The major misconception about blues is that it is sad, simple music for the downtrodden masses.
Likewise, many FOH engineers toil under the misconception that mixing blues is "easy and simple"–perhaps even "boring"–as compared to doing sound work for artists in other genres.
Imagine having to mix 12 bands, of varying blues styles, for a scheduled 10-hour show, doing only a line check (blues fest schedules rarely allow for soundchecks), under a hot sun (or in inclement weather), without attracting the attention of or ticking off the local decibel police, and making sure the plug is pulled in time to meet the town curfew. And let us not forget–since a blues festival is a once-a-year event, there's no room for inadequacy. Event organizers are extra critical of the mix. In some cases, these events are integral to a town or city's tourist trade. If you can't achieve a good crisp, clear sound that doesn't offend the audience (which is normally composed of anyone from ages one to 90), or if too many festivalgoers are complaining that they "can't hear the vocals," chances are you won't be invited back. Now that's pressure. With the blues festival season just around the corner, FOH invited a number of sound engineers and production companies to explain how they have come away unscathed from the blues festival hot zone. Some of their comments may surprise you.
Unity Gain
Why do blues fests present so many difficulties for sound engineers? As stated earlier, in many cases, sound engineers don't have the luxury of performing sound checks for every artist. In fact, it is almost unheard of, unless you are a major national act (which sometimes brings its own FOH engineer). There's just not enough time, and the changeover is super-quick (about 15 minutes in most cases on well-run festivals).
"It is not unheard of that the first song at a festival is usually the sound check," confirms Todd Mitchell, production consultant at Great Lakes Sound, which handles the Toledo BluesFest, among other events. "It is good to have a line check and listen to what the instruments are doing."
"We don't do sound checks," admits Tim Taraldsen, crew chief, production manager and sound engineer for Total Production Services, which worked the 2004 Tampa Bay BluesFest at the Vinoy Waterfront Park, St. Petersburg. "In blues it is a quick run-through right before your set and away you go."
"We have no permit to make noise until the start of the show," explains Dennis Deem of Sound On Stage, which handles the San Francisco Blues Festival. "Sound check aside, I haven't really listened to the P.A. full on until the first band starts. That is definitely challenging. I just am basically ballparking it out of experience after a while. It is the best-guess theory."
The Day Before
Most FOH engineers and production companies prefer to arrive at the venue a day (or more) early to set up and check their sound systems. If a production company has worked a festival in the past, recalling setup is the first order of priority. "About a month before Blues Fest we actually assemble the system, test it, take it down to the park, hang it up, hang all of the delays, and we fire up the laptop," explains Ian Hunt of Chicago Sound, which has been handling the Chicago Blues Festival since the early '90s. "We have been storing our settings from year to year and what we normally do is recall last year and turn it on and make adjustments. The system belongs to the City of Chicago and is 14 years old, so some of the parameters have altered. We take a lot of care with the main speakers; they are re-coned every year to operate normally. So that gives us a couple of weeks to play around with the system. When it is hanging up there for a couple of weeks, that's when we do our testing."
"Over time, as we went from stacking TMS4s to flying 850s, we went through the tweaking point," says Tim Taraldsen. "The 850 rig has been out there on the waterfront in Tampa Bay, Fla. since 1999, so I hope I have a learning curve this year with a new array."
Knowing what to expect from musicians, and what equipment they use, can save a production crew time and grief. Having a solid and professional backline waiting for musicians can speed things along and benefit the overall sound. "Most of the backline gear in use at the San Francisco Blues Festival is rental gear, which is an advantage," says Sound On Stage's Dennis Deem. "You might have different people playing the gear, but it is the same Leslie cabinet and it is the same grand piano. That is the one thing that I have in my favor. I've learned things over the years just by virtue of the fact that different acts use the same equipment. It is virtually all the same input list band after band."
"The whole idea of a successful gig is when you feel the spirit," Cleary says. "You get that little magic that happens. Anything that is an impediment to that is frustrating. You have to be realistic, you know? These sound guys are dealing with 10 acts on the same stage through the course of one day. A lot of them are temperamental musicians, and guys have just come off the bus after riding for six hours, not eating properly. Maybe even hungover. Tempers get frayed and it is hard. But when it works well it is lovely."
