Danny Leake runs a company in Chicago called Urban Guerilla Engineers, through which he runs, as he says, "all my sound stuff" – both studio and live work. For almost two decades, that live work has included FOH duties with the legendary Stevie Wonder.
After seeing a transcendent Stevie set at the Hall of Fame shows in New York City, something happened that I have never had happen before in the better part of a decade that I have been at the helm of FOH magazine.
I did not meet Danny in New York. I got an email from him a couple of weeks after the show. You see, there had been what could have been a catastrophic failure at the show. It was the kind of thing that, in the hands of less capable and level-headed pros, could have meant the end of the show. But cooler heads and a good backup plan got things up and going. I wrote about it in my blog on ProAudioSpace as well as in the November issue of FOH ("Invisible People," Editor's Note, page 4).
And out of nowhere comes an e-mail. From Danny. It begins, "I've just received my November issue of FOH, and I see you want to know what happened during Stevie's performance." And then he goes on to tell me exactly what happened, and how they fixed it, and to heap praise on the sound company. "The Firehouse guys were magnificent. They got the stereo TV audio up on the master console and put that in the house. I gave people "heads up" on what was happening next. Stevie sings on one of three mikes, the mike being determined by what song he's singing, and he has a very non-scripted show. That, in addition to guest artists. It was touch-and-go, but the show went on."
As I told Danny later, I was totally blown away. In all the time I have done this and hundreds of interviews – including at least a dozen after a high-profile audio failure of some kind – this is the one and only time that someone took the time to completely and honestly come out and say, "Here's what happened."
As good luck would have it, Stevie – who is not touring right now – was doing a one-off in Vegas a couple of weeks after that email. I arranged to meet Danny before the show at the MGM (where they where on a Martin rig supplied by Smoother Smyth and Delicate Productions) and talk a bit. Some excerpts from the interview appear here and the entire session is available as video online at both www.fohonline.com and ProAudioSpace.
FOH: How did you move from the studio to doing live sound?
Danny Leake: It's a funny thing, I had been in the studio for years and years. I was working with Johnny Gill (former New Edition) and he said to me, "I don't have a front of house guy, would you come out on the road and mix for us?" I thought "how hard could it be?"
The first hit was at the Tokyo Dome. It was a festival-type situation with Hall and Oates and the Doobie Brothers, who were all big acts at the time. Everybody is talking about things and I had no idea what they were talking about-I was like a deer in the headlights. Somehow I pulled it off, but when the crowd, you know they said "Johnny Gil!" and 65,000 people went nuts. I became addicted to that. I never got that in the studio.
What about the Stevie gig?
I got a call saying that Stevie wanted to go out with an orchestra. I had done the Chicago Symphony, and they asked, "You know something about orchestras, don't you? How do you make this orchestra work with a live band?" And off the top of my head – I was joking – I said, "Sure, you just put a mic on everybody, drop it down to the console and call it a day." And they hired me. And I thought, "Oh, now I have to make it work."
Being inexperienced, you know – most guys have a separate orchestra console, but I had no concept of that. I couldn't imagine anything else other than mixing my own show. So I said I could mix the band and the orchestra, and they thought, "Great. We don't have to hire another engineer." So I had two consoles-one for the band and one for the orchestra. Then Stevie said, "You know, I kind of miss my synthesizers," so I ended up doing the Rick Wakeman thing with three consoles. I had all of the rhythm on my right, keyboards and vocals in front of me and the orchestra on my left.
It was a trip. But it worked out, and I've been around for 18 years now.
How have you found the transition from analog to digital on the live side?
Well, I have been doing digital in the studio since 1979. I cut the first multi-track digital session ever recorded in Chicago. You can make yourself sound good on digital, but digital is not the same as analog, and there are certain extra things you need to do to make sure things stay cool. I know how to make myself sound good on digital, and for me it is all about the sound.
I love the sound of a Midas. I started with one, and then Stevie kept adding inputs, so instead of a sidecar, I got a second Midas. and sure enough, I ended up with 93 inputs. But that and all the racks take up a lot of room, so management asked me if I could shrink it down. Since the two monitor guys were on D5s, I gave them a shot.
I like the way the D5 lays out. I was able to set it up, so for me, it flows very much the way an analog console would."
For more of our interview with Danny Leake-including his contention that the next generation of great studio engineers will come from the live world and not vice-versa, view the embedded video above, which has also appeard on Bill Evans' blog at ProAudioSpace. What? Not a member of PAS yet? Well, 5,000 of your friends and competitors are. Go to www.proaudiospace.com to sign up.
