An admission. When I put the wheels in motion to cover Alice in Chains on their stop in Vegas, my motives were less-than-transparent. Truth is, FOH photographer and production manager Linda Evans (who also happens to be my wife) had some really great shots of the band that she took at the Roskilde Festival in Denmark, and I really wanted to be able to use them.
So I got with Greg McVeigh of Guesthouse Projects who had sent me a note about AIC using some Heil mics and asked for a hookup with their sound guy.
So when I found out it was Tom Abraham, I had to do some research. I thought I did not know Tom but found very quickly that I had at least 20 e-mails in the past year that had come from sound guys I respect a lot and who had sent to a group that included both Tom and I. So we had numerous mutual friends.
Then I got his résumé and felt kind of silly that I did not know him already. It's a long and impressive list that includes everything from symphonies in upstate New York to stints with Garbage, Shakira and ZZ Top. He was handed the keys to Alice in Chains by Showco's M.L. Procise in 2007 and has been the band's FOH engineer and production manager ever since.
A big tip of the hat here. The Vegas date was the last stop on an 18-month tour. So in addition to the complications that Sin City can present, the crew was looking at a load-out that included a full inventory and arranging for rented gear to be sent back to various vendors. Not a night anyone is enthused about having some dork from the trade press hanging out. But Tom was incredibly accommodating and took significant time – on a day when he really had none to spare – to talk mics, touring in general and his hatred of large festivals. Take it away Tom…
FOH: How did you get into the biz? I was the guy in the band who owned the PA. Was that your path?
Tom Abraham: Well, I did the "normal" thing out of high school, went to a state college in New York and got a degree in computer science, got a job with General Electric because my Dad worked there, and became a civilian defense contractor for the Air Force working on graphics software for radars. This was old-skool graphics – Fortran code in the mid-late 1980s.
I was a guitar player in a band in high school – I quit to go to college and they replaced me, but I still did sound for them and other local bands – sorta built a client-base of upstate New York bar bands. Remember, that was a time when there was really a good rock club scene in the late 1980s. I became the house guy at a craphole called The Lost Horizon in Syracuse – that was at the time when it was really happening – we did like 20 bands a week – both national acts and locals. I did everything – FOH, monitors, patch, maintenance, load-in and out…you name it. Busted ass there for three years. It was sorta the place to play in upstate New York. I worked my 9-to-5 gig at General Electric, then my 5pm-to-3am gig at the club almost every day – I was young and had energy then!
One day, a solo shredder guitar player named Vinnie Moore played and I mixed and his manager was there. The manager offered me a two-week run with Vinnie around the Northeast and Middle Atlantic region. Me and one other guy doing everything. Anyway, we did it, and the manager, Pete Morticelli, said he knew a guy in New York who dealt with "big bands," and he was going to tell him I did a good job. Well, two days later, phone rings and its Tony D from Q-Prime Management in New York. Two days later, I was doing monitors for Dokken. That was 1989 I think…and I was off and running. Quit the "real job," and have been engineering ever since.
How long have you been with AIC?
Got the gig from M.L. at Clair/Showco in July 2007. Been doing it ever since.
I don't hear a southern accent, so why Nashville?
From upstate New York. Lived in Madison WI for a while due to working with Garbage for a long time and they were based out of there. Nashville…Hated winter, girlfriend bailed, had to get away. Nashville seemed as good as anywhere, and certainly warmer than what I have become used to.
Give me the lowdown on the gear you were carrying. Everything but stacks and racks, or full production?
Well, you saw the Vegas Joint show which was not normal. We used the house PA there just to make the day easy, and it's a good rig. We were carrying 28 Clair I5s, 24 Clair I3s, 20 Clair B2 subs and 12 Clair FF2 Front Fills. Great sounding rig, every damn day. All control was two Digidesign Profiles (FOH and Monitors). Besides the Clair controller for the PA, there really wasn't anything else. We used the Clair Lab.gruppen amps with the Dolby Lake Controllers built into the amps. Really works great.
How did you make the switch to Heil mics? And how did the band respond? In my experience, I can get away with changing pretty much any mic onstage until it gets to vocal mics, and then I better have a good reason and be able to convincingly make the case. That your experience?
Toby Francis turned me onto Heil in 2007. He introduced me to Bob Heil, and Bob is so nice and so accommodating. And Bob actually understands the shit we go through with certain artists. In the end, Heils sound better than "the industry standard." Just listen…let the band listen. They prove themselves by using your ears. With AIC – they trust me to pick what's going to work best, so with AIC, it's no issue making changes.
Why the Venue?
Well, it does everything I need it to…it allows me to implement my wacky ideas more than any other desk. That's the number one reason I use it. I don't like the big Venue surface at all, I use the Profile surface – I feel it's much better laid out. The big Venue surface is just WAY too big for what it does. Just wish Digidesign…Avid…would put some better faders in the Profile surface. I have literally replaced 20 faders on Profiles just on this last AIC tour alone. That's on probably 10 different Profile surfaces as well. They don't hold up in the real world touring beat-down. I have complained a hundred times…nobody listens. Which I could switch, but the Venue system allows me to implement my concepts, and they are easy to rent in any territory, and that's important nowadays, ‘cause nobody flies desks around anymore – you pick them up territoriality.
What about the festival thing? I know you guys did Roskilde, and I am under the impression that you spent much of the summer on the Euro festival circuit. How big an adjustment is it to go from the only headliner to a top band but still one of a dozen on any given day? What kind of adjustments and compromises do you find you have to make?
Don't get me started. I hate Euro festivals. And it's all I seem to do. Those festivals are quantity over quality. No time at all to put on a quality show – just bang it out and find a way to leave ASAP. It's miserable. And ramming your control gear in after doors are open and getting it out before the show is over is pure joy. May I quote fellow engineer Brad Madix? "Its like camping, only camping doesn't suck." Festivals are an evil we just have to deal with nowadays. Its trench warfare mixing. Damage control mixing. You are just trying to make it "not suck." Half of mixing is tweaking/working with the PA to make it do what you want – and that is taken away from you at a festival. The whole deal is crap. Don't get me started more than I already have. Headline shows are PURE JOY, comparatively.
