For a place that acts as the tabernacle for old-time American music, the Grand Ole Opry has kept itself remarkably up to date. Like country music itself, it benefits from a periodic infusion of new ideas. The Opry is an institution that once banned drums from its stage (though bolder artists in the 1950s would have a kit playing behind the velour curtain of the Ryman Auditorium, the Opry's original home). But on a night this spring, the drums were as up-front in the mix as they are on the radio. Top 40 radio, even. This year marks the Opry's 80th anniversary, and it will herald the occasion by sending a scaled-down version of its five-hour shows out on the road. That's not an everyday occurrence anymore; the Opry did traveling tent versions of its traditional weekend shows in the 1930s, but after that, the Opry's peregrinations became sparser. During World War II, Opry stars toured American military bases in the United States and Central America, building wartime morale. Ernest Tubb took a group of Opry stars to New York's Carnegie Hall in 1947, and another Opry troupe played Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., that same year. The Opry's first overseas tour in 1949 took a troupe including Acuff, Little Jimmy Dickens and Hank Williams to U.S. military bases in England, Germany and the Azores. The Opry traveled to Houston in 1990 for a special performance for President George Bush, and then hit the road for a 10-city tour the following year. This year's road show will be fronted by Ricky Skaggs and feature Opry regulars including Patty Loveless and Del McCoury.
Opry Sound
The Opry House, on the Gaylord Opryland Resort & Convention Center sprawling campus on Nashville's eastern edge, became the show's current home in 1974. In 2000, it got a complete P.A. makeover. Nearly two-thirds of the way up the venue's 80-foot-plus interior and level with the lighting trusses, FOH mixer Tommy Hensley hunches over a 64-input ATI Paragon II with recall faders and assignable soft keys. It feeds a flown JBL VerTec center cluster comprised of 38 VT-4888 main boxes and six VT-4880 subs, with four AM-6315/64 speakers for the upper house delays, six MS- 26 cabinets for stage front fill and 14 Control 30 speakers for the under-balcony fills, all powered by 28 Crown MA series amps. The installation was done by Clair Brothers Systems and supervised by Dan Hines. Speaker control is with five Lake Contour DSP systems and a Gateway wireless touch screen. There's surprisingly little in the way of outboard gear. Then again, Hensley has little time to fiddle with it.
"This is a mass festival every night," he says, obviously relishing the controlled chaos that results from as many as 60 artists and musicians per show doing one or two songs each, a constant flow of music interrupted for two minutes every now and then for commercial breaks from the stage for the radio broadcasts on WSM (the longest-running show in radio history) and select broadcasts on the Great American Country cable network. The sound system is designed to overlay a semblance of order: Many of the stage's 59 inputs are dedicated lines–four electric guitar amps, seven for acoustic guitars, four featured vocal microphones, two for basses and so on. The solution for multiple pedal steel guitars is a custom-made four-headed guitar amplifier; players choose an input and it comes up on Hensley's console.
"Nothing is scripted," says Hensley, who mixed FOH for Kenny Chesney before coming to the Opry in 1999. "Vince Gill will walk up and use the A-T 4050 that's on the vocal mic stands for his acoustic guitar; Dierks Bentley walks out after him and plugs in the Countryman Type 85 DI box. You never know exactly what's coming. We don't get a sound check."
The API's snapshot recall contributes to controlling the show flow. Hensley has nearly filled the 450-location capacity with setups for many of the Opry's members and regular visitors. The fact that all drummers use one house kit also helps, as does the single piano. However, the snapshots assume that certain musicians will be in certain locations on the 80- by 60-foot stage. "Suddenly, you look up, and the fiddle player that's supposed to be on stage left is now on stage right," he says. "You get about 20 seconds to sort that out."
Acoustic Spider Holes
The Opry has no signature sound. The venue is acoustically damped and neutral for broadcast. (The Opry House added $200,000 of additional acoustical treatment last year in consultation with George Massenburg and musical director Steve Gibson.) The instruments are relatively stable in type. But while it's all country, country is different things to different people. "You can have Little Jimmy Dickens or Porter Waggoner playing stone country song from the '50s, and next up is JoDee Messina thumping and grinding, and you can't mix them the same," says Hensley. "Other FOH engineers come by and watch, and they are amazed that you can have that much variety from one song to the next. You can get into an EQ hole or have your gain structure messed up very quickly. The console snapshot automation can handle the faders, but I have to adjust everything else manually as it happens. It's not a job for the weary or faint of heart."
