Produced over the course of the Halloween weekend, the Vegoose music festival in Las Vegas, Nev., featured jam bands, punk bands, fringe bands and mainstream headliners spread out over three days and the city of Vegas. Bands such as Widespread Panic and the String Cheese Incident played out in late night gigs at clubs closer to the casinos [Interview with Chris Raboid And Brad Blettenberg of Widespread Panic is on page 26 –ed.], while the main show was concentrated on the grounds of Sam Boyd stadium in the city's southwest corner. Although it's only been around for two years, Vegoose is produced by the same team that does Bonnaroo, Superfly productions with A.C. Entertainment, who apparently decided they'd like to spend a weekend in Vegas as well as a week in the Tennessee wilderness in the rain. This didn't bother the folks over at Eighth Day Sound, who provided the sound reinforcement for the main stage. Owen Orzack and his crew supplied the stacks and racks for Double Down stage, while J.D. Brill and Clair/ Soundworx supplied the gear for the other three stages.
The Saturday night headliner was Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, playing their last show on their "Last DJ" tour. The tour was also the last one for longtime Petty FOH mixer Robert Scoville, who left the tour after its first leg. Brian Hendry, who's been mixing monitors for Petty and the Heartbreakers for about 12 years, stuck around for the whole tour, and his longevity in the Petty camp lends itself to some extraordinary trust onstage.
"Tom's not sound-checked for two years now," Hendry says. "Even at the start of this tour. First gig, Tom didn't sound-check."
But it goes even further than that. With the introduction of the Pro Tools VENUE system to the tour, none of the band has sound-checked since the first couple shows. Pro Tools engineer Greg Looper records every show, using a PFL of all tracks coming to FOH and records that straight to disk, those unedited tracks are then used for sound check.
"We take it straight off the top," Looper says. "So no EQing or programmed cues go to tape; it's straight off the pre's. It makes it easier for our recording engineer, because he doesn't have to undo anything that we do. When we do sound checks, the tracks come right back to the same channel, so whatever we're doing is already there."
Doesn't that make anyone on the crew a little nervous?
"If you think about it, it's actually better than getting a band up there just to do a sound check," Looper says. "Because they're never gonna play the exact same way when you have 20,000 people in front of you. There's an adrenaline rush, so you're gonna play."
With the exception of some outboard Lake processing gear, all FOH processing takes place in the VENUE, which is pretty remarkable considering the fact that as recently as three years ago the Petty camp was still a hardcore analog crew. And even with his "wicked" DiGiCo D5 mixing monitors, Hendry is still unwilling to completely give up the analog vibe.
"The way the D5 is laid out," Hendry says, "For me, monitor-board wise, it's a lot more like an analog-type layout, you know, user-friendly." And in a festival situation, where change-over happens in 20 minutes, with no time for a full line check, ease of use counts for a lot. Of course, none of this stops him from taking advantage of all the extra power available on a digital board. Because of the stage setup at Vegoose, Hendry only had about 8 by 12 feet of space for monitor world. At times like that he's grateful for all the on-board gates, compressors and effects. An analog board, with a sidecar for all the extra inputs and the racks of outboard gear never would have fit in that space. It's a definite advantage to be able to add half a dozen guest artists on top of your seventy- odd inputs and not have to worry about where to fit the sidecar.
"Figure out where you want the new inputs, put 'em in, nuke the channels up, switch them around, do what you want to," he says. In this way he was able to accommodate Stevie Nicks and crew when she joined Tom Petty onstage at a recent show.
Even with all this digital gear making life easier, you still need to be at the top of your game. Mics need to checked, levels set, and live is still live.
"Everyone should run through the whole system, except on occasions like this, where you're time limited." Hendry says. "So when the band starts is still the most exciting time. You're at some big festival when something goes out on you, and you say, 'OK, boys, let's go.' I dig that."
There weren't any problems with Petty's show at Vegoose, but there was plenty to dig. With multiple venues, four stages and truckloads of gear, Vegoose certainly seems to have gotten the "big festival" part down cold.
