Scott "Scoobie" Scherban and Drew Consalvo are making it happen for "the most rock 'n' roll of rock 'n' roll bands."
On an unusually beautiful summer night (for St. Louis), there’s a special concert at the brand new Busch Stadium: The Black Crowes are opening for the Dave Matthews Band. More than a concert, it’s an audition of sorts: It’s the one and only concert in the new stadium, and if the powers that be don’t feel it goes well, they’ll never be another. Consequently, the city’s royalty comes out to see a stage set up against the centerfield wall and over 100,000 interlocking plastic sheets that protect the precious grass.
More than 35,000 people filled the stadium for the show, enough to fill the local shed these bands typically would play at twice over. Gaggles of extra security were in place. But besides an unusual long push, setup, the show and teardown all went smoothly.
FOH sat down with the men behind the sound who made it all happen.
Monitor Engineer: Drew Consalvo
Drew Consalvo hails from Fort Wayne, Ind., and got involved with the business when he went to Sweetwater owner Chuck Surack’s recording studio to record with his band in 1984.
“I found that I was way more interested in what he was doing than in what we were doing,” Consalvo says. He would do some work for Surack, then joined the U.S. Air Force.
Stationed in New Mexico, he bought his first mixing console, a 16-channel Peavey board with spring reverb. Talking about the big-knobbed board of days of yore, he laughs and says, “You could have mixed on it wearing construction gloves!” Then he ended up in LA mixing shows at the infamous Madam Wong’s, and moved up the ladder from there. He’s been with the Crowes since 1998.
FOH: What were you doing when you got your first gig with the Crowes?
Consalvo: Strangely, I was doing some work with, of all people, Tony Danza. He had a variety show, and I was with him. Then I got a call from [Delicate’s] Smoother Smyth, and he says, “Mate, I have a band here who is looking for a monitor guy.”
That first tour was their “Sho’ Nuff” tour, and they were initially the opening act playing in clubs. It was nothing like it is now.
In the last 10 years of working with them, it’s safe to say their sound has evolved?
Oh, God, has it! When I first started with them they were just incredibly loud. As a monitor guy, it’s always a matter of “holy smokes, how are we going to get the vocals over the guitars?”
And how did you/do you?
Judicious EQing, good speakers and lots of amps.
What’s changed?
These days we’ve lost the side fills entirely, and the volume on stage has gone down.
And they don’t use personal monitors?
Oh, yeah, this is not the kind of band that wants to use in-ears. Being a guitar band they enjoy hearing their guitar amps naturally.
Speaking of those wedges, you’ve got the new Martins…
Yes, this is our first experience with the Martin Audio LE2100s. We’ve been using Martin LE700s for years, but these are a pair of 12s with a 6-1/2” midrange device and a 1” exit compression driver mounted on a differential dispersion horn. We heard them in a warehouse about a year ago, and I really enjoyed what I heard. Smoother was nice enough to order some for us. This will be the second show we’ve used them on. We have them powered by Lab.gruppens.
Let’s talk about this current tour…
We are running the gamut this year. Ordinarily, in the summer we spend all our time in the sheds, and expect to do a lot of that this year. But we are also doing everything from 750-seat clubs to big festivals for up to 50,000 people and everything in between. In some of the smaller venues we’re doing three nights in a row.
Do you like the smaller clubs?
The smaller spaces used to be harder because the band would never turn down for them. But recently the stage volume is actually becoming manageable! For me, the larger stages are better and more dynamic, but the audiences absolutely love them in the small spaces. Sometimes the band goes out of the way to accommodate that kind of love.
The band is known for not playing the same set list every night…
They have a very freestyle approach to putting their sets together, and I think it has contributed to their longevity. For me, it’s like being a chess player because you have to think a few moves ahead. But it’s refreshing that their song list is so different every night. They have roughly 200 songs to pick from, and I bet from night to night there aren’t more than four songs repeated. All this mixing is on the fly.
The band seems fun to work with. Are they?
Yeah, it’s a very low-key vibe with them, not a tense “Paul Anka kind of vibe” at all.
Let’s talk gear.
I use a Yamaha PM5D and so does [FOH] Scoobie. I’ve been a Midas guy for years because I love slamming that pre-amp. I have an aggressive style. But I first used the PM5D with REO [Speedwagon], and it’s working well for me now. The thing I like about it most is consistency. Consistency on cues from day to day, channel to channel, is great. On some boards there can be a variance — you tweak something 5 degrees on one knob, and on the next one it’s 2-1/2 degrees for the same results.
The band is old school in so many ways, but the console is digital…
What I may feel is a small sacrifice in the type of sound… clarity in digital is amazing. It’s not better or worse than analog, just different. I’ve embraced it. Of course, with this board, I’m not carrying racks of shit around anymore.
No outboard gear?
Nope! Everything I need is in the board and is working fine for me. Yamaha has done a really fantastic job with the machine. I’m chompin’ at the bit to see what they come up with next.
Anything unusual about the show at Busch Stadium?
Out of 150 or so shows this year, we are only doing four as a support act, and this happened to be one of them. It had been a while since I have seen the Crowes do 45 minutes. But everything went well for me even though [because of the big stage] I was about a mile away from my band. But it’s pretty exhilarating when you have a stadium full of people and you launch into that first tune without a sound check!
I have to ask — what was that suspicious stuff you were burning on the stage?
Touring, as you are aware, is filled with daily/nightly rituals. One of the keys to touring successfully is consistency.
Regarding the white sage ritual: Native Americans have used white sage to purify spaces and cleanse an area of impurities, bad energy, and evil and mischievous spirits. We do it every night about 15 minutes before show time. It is a practice we have done for some time now. We had a lapse in the ritual a couple years back and some bizarre technical glitches (coincidentally or not) occurred, so Chris pretty much ordered that the ritual be performed again nightly. Also, as I walk around smudging the stage, it also gives me a chance to give everything a final look before the band hits. Say what ya will, it works!