"The artists at blues events are a lot more laid back than a hard rock act or some of the more contemporary artists who have to have a processed sound," says King Biscuit Blues Festival FOH engineer Mike Grimm of CSS Audio. "So as long as you get a good balance out in front, and the volume level is comfortable–not too soft, not too loud–and you have a good mix, most people are tickled with what's going on."
A good mixer knows that he has to put the most important elements of the sound out front. "Growing up in Georgia my idol was always Duane Allman," explains Williams Lindsay, who worked FOH for the 2004 Blind Willie McTell blues festival in Thomson, Ga., under contract for Tracer Audio. "I definitely like keeping the guitars hot. However, we had Pinetop Perkins, and you want to keep his piano hot.
"If I remember correctly, I did bus the piano inputs through a group for just a little bit extra gain," continues Lindsay. "Pretty much, like I do with any festival, I put eight to 12 channels of insertable compression, and, more than likely, I had a compressor on the kick drum, compressor on the snare with gates on the toms. If I have a lot of dynamic processing, I will insert it and use it as necessary, and if it is not needed I will just hit the bypass switch."
Getting your input lists straight is not just a technical concern. For King Biscuit's Mike Grimm, it also saves precious time. "How can we make it run smoothly and stay on schedule from the technical end?" asks Grimm. "Leave a blank input here and there so that if somebody comes up with a bigger act you can quickly insert into the open channels. We have headset communication from front of house to monitors. So as soon as things get set up, or once my monitor guy decides what is going to get plugged in where, even if it is during one of the acts playing, he'll ring me up and say, 'This is going to go in here; the next band has this many players, etc.
"We will have the first 10 inputs on the mixer be dedicated to drums," explains Grimm. "We will only be using perhaps six or eight of them for most of the acts, but we have a few spares in there. As I said, we do that in case someone has percussion or if a guy comes in with his own set and needs a couple more toms miked. We then have an open slot. Bass always shows up on, say, channel 11. I'm using this as just a 'for instance.' Then the next three channels might be dedicated to guitar, whether there is one guitar on stage or three. Then after that we might leave a spot for a harmonica or two. Then we would leave five inputs open for keyboards, Hammond organs, etc. Beyond that we would leave some open spots for horns and vocals."
Oftentimes, FOH engineers will hear complaints from an audience member or members about not being able to hear the (fill in the blank). Sometimes the complaint is an accurate observation. Other times it isn't. However, whether the complaint is legitimate or not, if the sound is not being heard by everyone, eventgoers may walk out en masse, and vendors will be hurt financially. Sponsors won't get the exposure they were expecting, and money is lost. All of this means the FOH engineer is responsible. "If you provide a sound system that does the job right and covers the area appropriately, and that takes care of the audience, which means the promoters are 90% of the way happy, that puts me 90% of the way happy," says Raul Saurez of Third Ear Sound. "But when you are not covering an area consistently and can't decide who you are trying to mix for (yourself? The guy 10 feet over to your right?), that is when you wind up in trouble."
They Call It Stormy Monday…
Two of the longest running and most-loved blues festivals are also the ones that seem to generate the most rain every year: the Chicago Blues Festival and the King Biscuit Blues Festival. Yet, despite rain and/or the threat of rain, fans come out, year after year, in record numbers. Fan resiliency for each of these multi-day, multi-stage shows is what breathes new life into the event year in, year out. "One morning, before the start of the festival, we found a little dome tent set up at 8 a.m. not far from the FOH position," says Mike Grimm. "These guys were inside, set up with their refreshments, and they could see through this little clear window on the tent flap. That is what I call preparation."
"Unless the weather is horrible, they won't go home," chimes in Chicago Sound's Ian Hunt. "If they won't go home, we won't go home–provided we can keep stage safety and we are comfortable with the water levels, or no water level, on stage."
When it comes to inclement weather, however, some FOH engineers have to be careful what they wish for. "We were getting these terrible dust storms last year and I was hoping for a little rain just to pat down some of the dirt that was being picked up by the wind," says Grimm. "Then, wouldn't you know it? It poured."
"Any time you have an outdoor festival we'll get big, dusty winds," explains Rayne Gordon, set-up chairman for the King Biscuit Blues Festival in Helena, Ark. "If you are wishing for a little rain, it will pour."
Despite the problems King Biscuit faced in 2004, festivalgoers, which included some blues industry VIPs, were pleased with the sound." The sound at the King Biscuit Festival was everything an artist and an audience can hope for–clear, crisp, well balanced and punchy," says Alligator Records head Bruce Iglauer.
Probably the one place in the country you can count on consistently great weather is California. While California festivals are generally not in danger of being washed, they can be afflicted by fog. Says Raul Saurez, general manager at Third Ear Sound in Richmond, Calif., which works the Monterey, Russian River and Santa Cruz blues festivals, "Fog is probably the biggest inclement weather issue we have in California," he says. "The fog can change the sound quality. The system EQ balance will change if the day starts off foggy and then becomes a nice, hot sunny day. We just work our way through it. I know some of the guys in the Midwest have tornadoes, so we are lucky. Pretty much from May through October, we have nice weather."
"We've had weather come in and hit us pretty hard–especially overnight when we would have to scramble and get everything covered up," says Loren Wiklander of the Duluth Bayfront Blues Festival. "We usually have FOH tents with side walls and a monitor tent with side walls. Then we just tarp down everything good, rope it and tie it off. We can still operate with a light drizzle and rain if we have to, since the front-end boxes are all waterproofed and sealed."
As with many outdoor venues, many FOH engineers are forced to work from underneath a roof in inclement weather. These structures can obstruct their hearing. "The worst part from an audio perspective is that you have to stay covered up at FOH to keep from ruining your equipment," says Grimm. "I hate mixing from underneath a roof. Even in blazing heat, I would rather have the sun on me than be under a roof, because you get a different sound underneath the roof. We were underneath a roof for two days this past year. In fact, we had to have side panels up because we had drifting wind, and little breezes would blow stuff in on the mixer. All I had was a window in front of the board to see up to the stage. That means that I make several trips outside of the tent from time to time to get a good perspective on what everyone else was hearing, as compared to what I was hearing inside the tent."
In the case of three-day King Biscuit event, the Sonny Boy Williamson II main stage venue (there are four other performance areas for the festival, including the Gospel stage, which is indoors) has a 25-foot high roof. It does not have scrim to catch drifting rain. In years past, breezes blew misty rain on the stage–almost clear out in the middle of it. (Note: 2004 was the first year the KBBF used a roofed-over stage for its main performance space. Festival organizers plan on adding scrim for the 2005 KBBF, the festival's 20th anniversary.)
This raises interesting and pertinent questions: What happens when weather gets too bad? When do FOH engineers/crew chiefs decide to pull the plug? "If lightning strikes nearby, we will shut down," says Grimm. "Most guys who have done this for a long time have a box full of tarps and can cover up what needs to be covered up. I've been in some tremendous storms, and we had only five minutes to cover up, but we survived it. You always get a sick feeling in the pit of your stomach any time you see dark clouds roll in. Especially at night when you can't tell what is overhead."
The stage for the Toledo BluesFest, located in Promenade Park, is made of 4-by-4 wood panels and metal frames, with two 12- by 12-foot sound wings on both sides. The first concern of any sound engineer/production company should be to ensure that the stage isn't one large lightning rod. It's best not to "fry your headliner," joked one FOH mixer." When the weather turns fall in Toledo, safety always has to be the number one priority," says Todd Mitchell of Great Lakes Sound. "We are dealing with human lives up there, and it is always easier to replace equipment as opposed to human life. Any time there is lighting in the area, things have to be powered down. If it is wet on the stage, no one plays on the stage until it is dried off."
"If there is a sighting of lightning, tornadoes, general high winds or heavy rain, the event will be stopped," confirms Curtis Slough, special events manager for CitiFest, Inc. (organizers of the Toledo BluesFest), in Toledo, Ohio.
Most companies are ready for whatever Mother Nature tosses at them. "Tarp patrol is on duty from day one with rain tarps laid out ready for all positions," says Tim Taraldsen. "Kill point is a judgment call from your CC/SE/PM. Wind is not our friend, nor is lightning. If there is any water build up on stage, you are better off playing it safe."
The Howlin' Wolf Blues Festival, unlike many of the festivals featured here, is held indoors at the West Point Civic Center in Mississippi, where the crowds can climb as high as 1,000. This venue, surprisingly, presents perhaps as many, if not more, challenges than an outdoor show. Why? The Civic Center has vaulted ceilings with iron beams, a steel roof, and a carpeted stage with hardwood flooring that FOH engineer Scott Allen contends, "saves the Civic Center from just becoming a screaming mess."
