What’s a Console Like Yours Doing on a Tour Like This?
This story is about a modern analog recording desk, that thanks to the vision of a talented FOH engineer, committed to getting the right sonics for his audience and became the FOH console for a major global touring enterprise. Remarkably, this desk has lapped the globe reliably six times, delivering a warm analog signature in arenas, stadiums and festivals without a single incident or failure.
The touring enterprise is Green Day, the visionary engineer is Kevin Lemoine, and that console is an unbelievably good-sounding Rupert Neve Designs 5088.
Recently I caught Green Day’s Saviors tour at Denver’s Coors Field, where Eighth Day Sound provided a large d&b audiotechnik GSL P.A. system. On this night, Green Day is playing their two chart topping albums, Dookie and American Idiot, from top to bottom. The FOH riser was populated with many a digital desk, but what stood out was the mighty analog console that dominated the available area on the platform and gave the act that everyone came to see a truly meaningful, and recognizable, sonic signature.
FOH Engineer Kevin Lemoine
Kevin Lemoine has a real passion for music, having begun by playing trumpet and sousaphone in his school band, bass guitar in jazz band and even upright bass in symphony. “I’m a music fan, and that’s where it started for me. I happened to play in some really good bands in school. I had the whole concept of tuning, pitch and volume drilled into me before I was 18, and it really made a difference in my appreciation of what I am hearing as a mixer. I always ask myself “why does it sound like that,” and it always falls back onto what was drilled into me as a young musician.”
Lemoine has mixed for Smashing Pumpkins, Jane’s Addiction and Social Distortion, and he has the Green Day FOH post for 24 years. Over that time, he developed an organic view of what their audience expects when listening to their musical heroes. “I’m using fidelity as a catalyst to get excitement and impact. This band’s audiences are incredibly familiar with the material they are coming to see. They already know the songs before they walk in the building. They don’t want to be presented with something that’s unfamiliar. You want to give them goosebumps and have it be physically exciting. To have them in the room with a band that’s working hard, and you very much want to have an impact on them physically. Volume is a factor, but I think actually being in the environment around other like-minded people, with the music sounding how you expect it to sound — with fidelity to the recorded material — has an exciting physical and psychological impact and you want that.”
Green Day’s seminal albums were all recorded on really high-performance analog desks. I checked in with a friend, recording legend Allen Sides, who until recently owned Ocean Way Studios where those groundbreaking Green Day recordings were made. Allen informed me that Dookie was recorded on an all Class-A Neve 8038, while American Idiot was tracked on a custom Ocean Way / Universal Audio super-analog console with over 200k Hz of bandwidth and a ridiculously fast slew rate.
“I’m not the guy that says analog is better than digital, or digital is better than analog,” notes Lemoine. “I’ll take whatever you give me and try to do the best I can. There are plusses and minuses for everything. If you take the time on digital desks, you can absolutely sound good. But analog really plays a role for this band…Green Day appreciate the analog angle. They appreciate that there’s more to getting great sound than just loading a file. They play guitars from the 50’s through amps from the ‘80’s. They appreciate someone honorably taking their work and presenting it to everybody.”
While he’s experienced mixing on all the major digital platforms, Lemoine has been on an analog journey with Green Day for years. “I took an ATI Paragon II out with Green Day in the ought years. I had a 36-frame Midas 250 for a while but got sick of repairing stuff. Then we tried a 24-channel Trident Model 88. It was reliable, but I had to use submixers. The band kept adding inputs, so I started thinking about something bigger than the Trident.”
“When are you going to make a live console?” Rupert Neve Designs co-founder and general manager Josh Thomas recalls of a discussion with Lemoine five years ago. Thomas’ reply was: “Well, we’re not. We can’t. It will be price prohibitive. The budgets aren’t there. People don’t run copper anymore; they run fiber. Too big, too heavy.”
Not one to be discouraged by such obstacles, Lemoine replied “What if we took a (analog recording model) 5088 out?” Thomas initial reaction was “That is a horrible idea, Kevin.” However, thanks to Lemoine’s passion, his persistence and a healthy dose of client-centric thinking by all involved, Lemoine has been mixing on a Neve 5088 — specially modified for touring use — for almost every Green Day show of the past four years.
“The important factor in all this is Clark Thomas,” notes Lemoine, of his co-worker, system engineer and crew chief for Eighth Day / Clair Brothers. “I mentioned to Clark I was thinking about taking the 5088 on the road, and Clark offered to come with me to Rupert Neve Designs’ factory in Wimberly, TX. We wanted to see if it was roadworthy, if it would actually work on tour. So Josh encouraged us to take a desk apart, and we did. We paid particular attention to how the transformers were mounted. We could wiggle them around on the circuit board, and wondered whether these would break off.”
Josh Thomas from Rupert Neve Designs described the changes made by the factory to make the console roadworthy. “After a couple more shop visits we came up with a plan. It included enhanced securing of the audio transformers to the circuit boards and other internal mechanical strengthening. Honestly, Kevin is incredibly charming, persuasive, and those who know him know he is much bigger than me. He was successful in convincing us to build the desk. We made sure the plan included an extensive parts kit, but thankfully they haven’t had any failures in the four years since we delivered it.”
