the most important part to me,” he says. “If I don’t get a good drum sound, I’m not getting a good mix, period. I also need my bass, I need all my basic tracks thumping and sounding right.”
He adds that, “believe it or not,” he still uses the proven combo of a Shure Beta 52 for the kick drum alongside a Shure Beta 91A boundary mic. Clip-on Shure 98As are used on the rack and floor toms. Overheads are Shure’s KSM 32; snare is the classic SM57; a KSM 137 condenser on hi-hat; and a Beta 52 on gong.
That is a lot of Shure mics, but not exclusively. Percussion is captured via a combination of (yes, Shure) Beta 98a’s in close with four AKG C414’s overhead the congas and percussion. The Leslie cabinet on the Hammond B3 is picked up by two Sennheiser MD421’s on the bass rotor and two SM57’s on the top for stereo effects. Bass is a combo of an Avalon tube direct box and a Cascade Fathead II ribbon mic on the amp cabinet. Reeds and horns are mostly handled by a variety of Applied Microphone Technology AMT-series clip-on miniature condenser mics.
Ruggles has built a “cage” so that the amps are out, where guitarist Tommy Byrnes can do whatever he needs to get his sound, but speaker is confined to a large iso box with an Audio-Technica AT4050 in it. “He can just make it scream,” and yet it can be controlled without bleeding elsewhere on the stage. If I didn’t have that, he would destroy the stage.”
Direct boxes are a mix of Countrymans and Radial Engineering JDI’s.
Something Old, Something New
Everyone is on IEMs (Jerry Harvey Audio JH-16s and Sensaphonics 2MAX) except Joel and Byrnes, and there are some wedge monitor boxes around which Joel can control himself. Ruggles reports that Joel likes to control what he’s hearing at any given time, including the audience ambiance. “He loves to hear the crowd, and will turn his piano and vocals down just to hear the house, and sing to that.”
Joel’s predisposition to not put out new music has his crew working with primarily the same hits for the last 20 years, plus a variety of “B Sides” mixed in. But this does not make every tour the same old-same old, Ruggles insists. “First of all, the sound changes in different kinds of ways all the time, night to night,” he explains. “There is adrenalin involved, and how each individual is playing that particular song at that moment changes. This happens to Billy, too — and myself! Everything changes a bit, and you have to conform to that. Sound checks are la-de-da, but once the musicians start playing to a live audience, every face on stage lights up. There’s that first big turn down the rollercoaster, and it instantly becomes a lot of fun.”
The Billy Joel tour continues through 2015, wrapping up with another gig at New York City’s Madison Square Garden on Dec. 17, extending his record at the venue as the greatest number of concerts staged by any solo performer.
Audio History Flashback:
Last Play at Shea the Old Way, 7/18/2008
One of the biggest historic events in live events happened on July 18, 2008, when the New York’s Shea Stadium had a final concert before they tore down the stadium New Yorkers that was home to the Mets, Giants and Jets. Immortalized in Paul Crowder’s 2010 documentary The Last Play at Shea, the concert celebrated a musical sanctuary where the Beatles opened their 1965 tour of America.
Over the years, others who pushed music from the same field into the stands included Janis Joplin, Paul Simon, Miles Davis, The Who, The Clash, The Police, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Bruce Springsteen… and on that final night, Billy Joel. He was joined by a parade of artists including Paul McCartney, Tony Bennett, Don Henley, Garth Brooks, Roger Daltrey and Steven Tyler.
Joel’s longtime soundman, Brian Ruggles, knew he had a formidable task in front of him. “Billy hadn’t done an outdoor show like that in a long time, and frankly, neither had I!” he says. He came to the conclusion that a historic concert for a packed crowd of 55,000 cried out for historic gear. “I wanted those old Clair Bros. [JBL-loaded] S4s, those big four-foot-by-four-foot-by-18-inch thick monsters. I went out and got 140 of them for that concert. I know it’s kinda weird, but I wanted that old sound gear that would really push through and not use some line array that gets hung up in the wind. I wanted brute force, and the S4 is the muscle car of sound systems.” Providing the engine were racks of Crown Macro-Tech 3600VZ amplifiers.
Ruggles added that “It worked. It was difficult, and when we’ve done stadiums since, we’ve used [Clair Bros] i5s line array cabinets. But that Shea concert that was the right call, it turned out really good — though I don’t think I would do it again.”
Besides Clair Global and Ruggles, other Billy Joel Tour alumni working that show were veterans production manager Bobby Thrasher and engineer Mike Pirich. For that tour, both Ruggles and Pirich were using Studer Vista 5SR digital consoles enabled with Harman Pro Onboard HiQnet™ control.
Billy Joel Tour 2014/2015
Crew
- Sound Company: Clair Global
- FOH Engineer: Brian Ruggles
- Monitor Engineer: Josh Weibel
- System Tech/Crew Chief: Richard Schoenadel
- Stage Tech: Jay Yochem
- P.A.. Techs: Bryan Darling, Tom Ford
P.A. System
- Mains: (32) Clair i5 & i5b (16 per side)
- Side PA: (24) Clair i5 & i5b (12 per side)
- Rear PA: (32) Clair i3 (14 per hang)
- Front fills: (8) Clair P2; (4) Clair R4
- Subs: (8) Clair HP 218 powered subs/side
- Amplifiers: (75) 20k amps
FOH Gear
- FOH Console: DiGiCo SD5
- Plug-ins: Waves Soundgrid
- Outboard Gear: Lexicon PCM70, Bricasti M7, Eventide Eclipse, TC M5000. Summit DCL 200 tube compressor
- Drive Processing: Lake LM44; TC 6032 Remote; (7) TC 1128 graphic EQs
- Recording: Avid Pro Tools, 96 channels
Monitor Gear
- Monitor Console: DiGiCo SD10
- Plug-ins: DiGiCo onboard comp/gates/reverbs
- Monitors: (6) Clair CM 22 wedges, (8) Clair SRM downstage, Ml-18 sub
- RF tools: Shure Wireless Workbench 6
- IEM System: Sennheiser 2050s
- IEMs: Jerry Harvey Audio JH-16s; Sensaphonics 2MAX
- Vocal Mics: Shure Beta 58 and SM58; SM58 capsule on Shure wireless
- Instrument Mics: Shure Beta 52, Beta 91A (kick); SM57 (snare); KSM137 (hi-hat); Beta 98A (toms); KSM 32s (overheads); Beta 98A, AKG 414s (percussion); Cascade Fathead II (bass); Audio-Technica AT4050 (guitar iso cab); Sennheiser MD421s, SM57s (Leslie); Applied Mic Technology AMT-Series, (horns/reeds).
- D.I. Boxes: Avalon Tube Preamp, Countryman, Radial Engineering
