NEXO GEO tangent-array systems have accompanied Britain’s funnyman Bill Bailey on the arena tour of his one-man stand-up show, playing to crowds of 10,000 all over the UK. Sound Designer George Glossop has specified NEXO GEO T as the main PA. Now that the comedian is playing some of the largest live venues in the country, the system design has been upgraded from the NEXO S8 system that Bailey has used in the past.
Promoter Mick Perrin Just for Laughs Live called upon George Glossop to design the sound systems for the ‘Tinselworm’ shows. Glossop has worked with Eddie Izzard and Bill Bailey for several years. He outlines his unique criteria for a successful sound design for this type of performer.
“Comedians like Bailey are very well-known through television, and people are used to having him in their living rooms. When we put them on stage in a big shed, the system has to be right on top of it to keep every single word right there in your face.” Glossop points out that “comedy is not like live music; the audience doesn’t know the words or the songs, so if there’s any lack of transparency, we’re in trouble. Our job is quite simply to make them feel like they’re watching the show at home on TV.”
After a six-way audition of well-known systems, Glossop picked the NEXO GEO T tangent array as his main PA. Regular supplier SSE Audio Group provided GEO S8 systems for Bill Bailey’s last tour in 2003. This time, with larger venues to cover, GEO T arrays were stageside, supplemented by GEO S8 arrays as the delay system, and NEXO’s new GEO S12 cabinets as outhangs to cover the sides of the arenas.
“NEXO ticked all the boxes for us,” says Glossop. “Our criteria revolved around visual impact and speed of rigging, but we remain impressed by the rear cancellation of the GEO T, and the fact that the GEO technology allows us the option of using a wider-angle dispersion cabinet at the bottom of the array.”
With five large screens on stage, sightlines were very important to the production. The compact size of all the three NEXO GEO cabinets being deployed was a strong argument for using them, as was their reputation for easy rigging. The tour was carrying 28 GEO T cabinets, with 18 NEXO Alpha subs. Flown adjacent to the main left/right GEO T arrays were outhangs each comprising of 12 GEO S1210 and 4 S1230 cabinets. Down the hall was a five-point GEO S8 delay system using a total of 28 GEO S830 and seven GEO S805 boxes to give coverage to the bleachers and the rear of the hall. Additionally, eight PS8 cabinets were used as frontfill. The system was powered by CAMCO Vortex amplifiers, managed by NEXO’s NX242 TDcontrollers, and mixed by FOH Engineer Scott Scherban on a Digidesign Venue digital console.
“Everytime I do this, people say ‘that’s a hell of a lot of gear for one comedian!’ But on our last shows, we had 72 inputs, 42 just for Bill on his own,” he says.
Bailey is an accomplished musician, and has always played live during his shows. The ‘Tinselworm’ stage featured keyboard rigs with samplers, theremins, acoustic guitars, mandolin, bouzouki, alpine horn, Marshall stacks, Gibson Flying V and alpine bells. He is wearing a DPA 4088 cardioid headset mic and moves freely between instruments. “Like all comedians, they go off on tangents and ad libs of their own: we have to enable the audience to follow them, which means that every word has to be crystal-clear to every seat in the house, over the considerable noise of 10,000 people laughing.”
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