It's happened many times since I started writing for FOH–a seemingly simple story assignment turned out to be much cooler than I originally anticipated. This one started as a detour on a trip to Vegas, where my primary task was to check out a Cirque du Soleil premiere. Sure, I've heard of Tim McGraw, and his latest hit, "Live Like You Were Dyin'," is one of my current faves. And all the women in the office love his…um… tight jeans. What I found when I got to the McGraw camp was a great sound crew who've worked together long enough to really be a team, and who know exactly what they're doing–even when they're improvising, turning last night's dinner leftovers into gear components. We spoke with FOH mixer John Ward, who has been mixing McGraw for more than 11 years, and his Clair-provided system tech, Jason Swartz, between line check and sound check, then came back later to check out the show.
I see you are using the D5. Are you using the onboard FX?
John Ward: Because of the DSP load, I do use outboard effects. I've got a couple of TC M5000s, basically drums, chorusing for the backgrounds and stuff. I use a couple of Antares Intonators for vocals, and I actually use one for fiddle.
I've never heard anybody use that on fiddle, but it sounds like a good idea.
JW: It works if you leave it very loose–it's got to be very loose.
I read online that you guys were using an old T2 system for a while.
JW: It was okay; it was a necessity for some of the things we wanted to pull off. Tim wanted lights in the speakers. That was his specification; he wanted to be able to light them. We were outside most of the summer, so it wasn't really that bad. I prefer line array, and I prefer the I-4. That's my favorite. Over the years, I've kind of seen it develop.
How many subs do you have on the deck?
JW: I think 20 of them.
That's a lot for a country show.
Jason Swartz: Yeah, that's a lot for a country show, but it's about putting a little bit everywhere. We're not very loud or anything like that–we're not going to use them that dramatically or anything, or from the air–but that's the idea: a little bit everywhere.
JW: We're really trying to cover the room. When you walk around the room, we want to sound very similar everywhere you walk.
You've been with Tim a long time…
JW: This will be year 11. I never expected that. Tim's been great. He's a good guy to work for. He's always up, chipper, y'know. We've got a light year coming up. He's doing some movie stuff, so he's got a couple of months in there slated for that instead of touring.
So how long have you been out there?
JW: Mixing since '84. As a musician, since the '70s. I was a guitar player, and then I came to Nashville, where there weren't a lot of sound people at that point in time. I worked for Tom T. Hall for a couple of years, and then kind of bounced around, ended up with Ricky Skaggs for a couple of years. Usually I worked with the sound companies as a monitor engineer, or a tech. Sometimes I'd set up the monitors, then run out to Front of House real quick, throw a mix together, get it going, then run back, that kind of thing–all one guy. I've done that on a few tours.
When Ricky slowed down, I heard "Indian Outlaw," one of Tim's early hits, made a phone call and said, "Are you guys looking for somebody to fill in or whatever?" I got the call, went out, did it, stayed.
Jason, How long have you been with Tim?
JS: Since October of 2000. I started out with Backstreet Boys, then went to Creed and Tim McGraw in the same year. Creed took a three-month break; that's how I got to know these guys. I finished that year with Creed, then I went with Widespread Panic for a year, and now I'm out with these guys all year.
At this point in time, I assume Tim's doing all arenas?
JW: Or sheds. Or occasionally we'll do a festival or something. We'll do an oddball thing, a lot of TV shows, so we have to be television savvy, be unobtrusive yet try to get our point across.
When you're working with TV, do they take the feed from you, or do they do their own thing?
JW: Generally, they do their own thing, but we try to guide and direct that. Through the years you build up a relationship with these guys, and they'll either let you do things, or they won't. We've been fortunate to develop some good relations with TV guys, and although it's not always a hands-on experience, they'll always take input.
I notice here you're in the round. What do you do when you're in a shed?
JW: If we hit a shed in this condition, then we just hang a little deeper and move to the side to cover it. Last year, we did it with a thrust; we experimented with 16 deep. Some of the bigger rooms, such as Phillips Arena in Atlanta, or Conseco, they have very tall seating, and that seemed to work out really well. So we just hang as deep as Tim will allow, without killing seats, and cover as well as we can.
With the Lake system, it's a little easier to adjust. If you want more control, you just add more lines. You add as many I/Os as you want. I don't know how open-ended
it is, but…
JS: I've never heard of a cap, but I've seen 15 of them in a rack before, so that's never been a problem. We're only using six or seven on this setup here.
JW: I'm not opposed to amp-trimming as well. I'll go to zones, and go, "Okay, if we dial the horns back here just a hair," you know, that kind of thing. But I let Jason do his job.
JS: He'll give me, like, 15 minutes to do the big cuts stuff in the room, maybe align everything, and then we'll do it together, a little here and a little there.
JW: We'll always discuss it. It's never, "I think you should do this," or "I think we'll do this." It's more like, "well, what do you think we're going to give up if…" Because his job is to system tech; he's got to walk the room while I'm mixing. This is a busy show; I don't have time to walk away from the desk during the show.
JS: I can sit up in the top row and EQ, depending how the processors are set up.
That's really changed your job, hasn't it?
JS: Oh, you don't have to yell over radios, "Turn down this frequency!"
Who's running monitors?
JW: Johnny Branham is on Tim, and Chris Holland does the band. Ben Blocker does cable management, Larry Wilson does all of our patching on our deck, or he did until he dropped all of his stuff…
JS: Kevin Kapler is the monitor tech and RF tech. There are five people from Clair Brothers, and three audio guys from McGraw.
With the D5, are you using the head amp sharing, between monitors and mains?
JS: Absolutely not. We're not sharing. It's unacceptable. We experimented with that for about three dates, and then we said, "We don't want to do that anymore." A desk should act like a desk, and each engineer should have his own choices. Something I may not need to barely hit, another engineer may need more out of, and then it becomes an issue, a tug of war.
Monitor-wise, is everybody on Personal Monitors?
JW: Everybody. No wedges on stage.
JS: There's a thumper underneath the drummer's seat, and that's the only amplified monitoring situation. The percussionist and drummer are on hard-wired PMs, and everybody else is on wireless.
JW: We started using PMs in the second year, probably. Before there were combiners, before there was enough frequency agility. John McBride and Ralph Masteranglo have always been helpful. Tim McGraw hasn't always been on the cutting edge, but we've always tried to be real close to it.
I'm assuming then that there are no amps on stage either. How does that change the way you mix?
JW: You don't have to take a big 400 cut because everything is coming back at you, you know? You can add guitar in, because you don't have 110 coming off the stage. It cleans everything up. It doesn't give you many excuses for why it's sounding bad.
At the other end of the signal chain, what are you guys doing mic-wise?
JW: We're doing wirelesses, mostly Sennheiser. We tried many mics with Tim, and the ones that we're using right now seem to be the best of the lot.
Is that the KMS105?
JW: No, KMS105 is picking up too much; Tim's soft. If you want a lot of overheads and drums, then that's the mic to use. We're using an 865 capsule. It's a dynamic. It works well for Tim.
A lot of off-axis rejection?
JW: Yes, in the Sennheiser line, more so than in the M5000. We went through all of that, and if Tim's having a soft night, and he's pulling back, then I've got everything in the world but his vocal in it. So I'm shutting drums off, I've got the moving drum mic, and we don't want to do that. We've found that this works. It's not the highest-priced or the top of the line Sennheiser, but it works the best for Tim.
What are you using drum-wise?
JW: It's a mixture of stuff; I'm not married to anything. The snare is 57, top, bottom: 414 overhead, 460s on the high-hat.
JS: Beta 52 on the kick, 421s on the two floor toms.
JW: Well, we do have a deal with Sennheiser, but I'm never one to really compromise. If you can show me something that will work and be as good as what I'm using, then that's fine. But we do use mostly Sennheiser products. The snare, kick, all of that, are Shure products. Overheads are AKGs, toms are Sennheisers.
JS: 57s on the guitars.
Are you using isolation cabinets under the stage?
Do you find that you have any problems getting the right tonality?
JW: Pizza boxes–used pizza boxes. That's the secret.
You lost me.
JW: You need a reflective surface inside your isolation boxes. We found that out one day, by playing with a pizza box. Because the isolation box was all foamed up throughout, to keep it quiet. It's just sucking the life out of it. So Tim Israel, who was our old guitar tech, and I sat with a pizza box, and we played with it, putting the reflective surface in different places, so we found a good place for a pizza box.
So are you actually using a pizza box on tour?
JW: I don't think the pizza box is still there. We ended up tearing the foam out in an area and making a live surface, and that made the difference.
Have you done this room before? How do you like it?
JW: It's tricky. It has a threshold where it's about as loud as you want to go. Last time I came in here I had a lousy show, I had a good show the time before… This room has a threshold it likes, and once you exceed that threshold, there's nothing you can do to get it back. I'm going to say it's somewhere right around 100 to 101.
JS: It never gets dramatically loud. It's a very comfortable show.
JW: We try not to kill 'em, because we want 'em to come back. If I don't do good here, we're not going to do good next time. That's the way I feel about it. If I have a bad show, I feel like I've let Tim down, because I've seen places where we've gone in and done bad shows, and the next time we come back around, the seats are a little light, or whatever. It takes one or two more times back in with good shows to get 'em back in.
So is there anything else we need to talk about, the philosophy of mixing?
JS: Point the speakers where people are sitting!