As Eighth Day’s system engineer, Thomas designed the cases and packaging. The completed system includes a rack-mount server-style air conditioning unit, with hoses that supply cold air to the desk when ambient temps are high, particularly at festival gigs. Clark also devised an extensive infrastructure used to control console effects switching and signal distribution. He designed it using Sonnet DuoModo chassis loaded with Mac Mini’s and Echo III modules. The system uses three UAD-2 OCTO PCIe cards, an RME HDSPe MADI FX PCIe card and a DirectOut Prodigy.MC mainframe with five MIC8.HD.IO converter cards. Ableton Live serves as the plug-in host controlled by an Elgato Stream Deck touch panel.
Eighth Day’s Tom Arko
In deciding to support his very unusual request, Lemoine recognizes that a great deal of credit goes to Eighth Day Sound founder Tom Arko, and account rep Jason Vrobel. Lemoine recalls, “One day. just in passing, I mentioned to Jason that I’d really like to take out a 5088. Obviously, he heard me. A week later, Jason informs me that they had discussed the idea with Tom. He supported it and informed me that ‘we’ll do it if you want to do it.’”
I spoke with Tom Arko about his decision to invest in an expensive piece of equipment that, in the event it was not successful, would leave him with a costly desk that would be difficult to rent. “The Neve is a serious departure from the consoles we typically keep in inventory,” Arko explains. “But this was a purchase I was happy to support. Green Day has been a wonderful client; Kevin is an excellent engineer, and our philosophy is to always do everything we can for the client. Thankfully, the console has been entirely solid, and the shows sound fantastic.”
So, Eighth Day bought the console, put it in its case, and shipped it to rehearsals in March of 2020. It flew to the first gig which was in Russia, and then everything shut down thanks to Covid, so it came back to Eighth Day’s shop to wait out the pandemic. Since returning to touring, the console has gotten extensive use and has survived the rigors of the road in impressive fashion as confirmed by Green Day’s production team.
Production Manager Zito
I asked Zito, Green Day’s production manager, about his experience carrying a very unusual piece of kit around the world. “Green Day is an audio-driven band, and everything comes down to how it sounds every day. Every decision that gets made — with mics, positioning, what we do and how we do it — comes down to giving Kevin the best tools to succeed. My background is in audio… I actually mixed for the first 10 years of my career including Backstreet and OneRepublic, so having made the transition to production work, I’ve worked with a lot of big-name engineers. As a production manager with an audio background, I’m always looking at things a little differently,” Zito explains.
“When I heard what we were doing with Green Day, they had already bought this new console. And I thought ‘this is massive, the size is massive.’ The footprint and its other requirements — like air conditioning — is a lot, and I thought ‘Why are we doing this?’. But engineers are hired for a reason, and typically they are one of the positions hired directly by the artist because they want whatever this engineer does. I’ve been down the road with so many engineers and so often ‘the juice is not worth the squeeze.’ You get them all this shit, they need this rack and that piece of gear, 12 of these, and you do it because they are the ones that have the gig, and my job is to support them.”
However, Lemoine and Green Day are not “typical” clients and from “the first day I heard it, I thought ‘Holy sh*t, wow!’ Okay, this (touring the Neve) is worth the effort, and it is. It a lot of effort to move it around the world. The size of it, the footprint, it requires eight guys to tip the console, as it’s bigger than a piano. But it has just been exceptional, and it has been exceptionally reliable. We have carried a (digital) backup for it for four years and have never had to use it.”
Danny Abelson was a partner in Turbosound, helped introduce the ATI Paragon console, and still has his IATSE card.
Green Day “The Saviors Tour”
AUDIO CREW
- Sound Company: Eighth Day Sound / Clair Global
- FOH Engineer: Kevin Lemoine
- System Engineer/Crew Chief: Clark Thomas
- Production Manager: Zito
- Monitor Engineer: Danny Badorine
- Monitor Tech: Dylan Rohrer
- Stage Patch: Frank Jernigan
- RF Coordinator: Roger Bammann
- P.A. Techs: Francesco Grassi, Isaac Genheimer
- Delay Techs: Paul Cabello, Nate Peterson
FOH GEAR
- P.A. System: d&b audiotechnik GSL/KSL
- FOH Console: Rupert Neve Designs 5088 modified for touring
- Outboard Gear: API 3124MV, Maselec MPL-2, RND Newton Channel, RND Portico II, Massenberg 8200, Klark-Teknik DN 301, Midas XL48
- Amps: d&b audiotechnik D80
MON GEAR
- Monitor Console: Avid VENUE S6L
- Mics: Shure Beta 91A; DPA 4055, 2011c, 4099, 2028; Telefunken M80; Neumann KM184, Schoeps MK-21; Josephson E22S; Sennheiser MD-421, e609; Radial DIs
More Green Day 2024 tour photos by Steve Jennings:
