Over the course of a 20-year career, John C. Clark III has gone from stagehand work in clubs in his hometown of Albuquerque, N.M. to running FOH for R&B phenom Kanye West. Today he finds himself on the backend of West's "Touch the Sky" tour–a massive undertaking that started out as a coheadline thing with U2 where Clark was driving a huge Meyer-powered rig that included four M3D line array loudspeaker s, eight MILO cabinets, four MICA units, and nine 700- HP subwoofers per side–doing one-off fly dates with the system du jour and making his boss sound great on whatever gear he is given. FOH: Tell all about yourself in three easy lessons.
John C. Clark III: I started in 1986 so it's been about 20 years. I started out like everybody else–small. Not like the big boys who live in a major area. I lived in Albuquerque and worked in some clubs doing a lot of stagehand work, coming up little by little, small tours. But now I'm dealing with Kanye West, working with big boys and working with big boy gear. Kind of cool!
Do you carry a console with you?
We do a lot of fly dates so usually, no. My production manager will specify good gear and he is a big fan of Midas consoles, XL4s, Heritage 3000s. I am too, so it was fortunate that he put them in the tour budget. That's what I was getting and it was good for me. When we did the tour it was a little larger. There were some internal politics with the artist that traveled with him, so they integrated two crews and I got bumped to monitors and the other guy went to FOH. He used the VENUE and Pro Tools and stuff like that.
I was supposed to get a Heritage for monitors but at the last minute I got a PM5D. I had some training on it, but little experience. So it was a little nerve-wracking at first, trying to get it to do things I wanted it to do, but we got through it. The opening act had to travel with a monitor engineer and he was very familiar with it so between the two of us we got through it. I actually like the 5D but I haven't gotten to the point where I get to ask for it. If I were to ask for something I would probably ask for Midas. It depends on the budget and who is providing the gear, so we usually take what they have.
After that one time I didn't see the console again for three or four months. The next time I saw it, it was day one of the rehearsals. I'll tell you–just take your time on it. It is still just a console. It has certain knobs that do more than one thing, but you always have your output section in front of you and you always have your input section in front of you. That's what got me through, I just went very slowly and didn't do all of the adjustments that I wanted to do at first. Go very slowly and work things out.
It seemed real clunky at first because I wanted to push this button and do this and push that button and do that. But once you get to that point where you're comfortable with the buttons, then you will find that it is really fast. In an analog console you are spending that time reaching all over the place finding the button, you have your rack with the EQs and effects. Once you figure out of where your output is you can put some processing on it. Once you get to the point on the 5D where just touching that output and putting your dynamics on it when you go back, it is quicker. If you don't know it that well, it doesn't feel like it is quicker.
The scary part about the 5D is that there are so many different ways to do the same thing. You will run across people who do it differently and they will tell you to do it their way. You'll go–"Wait a minute, why are you doing it that way?" Then you'll run into a third person who will do it even differently that the other guys.
It is better to figure out the way you want and go for it.
You can try to do it other ways, but do it in baby steps. There is a feature on there called fader flip and once that you see it you are going to go, "That is really cool," and that is what I wanted to do. But when you forget that you are in fader flip and gotta change something–it can get tricky.
Don't listen to that person who comes up and says, "Hey there is an easier way to do that." Say "Yes, thank you, but I am going to go with this right now." They will take you out of that screen of your comfort zone and you will get feedback going off and effects going off and you are going out of your mind.
The monitor mixer, who is not a digital guy at all, and I had set up all of the mixes and everything and it took us a while to do it. We got ready to save everything and this guy did not have the keyboard plugged in. When he plugged in the keyboard everything was gone. Nothing was saved so we had to start from scratch, all over again. That hurt, it really hurt! I mean like nothing was saved, it was all gone! We had worked for 40 minutes getting everything just right. The levels, and everything was gone!
So that was a little frustrating. So I had to rebuild that to the best of our knowledge. I saved that again and had to walk out to FOH and build a mix there. But by the time I had done those two setups, I was quite pleased to be able do all of that in the time span. The show went off and the first song was normal and I had a grasp on it. Everything was great!
Is there certain gear that you just gotta have?
I don't want to say that I am not loyal to certain brands, but in the end I'll use whatever's there and be happy with it, and thank everyone, and go to the hotel. It's kind of a tough one. I can pretty much say now that anything that has plenty of power, no phasing issues and no blown up drivers–I can use it.
On the tour we were using a very large Meyer system that really helped with the low end. It's so easy to get distorted bass because you're trying for sheer volume. You've always got to turn the main stack down so that the subs can keep up, but that wasn't the case with this system. It brought out just the right amount of stuff, it was so easy to get whatever I needed, gain-wise as well as the type of tones that I wanted.
But I was at Martin Audio for many years. Prior to that I was with EAW. And then I started traveling and doing racks and stacks, and I used all kinds of stuff: Audio Analysts AAlto, JBL HLA. So I used a lot of stuff and if the power is matched, it's fine. I really don't care about the brand. I can pretty much say that I have used all the brands and different power amps and I just don't have a favorite anymore.
Do you get asked what you want before the rider is written?
If I am not involved in the choosing of gear for the next tour, I really don't care. If I ask for an XL8 and they say "no," so what? A lot of my peers are very hard and very dedicated to certain gear. Because I have worked with regional companies all the time, and not having exactly what I wanted, I don't want to put anyone in that position that I was put in. They would grumble, but at the end of the day the show went on and we were happy. Sure, we had to tweak a little bit more but it worked.
My trick was if the band guy would run it too hot, I ask the band guy to come over and have a cool drink while I would textmessage my system guy to set the limiters. Sometimes you don't have a lot of horsepower and you have to realize that. Work with what you have. To blow something up is not cool! You have to respect the equipment and what level they are at, so I was always respectful of the gear.
The local soundco guys say "Your rider says this, but I have only this." I say, "Calm down and don't worry about it." They say, "Thanks!" I have got a production manager who tries to stay within a budget and still get what he likes. He's a sound guy. And then there are my peers saying you should pick your own stuff. I get the job done. For the most part if it is working right, it's a good sound company, good service, I don't worry about it anymore. If I can't get what I need out of what I am using then I am not doing my job. This is like traveling the country driving a different car around each day. Does the car go? Yes. Does it have good tires on it? Yes. Then it will get us where we need to go.