Larger, rock-type bands play with bluegrass string bands. Bleed is a constant problem; the drums are surrounded by clear Plexiglas gobos. "The emphasis used to be on radio, so we kept the house volume low," Hensley says. "But now, people are used to louder musical performances. We can run 95 to 96dB in here. The goal is to have people leave feeling satisfied that they saw a heck of a show."
Monitors
P.C. Salter and Kevin McGinty see the show close up from the stage-left monitor position as they alternate mixing. At one point on a four-way XTA splitter that also serves two broadcast operations and FOH, they work on an 80-input Harrison LPC console with 10,000 storage points for snapshot presets that Salter thinks might someday actually get filled. "We're at nearly 500 now," he says. Monitoring is by 14 Clair AM wedges, abetted by eight Shure PSM 700 personal stereo monitors and three Yamaha S-20 hot-spot monitors, plus a Meyer PSW-1 on the drum riser. Salter says the challenge on monitors is the same that Hensley faces at FOH– seconds to figure who's playing what, where they're going to play it and how loud or soft. "Before we got the automated Harrison, they were into the first chorus by the time you got them dialed up," he says.
The Opry has used mostly Audio-Technica microphones for the last five years, though they are experimenting with another brand and may switch later this year. The front line of vocals are A-T Artist elite 3500 microphones set on the Opry's trademark stands, housed in slender triangular boxes with the "WSM" logo on the sides. (The station's and the Opry's original sponsor in the 1920s was a local insurance company; the station call letters come from the insurer's motto, "We Shield Millions.") AT4050 microphones are designed to rest midway up the stands for acoustic instruments. The drum has a mix of A-T and Shure microphones. A pair of AKG 460s are in the piano; the new Yamaha MIDI piano eliminated the Barcus Berry pickup once used. There are both A-T and Sennheiser wireless systems, but the Opry is very much a wired show. Background vocalists, clustered upstage right, use Audix OM-7 microphones, a choice based as much on ergonomics as sound. "I like them 'cause they're dead," says Salter, who started with the Opry 22 years ago when microphones like the RCA DX-77 were everyday tools instead of museum pieces. "You back off them and you don't hear much. You're on them and they open it. I don't have to gate them and that's one more thing I don't have to keep an eye on."
When the Opry is on the road this summer and fall, it won't be nearly this complex. But the basic elements will be there, including the unscripted aspect. "We know who'll be out on the road with us, of course," says Opry general manager Pete Fisher. "But you still never know what they'll do, or who will show up. Last year, Vince Gill turned around at the show in Detroit and there was Bob Seger sitting there. You just never know."
Gear
Overheads: Audio-Technica AT-4047
Toms and snare bottom: Shure SM-98
Snare top: Shure SM-57
Hat: AKG C-480
Kick: Shure Beta 52
Basses: Ampeg SVT direct boxes
Acoustic bass: Sennheiser 421
Announcer: Shure SM-7
Drum and piano vocal: Sennheiser 5000 series wireless with ME5005 capsules
Wireless sing mics: A-T AEW T3300
Hard-wired sing mics: A-T AE 5400
Backup vocals: Audix OM-7
Instrument mics: A-T 4050
Piano: AKG 460 with pivoting head
Keys: Countryman direct boxes
Steel guitar amp: Sennheiser 421
Guitar amps: Sennheiser e609 and Shure SM-57
Instrument direct boxes: Ampeg SVT
Amp direct boxes: Hughes and Kettner Red Boxes
Monitor console: Harrison LPC
Monitor wedges: Clair Brothers' 12AM 14 stage mixes
Ear mixes: 8 stereo Shure Brothers PSM 700 with 8 Aphex Dominators
Monitor reverbs: 2 Lexicon MPX-1s
Applause mics: beyerdynamic MCE-86N shotgun mics
