Blue-collar heartland rocker Bob Seger and his Silver Bullet Band spent last spring and this winter on their first tour since 2006’s Face the Promise tour, earning a spot right in the middle of Pollstar’s Top 25 North American Tours of 2011, selling over a half million tickets for 48 shows in 45 cities, and winding up like many good runs with a stop in my hometown of Jacksonville, FL.
The set list reads like the tracks on Seger’s retrospective double-CD, Ultimate Hits: Rock and Roll Never Forgets, culled from 11 platinum and seven multi-platinum albums, with encores that include, “Against the Wind,” “Hollywood Nights,” “Night Moves” and “Rock and Roll Never Forgets.”
Veteran front of house engineer and fellow Florida native Andy Meyer mixes on a full-sized VENUE D-Show with a 16-fader sidecar, assisted by Clair crew chief and system tech Brett Stech and PA technician Ben Blocker.
The loudspeaker system is a standard Clair arena design, employing 14-box i5 arrays flown alongside 14-box i5B sub arrays, with 12-box i5 side-hangs. The system is supplemented with eight BT-218 “Bow Tie” double-eighteen subwoofers, stood on end at 5-foot intervals across the front of the stage, delay-tapered towards the outside to spread the lows out evenly.
Clair FF-2 single-eight front-fills are used at Seger’s downstage-center and wing positions, in addition to individual i3 dual-twelve line array enclosures used as front-fills towards each side. The entire system is powered with Clair Lab.gruppen-loaded StakRaks.
Against the Wind
At FOH, Meyer employs a few strategies gleaned from touring with Rage Against the Machine, Sevendust, Guns N’ Roses and Motley Crue, (who he’ll be in residence with in Las Vegas at the Hard Rock’s “The Joint” next month). Meyer uses an Apogee Big Ben digital word clock to synchronize the signal chain from the VENUE console to the Lake system processor.
Meyer sends two sub-mixes digitally from his VENUE’s AES outputs — one vocals, the other instruments — processing each with one of two MindPrint DTC premium channel-strip processors, used mainly to “breath a little air” into each. DTC employs parallel EQing. Unlike standard (serial) equalization — in which the entire signal is piped through all filters — with parallel EQ, only frequencies chosen to process pass through a given filter.
These two sub-mixes are then returned via AES to a Dolby DLP at FOH that supplies the system’s Lab.gruppen PLM amps’ dual AES inputs with both feeds, allowing Meyer to shade the vocal in the lowest array enclosures to improve gain before feedback.
Meyer also employs Waves’ Renaissance Channel’s (R-CH) EQ and dynamics on every input of his D-Show, preferring it to VENUE’s on-board channel processing, citing improved sonic clarity, which he challenges every FOH engineer to compare for themselves. He also uses McDSP’s ML4000 multi-band compressor on Seger’s vocal.
Audio-Technica’s Artist Elite 5000 Series UHF wireless system is used with an AEW-T5400 handheld wireless microphone for Seger’s vocal. If you’re my age, you know the words to these songs, and with an entire arena singing along, it can be difficult to get the lead vocal on top. Meyer points out that he mixes Seger at 98 to 100 dB, quieter than he would most of his other clients.
Meyer’s well-stocked FOH outboard rack includes three ATI Pro6 EQ-and-dynamics channel-strip processors — derived from the legendary Paragon console — which he employs for Seger’s vocal. Meyer uses Waves Renaissance Reverb plugin for vocals, horns and snare drum, and he also inserts Massey Plugins’ L2007 Mastering Limiter on the main busses.
When first asked to mix this tour, Meyer went back and studied the catalog, listening carefully to get a grasp of frequency, placement and imaging within each song, ultimately choosing an old-school approach that maintained the music’s tradition — nothing too big or crushing — but using a combination of modern audio equipment to spark and feed the analog flame.
American Band
Rock icon (and Grand Funk drummer when not touring with Seger) Don Brewer’s DW five-piece drum kit is miked using AT5400 vocal mics on kick-drum, as well as for snare top and bottom. That might sound unusual, but Meyer says it’s an obvious choice and a testament to the mic’s all-around worthiness, knowing it employs the same element as their classic AT4050 large-diaphragm studio mic, which handles high SPLs while providing accurate, natural response.
Earthwork’s DP30/C “periscope” TomMics are used on toms and Neumann KM-184 pencil condensers are used for overhead mics and on Brewers’ Sabian ride and hi-hat cymbals. As with GFR, Brewer also sings, here into a hardwired AE5400.
Kenny Greenberg’s guitar rig — a Matchless head with a Category 5 dual twelve cabinet and a Fender Super Reverb — is miked with a pair of Audio-Technica AT4060 large-format cardioid condenser tube mics, which Meyer is enjoying after many tours where pyrotechnics have prevented using tube mics on stage.
Seger sits down with a Martin HD-28 acoustic guitar on “Night Moves” and “Against the Wind” and sits at the piano for “We’ve Got Tonight” and “Turn the Page.” This piano is a baby grand shell that houses a Yamaha MOTIF XS8 keyboard, plugged in to a pair of green Radial Engineering J-DIs, which are employed throughout the stage.
Backup singers Shaun Murphy (ex-Little Feat singer), Laura Creamer and Barbara Payton sing into Shure UR2 wireless handhelds with Beta 58 capsules, and UHF-R receivers are used for a few of the band’s wireless instruments as well.
Alto Reed not only doubles on tenor and baritone sax, all miked with ATM350 clip-on mics, but he also plays acoustic guitar, organ, tambourine, maracas and even timpani drums, as he has for years. For the four-piece Motor City Horns, four Royer R-121 ribbon mics are used for two trumpets, a trombone and another saxophone. They play on 15 of the show’s 25 songs.
More Cowbell
Bill Chrysler, who also hails from Michigan, originally requested a Heritage 3000, but is mixing monitors on a Studer Vista 5, required because of the large number of outputs needed for all the wedges and IEMs. In addition to Seger, Campbell, Greenberg, Frost and Reed are all using Sennheiser SR 2050 IEMs.
Chrysler’s credits include a decade mixing monitors for Christina Aguilera, multiple tours with Maroon 5 and John Mayer, and this past year he also worked for Rihanna and Lionel Richie. He is assisted by monitor tech Josh Weibel.
The stage is well-covered with Chrysler’s favorite wedge, Showco’s single-twelve SRM floor monitor, using them for BGs, horns, piano, Hammond organ and drums. Downstage-center for Seger, a single SRM wedge is used for his vocal, flanked by a stereo pair for instruments and stereo effects, and additional wedges are placed on the stage’s side wings for Seger when he’s moves over there. Seger also monitors with a single-bud JH Audio JH16 PRO.
Chrysler supplements Vista’s 4-band output EQ with 15 channels of tc electronics EQ Station, keeping its Motofader-64 flying-fader remote at his right hand. He uses a pair of Yamaha SPX-990s for Alto Reed’s saxophone delay and reverb and a third for Seger’s vocal. He mentions that Studer’s Vista is laid out more for FOH than monitor mixing, but that Vista’s sound quality is impeccable. He employs a scene for each song and uses subgroups to give lead instruments bumps and rides.
Chrysler adds that many of these musicians have been working together for decades and they get along like family.
