When The Rolling Stones' "A Bigger Bang" tour came to Chicago recently, we had the opportunity to visit backstage with monitor engineer Mike Adams. It was a cold and windy October evening when Jack Kontney caught up with Adams before the show.
FOH: How did you get started as an engineer?
Mike Adams: I count my career from when I started getting paid on a weekly basis. That was 1981. It was a band called Green Dog, out of Denver, Colorado. As far as getting started, I took the long, stupid, hard road. When I was 16, I just started hanging around, getting myself into nightclubs and finding guys that made it sound really good, and just started trading out my labor for their knowledge. By the time I was 18, I was working all over the Denver area, mixing in clubs. And now here I am. So you were always a mixer, never a tech? That's unusual.
Yeah, I reversed the usual path. I knew how to mix, and really knew my way in and around a console, and yet I had no idea about so many basics. Things like, how do you hang a P.A. in the sky like that? It's kind of embarrassing.
I was lucky, though. I started working for Showco after I'd been in the business about 15 years. The first thing I learned there was that I knew absolutely nothing about logistics. But they treated me great. They knew I had deficits in knowledge, but they were willing to work with me because I had other things to bring to the party. I'll always be grateful for that.
This is your first Rolling Stones tour. What other artists have you worked with?
I've done monitors for Pantera, John Mayer, Guns N' Roses, Luther Vandross, Third Eye Blind, Ozzfest and Black Sabbath. Let's see, also KISS, Motley Crüe and Fear Factory. That's pretty much it. Overall, I've done a lot of metal, a lot of pop and some R&B. This is a little bit of all those things.
What's the setup like?
I mix the principal band members, and J. Summers mixes monitors for the singers, keyboards and horns. It's a huge stage with a lot of performers, so it really takes cooperation and teamwork to make it work.
You have a mix of personal monitors and wedges on stage.
Well, we need them both. In the band, Mick Jagger uses PMs, and so does bass player Darryl Jones. The other principals don't, so we have a full array of wedges across the stage. In the orchestra, Chuck Leavell uses PMs, plus Bernard Fowler and Lisa Fischer, two of the backing vocalists.
It's a Clair Brothers tour. Are they Clair wedges?
Well, technically they're Clair's 12AM wedges, but they're still a Showco SRM inside, and that's a wedge I love. We have 100 wedges onstage. Anywhere you go, there's a mix coming out. I know it seems ludicrous, but in reality, it's just really good coverage.
Mick Jagger has been on again, off again with PMs over the years. Does he use them consistently now?
Yeah, for the whole show. In rehearsals, he had been using wedges. Then, one day, he just looked over at me and said, "Well, I guess it's time I start using the ears, because I know I'm going to be wearing them on the tour." I was told when we started that he normally wears just one. But he's been on two PMs since the first day that he put them in. Which is great, because it's so much better that way.
What about ambience for the PMs? Do you use audience mics?
Oh yeah. I try to create a sort of virtual situation for Mick. He prowls around like a cat, always going back and forth. So in order to make it semi-natural sounding, we've lined the front of the deck with six audience mics, and I have four more out at front of house. Everything is panned, so Mick has a nice stereo image of the band mix, but he still can hear the people in front of him. In general, I'll just pop the ambient mics into the PM mix between songs so he stays connected to his audience. On certain songs where the whole audience is singing along I'll pump that in, and it can really sound great.
What about Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood?
They're just not PM guys. Keith is old school. He's the musical conductor of the band, and he likes to be able to hold his guitar, make sound with it, and pull the group together that way. He wants to make sure that everyone hears that guitar change, and he wants the whole group orchestra to move with it.
Did it change your world when Mick switched over to PMs?
No, not for me. I wear my Sensaphonics when I mix, no matter what the artist is wearing. I know that sounds a little dangerous, but the reality of it is, if I get a good mix in my 2X-S, that mix will work in anything. It will work in anyone's earphone product, and it will sound great if I have wedges onstage.
When controlling various PM mixes, do you then switch the inputs into your own PMs for reference?
Sure, that's one of the reasons that I use the particular console that I do. My main console is the Midas H4000, and my sidecar is a Midas H3000. I've been using them for a while now, and I love them. One of its features is that it has a split cue, and you can cue in stereo. So I just run the cue on an A-B system, the A feed going to a cue box for local PMs, and the B system going to my live wedges. So I can listen to any mix at any time.
What else have you got out here?
Let's see, I'm using all Avalon 737s for Mick's compressors — one for each of his two handhelds, plus one for his headset. I'm using six Manley ELOPs — electro-optical limiters — as compressors for keyboards. And I'm using Aphex gates, some dbx products, you know, just the normal stuff for monitor world.
For wireless, I'm using all Sennheiser EW Series for the PMs, and all Shure UHF for the mics. Then I'm using the Clair Brothers helical antenna and the Clair antenna combiner for the PM stuff, to project it hundreds of miles into outer space. (laughs)
I always have to ask: How many mixes are you running?
Forty, actually. We run the wedges in stereo. There are a series of zones across the stage, and each is set up in stereo. We use four wedges left and four right to create the zone. So each zone has a stereo sweet spot for anybody who cares to be in it.
What about time alignment?
The thing is, these guys are always moving. So even though we are creating stereo image every 24 feet, it's all relative, you know? That's why we didn't get into a lot of delays, even though technically maybe we should because of distance. But on a stage this size — where is ground zero?
So it's up to the artists to find the sweet spots?
Yeah, but these guys have done it, seen it, said it all. They're cool, and they just go to where they like it the best. What's important is every night they expect it to be the way it was the night before. Then they're happy. So that's what we give them.
What kind of levels are you running?
Directly at the source of each wedge, we have 116 dB SPL. If you pull back from the wedge about five feet, where your head might be, I believe it's around 104 or 105. So it's loud, but I don't think it's ridiculous.
How loud are your PM users listening?
I think they were clocking about 83 decibels on average when we checked. Very reasonable, obviously much safer.
What about hearing safety? Do you work on that aspect of things?
Yeah, it's definitely a consideration. I try to make the people I work for aware of it, and it generally pays off. When I present PMs to an artist for the first time, that's something I try to explain. I tell them, "It's going to be so clean and so clear that you're going to hear everything. You're probably going to go, 'it's not loud enough.' But with the isolation these give, you just don't need to have it that loud anymore." It's a mindset.
How does the artist dynamic work in that situation?
Nowadays, if you're working with an established artist, chances are they're already wearing PMs. But if not, I always suggest they give them a try. It's a small investment for such a useful tool.
Anything else?
Yeah, remind me never to mix an outdoor show in Chicago this time of year! What were they thinking when they booked this?!
