Andy Meyer on juggling five bands, huge stage volume and a guitar rig that goes down to 30 Hz.
With bands like Mötley Crüe — whose members appear morally opposed to personal monitors and seem determined to prove their continuing viability by being louder than ever — paired with loud upstarts including Buck Cherry and Nikki Sixx’s solo side project on the same bill, one might assume that the biggest challenge of the recent Crüefest tour would have been dealing with sheer volume. Au contraire says Crüe FOH mixer Andy Meyer. While dealing with huge SPL can be an issue with five bands onstage every night, the biggest challenge is often just having enough time to get everything up and going.
When the tour hit Vegas with a slimmed-down, three-band schedule (gotta keep the show tight and get those people back out into the casino where they belong…), Meyer actually had time for dinner after sound check. We sat down with him backstage and had a chat over a plate of tour catering ribs…
FOH: OK, let’s start out talking system…
Andy Meyer: Well, first of all we are using the Clair I-5 PA. What you are seeing is a custom bumper, so the onstage column is the I-5, the offstage two columns are called I-5Bs. The I-5Bs are discreet from 85 Hz down. So, there are 48 subs — 24 per side — in the air. Plus, under the deck there are nine double-18 (BT) subs a side.
That’s a ton of subs.
Well, it kind of evolved because we wanted to fly the subs, get some low end up in the air. Basically, it's almost like an undisciplined mix — everything overlaps. This is not a case of neatly placing bandwidth like your guitar has this range and vocal has this range and things like that. For instance, Mick’s guitar, he wants it all the way down to 30 Hz. He wants sub coming out of it. He actually has a crossover in his rig that gives me a discreet output from 80 Hz on down off his guitar. I am moving a lot of air just with the guitar. I have so much overlap and energy, but it gives it this power that it needs to have. So, there are challenges in doing that. That takes a lot of PA. And it’s not so much about volume as it is about the bandwidth and being able to reproduce all of it. So, this PA and this band has been a wonderful marriage. It has been great. It’s got huge guts to it. When (Mick) gets going and I start driving the guitars it will move the hairs on your arm. It is very impressive.
Have you worked with the band before?
No. I haven’t worked for Mötley Crüe before; however, I have known Tommy for quite a few years now. His drum tech and programmer, Viggy Vignola, and I have toured together for five or six years straight. We were on Timberlake together and Sevendust…
Okay. You did Timberlake?
Yeah, I did. I mixed that whole tour — almost two years of work that was.
I missed that tour, but heard it was a pretty good show.
It was fantastic; Tommy would come out and see the shows. He liked what I did, and then when it came time he asked me to do this tour. It was very kind of him. I was actually working for Janet Jackson, but wasn’t quite sure whether she was going to tour or not.
How long are you out with Crüe?
Well, right now this leg is till September and then tentatively October we have Asia dates and South America dates.
It looks like it is all Venue up there.
It is all DiGi, yeah. There is a D-Show and a Profile at front-of-house and a D-show and a profile in monitor world. The D-Show is there to do the band and then the Profile’s for Vince. Vince has his own guy, which really is good because it is just too much trying to cover everybody and keep them all happy. It works well; a lot of artists are doing that. It's really hard to keep track of everything that’s going on, especially if your singer is flying around doing things and you are trying to watch all that and then one of the other guys needs something, you never see it. So, it is just a better way to do it. It really is.
Okay, so let’s get down to it. How loud is it?
The show is between a 104 and 106 at FOH, which is pretty loud for 110 feet back.
That’s pretty damn loud.
It’s up there, but it just about takes that to get over the stage.
Yeah, it's funny because I am seeing a lot of bands going out with… I mean it looks like a wall of amps, but they are almost all dummies and they’ve got a Palmer DI or something like that driving the system.