The light fixtures are painted with nine plates of glass in each light that act as virtual mirrors. This is not the most desirable atmosphere in which to mix blues. "The Civic Center is not the easiest building to get a good sound in," says Allen. "The room will work with your P.A., but you have to be sure you don't overdo it. In 2004, I used only a 2×18 subwoofer and two EV QRX boxes per side. That helped out because we usually get a lot of low-end vibration that can overtake the material. It is almost an acoustical nightmare, but has proven to be conquerable."
"Since our venue for the Howlin' Wolf Blues Festival lacks great acoustics, we are very fortunate to have Scott to get the sound right," explains Richard Ramsey, program director of the Howlin' Wolf Blues Society in West Point, Miss., and organizer of the HW Blues Festival. "Wolf would accept no less."
Location, Location, Location…
Sometimes the sound quality of the mix is integrally tied to the venue's location. The Toledo BluesFest, while offering scenic views of the Maumee River, presents some sound design problems. "The buildings behind the park and adjacent to the park can create a nasty echoing effect for downtown," says Slough. "Fortunately most of our 'loud' music events are held on a weekend or after 5 p.m., so as to not interrupt the downtown business community."
"The venue, Promenade Park, is very wide, and not very long," says Great Lakes Sound's Mitchell. "We typically provide 180 to 240 degrees of sound coverage per side. The stage also faces towards the downtown area, so reflections from the high-rise buildings have always been an issue. We could eliminate a lot of those reflections by flying the P.A. system. However, flying is not usually an option due to the architecture of the park. It would not be cost effective."
"Up on the hills of Duluth they have a lot of TV towers and a lot of RF interference, so we have to be careful of the wireless microphones to make sure our frequency bands are dialed in properly and we are not getting a lot of RF bleed," says Loren Wiklander, of the Bayfront Blues Festival.
"We occasionally have problems with electrical power on the site, largely because we share a transformer with Soldier Field," explains Ian Hunt of Chicago Sound. "There is massive power drainage from Soldier Field as lights come up and we suddenly find there is not enough current left for us. That is something we have been battling for years. It has never been a serious issue, but occasionally we run the side stages on generators and leave the main stage on the main power to ease the load. I don't really like using generators, but you don't really have a choice sometimes."
Local ordinances have a lot to do with how festival sound carries. (More about this in a moment.) Dennis Deem, of Sound On Stage (San Francisco Blues Festival), must play by the rules just to set up his equipment. "We can load in on a Friday for a Saturday show, but we can make no noise," explains Deem. "If you drive and your tires touch the grass, it is a $300 fine or something ridiculous like that. To get anything out to onto the field–I have one delay tower and FOH console–the park service brings a little utility cart and we actually have to put everything on it, a piece at time, through the grass. We have no permit to make noise until the show begins."
Allowing for Anomalies
If you have ever seen or worked a blues or roots festival, you've undoubtedly been exposed to homemade and/or custom-made instruments such as jugs, broom handles and washboards. For instance, popular blues crooner Janiva Magness will typically come on stage dressed in a stainless-steel washboard (equipped with breast cones) that covers the entire front of her body. At the 2003 Howlin' Wolf Blues Festival, acoustic country blues artist Mark Lemhouse (a one-man act) took the stage at the Civic in West Point. "He played guitar and couple of other funny little instruments," remembers FOH engineer Scott Allen. "Mark also had this stomp pad that was basically a piece of 2-by-4 with plywood on the top and bottom of it. Essentially, it was a little box that he would stomp on that he amplified by using a transducer pick-up–the ones that often go in your acoustic guitar."
Says Michael Powers of Lemhouse's label, Yellow Dog Records, "Mark's stomp box adds the bottom end when he plays North Mississippi-style trance blues. It lets him add that hypnotic beat without needing a backing drummer."
"Basically, it is a flat, 2-inch-thick stomp box, about the size of a normal kitchen cutting board, loaded with a stick-on guitar pickup," says Lemhouse, who plays a National Resonator steel acoustic guitar while he gets to stompin'. "I use duct tape with a bunch of rags to center the pickup and run a quarter-inch line out to a DI. I'll kick the thing and then play a little slide guitar as I do it to get a booming kick drum sound."