Hey, I wasn’t going to say anything! Except what exactly is it?
The incense (Nag Champa) in the apples downstage is another nightly ritual whose origin is before my time. We go through it by the kilo. By the time you get about three months into a Crowes tour, every item on the tour smells like Nag Champa. And something else…
FOH Engineer: Scott “Scoobie” Scherban
Scott “Scoobie” Scherban started in the business building cases 22 years ago.
“Working from the bottom up has always been my philosophy. When people ask me how to get into this business, I say skip schools [on the topic], and go to work for a production company and start polishing trucks.” As a young pup, his first tour was with the Cure. “I was like the fifth boy down, a little slave.”
So how long have you been with the Crowes?
Scherban: It’s been 10 years on and off, and a lot of those earlier years I was just a sound tech or a fill in. But the last four years I’ve been the full-on FOH guy. Now, I’m actually production manager as well.
Like Drew, you also use a Yamaha PM5D…
I find it to be the most ideal console for this band. I’ve tried them all. When we were in Australia, I tried Digidesign’s Profile, which is a great little desk, sounds great, but for this band it was a bit too digital. There wasn’t enough grind.
This band goes more than 11, and you need that bite to get over that. The 5D is ideal because it’s compact and has everything I need. I have a delay, a little reverb, but most of the channels are dry for their straight up rock ‘n’ roll. Built into the console is a ping-pong delay bounding left to right, a room reverb, a plate, and that’s pretty much it. And most of the time they aren’t even on!
…and when they are?
I use the delay hits. When the band jams back, slows down, breaks down the song, Chris [Robinson] likes to howl into the microphone, and it becomes this trip-everyone-out-and-pretend-you’re-on-acid-routine. Kids love it. It’s a very hippy vibe.
What are the challenges?
Basically, my challenge with this band is you don’t really mix them, you just make it wider. The sheer volume coming off the stage is loud enough. All I’m doing is damage control. I’m just making sure the guitars are heard on both sides of the venue and protecting everyone’s hearing including mine!
And how do you work that magic?
I work to provide a nice, loud, warm, rich sound that you can feel but doesn’t hurt everyone’s ears. Actually, a lot of my EQing is doing the opposite of what is coming off the stage. I end up counteracting what is coming off the stage and try to make it as smooth as possible.
I have to put guitars in the PA, but I’ll throw them out of phase from what is going on stage. I’ll back off the volume — considerably back off, but it’s still loud. Drew’s monitors definitely contribute to that some of the time!
Part of the band’s charm is they are so old school.
The two background singers have personal wireless monitors, but that’s it. Everyone else is on a wire and a wedge. It’s one of the last true rock bands. I mean, the biggest thing technically on the stage is an electronic keyboard.
Is it a philosophical thing?
It’s just how they like to do it. We try things here and there, but it’s not in their music. There are great things out there we’d love to use, but you can’t react to their brand of blues/rock ‘n’ roll with them, especially the way Chris performs.
He’s all over that mic.
Chris cuts the mic and sings through a quarter hole. Years ago, Drew, I think it was, mentioned that he would sound better if he didn’t do that, and Chris just said, “I don’t tell you how to mix.” As an engineer you have to work around a band’s quirks — your job is to make it all work and make the band happy.
And speaking of mics, that’s all old school too…
The band has always been a Shure band. Drew and I would love to use others, but then again, I think that’s where their sound is: in those 58s for vocal and everywhere else, 57s. We do have a Shure KSM9 on the backing vocals, and we do have a couple of toys to squeeze in…
At the Busch Stadium show there was no sound check?
There usually isn’t. That’s the beauty of digital; it’s all mostly dialed in. But still, that’s the difference between a good engineer and a bad engineer — it’s the one song theory. If you can’t get a good mix in the first song, especially with this band, then you’re really in a lot of trouble! [Laughs].
And you were using Dave Matthews Band’s speakers at this gig?
The Meyer speakers were set up for him, and didn’t really have enough balls for our kind of band. I’m a huge fan of Martin Audio, and we usually go with Martin line arrays.
Seems like a great outfit to work for.
It’s a friendly vibe. You can be a smart ass to them. It’s like we’re siblings. There’s nothing really bad about anybody on the tour, and you don’t come by that too often these days. Even on a lot of good tours there’s that one guy, you know what I mean? The one that is a pain and almost everybody universally dislikes. But on this tour it’s great. There’s no “that one guy.”
Gear List
2 Yamaha PM5D (FOH and monitor)
1 Clear Com System to monitor mix position
14 Wedge, bi-amped 2-way 2×15” Martin LE-700
2 Martin Audio LE2100 Monitor Speaker
2 Martin F1 2×15 sub with 2 W2 Tops or D&B C7/C4
1 Monitor amp racks (8 mixes) Crest/Crown/Lab.gruppen
8 2×18” subs
16 3-way boxes (Martin Audio/L-ACOUSTICS /d&b)
1 HHB Communication CDR-850 CD Recorder/Player
1 Marantz PMD570 Compact Flash Recorder
1 Tascam DA40 DAT Recorder
1 Apogee Big Ben 192k Master Digital Clock
1 Martin Audio MA4.2 amplifier
1 Martin Audio DLZ025 – W8C High Freq. Diaphragm
1 Martin Audio DLS540 – LE700/F1B 15” Speaker
1 Martin Audio DLS240 – WT2 12” Speaker
Mics: Shure Beta 52, Shure SM-91, Shure SM-57, Shure KSM-37, Shure Beta 56, Shure KSM-27, Shure Beta 58A, Shure SM9.