Yeah, exactly, but I am not just using palmers out here. We are using microphones. I am using Audio-Technica 4050s on the left, right and mono; Mick’s got a left, right and a mono. Well, basically, it is a left and right wet and then a dry. We'll call it that. That’s a better way to put it, and then I also have an AKG 414 left and an AKG 414 right, and so I have a 4050 and a 414 left, 4050 and a 414 right and two 4050s on the dry. I am using a palmer on the sub output instead of a mic; there’s also a mic up there that we use for monitors. For the sub output I needed a direct source because I am moving those low, low frequencies. I didn’t want to get it loose in the PA.
What about drums?
Well, we do individual cymbal miking, so there are six total inputs for that. There is a ride and five overheads. Now because they are so spread out we wanted to do close miking with Tommy because of the extreme volume of the drum monitor. Snare top is an AT5400, snare bottom is an AT4050 and there’s an AT 2500 in the kick drum. There is a gong drum that has an AT2500 underneath and then the toms are double mics. I have ATM25s on top and on bottom of each tom and that gives them a great deal of depth.
So, what do you have as far as total inputs?
I haven’t counted really. Let's see… we've got, well, the 2500s or 2 inputs of kick, that’s four, snare top five, snare bottom six, hat seven, then there are 9 tom input’s, overheads, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, cowbell 23, perc trigger-24, 808-25. All right, so there are 25 inputs there.
Have you ever tried the 2500 on guitar?
Oh, yeah. That’s what I used on Justin’s tour on the guitars. I did a 2500 on each guy, no EQ, just turned it up, which worked out fabulously.
Yeah, turn it on and go. How do you have to deal with this kind of low end?
Well, if the downbeat with the pyro concussion is exact, which doesn’t happen often, it can cause damage. We were blowing up 18s earlier in the tour and not being able to figure out why and… I knew the concussion was moving the mix a bit. You know, I was watching some of the inputs hitting pretty hard, but I was listening back to a show a few days ago when one of those hits happened, and man I will tell you what, it moved the drivers in my headphones, it hit perfectly on the downbeat — everything aligned, which is hard to do man.
So, what are we missing?
We are using new Powersoft digital amplifiers on the sub-bass.
This is the first tour I have heard them on.
They are a single-space amplifier that produces 7,700 watts at 2 ohms per channel with built-in DSP. It’s a very powerful amplifier.
Oh, so does that cut down four or five racks?
Oh, it cut down a couple of amp racks, yeah. Because we’ve got three in one rack and four in another — that’s four spaces and three spaces, that would have been two full amp racks.
We were talking about stage volume. What the hell are the side fills that were flying?
Oh, those are prism blue boxes. They are all prism boxes. So, there are four a side in the air and a sub on the ground and we don’t always do that. In sheds, it is just one sub and two tops on the ground. The reason is the sight-line issue because of the arena show, so we flew them up in the air and you need more when they go up in the air really.
I have seen so many more people over the years going in-ear that I am not seeing the kind of stage volumes I used to.
Well, you know what? That would be great. You know these guys have just done it so long and it is natural. It is so natural to them, I guess, to have that kind of wall surrounding them and it works.
Have you been on the Venue system for a while?
Well, I tried the Yamaha for a while, the PM5D. My trick other than the Big Ben Word Clock on it was the Waves slot card for the console. So, I put a Waves card in and I came ADAT Optical out into an Apogee mini-DAC, which is a D/A converter and so it basically bypasses the whole deal. It goes optical right out into the Apogee and the Apogee did my conversion, my D/A, plus the Wave slot card also has an L1+ ultra-maximizer, I put right on the main mix. It was pretty rocking actually. That console sounded pretty damn good like that. The Venue, however, is a much better sounding console right out of the gate, and the snapshot automation is amazing. It is my console of choice.
With the stage so loud, what is the best way you work with the monitor mixer?
It’s imperative that you have a good relationship and you are on the same page with everything. We are getting through it and making it happen. Every little thing that changes on the deck sonically alters what I get.
It’s all about making it work no matter what.
Exactly, results only. That’s the game, man. Get a great result.