"We were used to doing four-piece rock bands, and we were thinking, 'What do you do with this thing?'" Allen explains. "We had never really miked anything like this before. Luckily, we got to work with Mark a little bit before the show, and he helped us EQ-out the sound he was going for. What we decided to do was just pop the line into a DI."
The sound at the show was more than Lemhouse could ask for, he says, and he had to "give props" to the sound guy for knowing what to do and successfully navigating the strange homemade instrument.
DB Level
How loud is too loud? That is often a question that FOH engineers allow others to answer for them due to political and legal concerns. Because of local ordinances, civic groups and general complaints from local neighborhood residents, engineers have to play it by the book to ensure that sound doesn't carry too far or too loud for too long.
"As far as the directions Richard Ramsey, the event organizer, gives me, he says, 'Look, I kind of run this thing, but I do have a superior, too,'" says Allen, FOH for the Howlin' Wolf Blues Festival. "He says, 'If something is going wrong, they tell me!' [laughs]. Richard has walked up to us before and said, 'Keep it down a bit.' After a certain point in the show, I think, after we reach 9 or 10:00, some of the older crowd leaves. We have about an hour or so, so we can kind of cut loose. We can push the dB limit up to about 105."
"I spent the first couple of years doing battle with the dB police," says Dennis Deem of Sound On Stage. "Because the San Fran fest is on federal land–Great Meadow at Fort Mason–we can only make so much noise. After a couple of years, I figured out that if I'm at 105 at FOH, then I should be good at the back of the meadow.
"It used to be that the ranger would have a dB meter at the back of the meadow," Deem continues. "I'd look back and I see her making the trip up to FOH position, and I knew she was coming because it was too loud. I had a dB meter at Front of House and I figured out what her breaking point was in relation to mine. I could set the P.A. so that it probably wouldn't get past that optimum level too far. After the initial couple of years, they have never complained since about the level."
"For the Chicago Blues Festival, local ordinances cover the field and surrounding environment," says Ian Hunt of Chicago Sound. "There are a number of interpretations of it, but the one that everyone seems to be working toward is a maximum of 88 dB-A at the property boundary. Depending on winds and weather, that translates to 104 dB-A at the house. There are representatives from OSHA who hang around the Front of House mix position just to monitor the level. Politically, these things can be very tricky sometimes. Local residents can raise a lot of fuss."
Hunt solves dB problems by using "measuring" microphones. "We put them out at the perimeter, and they feed back to a little computer box at the Front of House position, which presents the operator with three lights: a red one, an amber one and a green one," Hunt says. "If your performance has been at a reasonable level, you will be showing a green light. That means you can turn up a bit. If you are showing an amber light, you have pretty much used up your allowance. If you are showing a red light, it is time to turn down."
"Due to our location, Promenade Park, which is located primarily in a business district in downtown Toledo, we have not had to oblige to any noise ordinance, per se," says Curtis Slough, special events manager at CitiFest, Inc. "We do work closely with the City of Toledo and the Toledo Police Department. They know our schedule of events well before the season starts, and if they have any concerns with the times of the events, they let us know."
All of this is to say nothing of how well received the sound is by the audience. Because the ages of most festivalgoers vary widely, it can be challenging to please everyone. Or, more importantly, to not blow them away with volume. "We see people of all ages coming to the Bayfront Blues Festival," says Loren Wiklander of Audio Visions Minnesota. "It seems to be the same crowd every year with their lawn chairs and they crowd around the FOH mix position."
"We try to keep our shows, at the FOH location, at anywhere from 100 to 105 dB in a festival situation," says Great Lakes Sound's Todd Mitchell. "A lot of it is knowing, from experience, to first look at who's going to be at the festival–the demographics. You have to look at the type of music you are dealing with. Certainly a level for an acoustic jazz trio is not going to be the same as for the Rolling Stones. You have to look at the people who are attending the festival, you have to look at the entertainment on the stage. There are some venues that have a dB limit. It is always a constant struggle between band and FOH engineer, promoter and attendee."
Despite all the hassles and uncertainties, FOH engineers love to work blues festivals. They approach blues festivals much in the same way they do other gigs–as a fun challenge. "You have to be prepared for anything," says Mitchell. "You have to be on top of your equipment and know what all the buttons do."
Will Romano is author of Incurable Blues: The Troubles & Triumph of Blues Legend Hubert Sumlin (Backbeat Books).
