Bob Seger doesn't tour or record often. The "other" Motor City Madman has released all of three LPs in the last 20 years, and the current Silver Bullet Band tour that commenced in March is his first in five years, and only the second in 16 years. However, when you can sell 20 million of those three records in that time (as Rolling Stone points out, Bruce Springsteen has sold only 8 million in the same time frame) and consistently sell out your tour dates every time around, you don't really have to do anything in volume – except turn it up.
For the key Detroit "homecoming" dates – three shows spread across a week at the Palace of Auburn Hills in May after rehearsals at Kid Rock's rehearsal space outside of Detroit – Seger decided to combine both live and recorded. In fact, while the shows were planned for a few months, the recording part was finalized a matter of days before the Detroit stint. But both benefit from a significant streamlining of the live sound and concert recording; for the former there are no outboard racks, for the latter, no truck, creating space for extra seats that the hometown crowd quickly lapped up.
Compact FOH
In the front-of-house position, FOH mixer Brad Divens was working behind an Avid VENUE D-Show console – using 51 inputs and five stereo effects returns – that sat atop its FOH processing Rack. All signal processing was accomplished using either the console's onboard systems or via plugins. The PA was a Clair-supplied legacy Showco Prism system, configured for wide coverage – 11 columns per side, four cabinets deep, all powered by Crown MA3600 amplifiers. Front fills were eight FF2-Rs across the front and three P2s on each downstage corner, all powered by Lab.gruppen amps. All speaker and system processing was performed with Dolby Lake Processors.
In what was a sparse FOH location, Divens was joined by Pro Tools expert and Aerosmith production veteran David Frangioni, who was called up by Dan Barnett, owner of Ft. Lauderdale video production company Wizard HD, which was tapped by Seger to coordinate the recording. (No video recording was scheduled for Detroit, fueling speculation that the Detroit shows could be released as the long-awaited followup to Seger's legendary1976 Live Bullet.) Frangioni brought along an Avid Pro Tools HD2 Accel system running v.9.02, recording to an Avastor 1-TB HDX Firewire 800 drive. The inputs were fed directly out of Divens' Avid Venue console and into the computer for recording.
"Just a few years ago, you would have had to have a remote truck to accomplish what we're able to do here with just a computer and a few peripherals," says Frangioni, who was assisted on the gig by Mihai Boloni. Peter Thompson mixed on a Soundcraft Vi6 desk in monitor world.
Divens says most of the inputs needed little in the way of configuration other than some additional gain from the head amps. The direct outputs of the console bypassed the processing applied by Divens for the concert mix, recording straight to Pro Tools flat just after the A-to-D conversion in the console.
Forty of the channels were a straightforward connection from console to Pro Tools, including a stereo recording direct from the console's two-bus output. But the other 22 channels required some workarounds, underscoring the challenges of dropping a recording rig into an in-progress tour and of relying too heavily on technology to resolve all the issues.
Frangioni was expecting use Avid's new VENUE Link software to automatically configure the connections and name the tracks from the console to Pro Tools. In fact, he recalls, he initially waved off systems engineer Brett Stec's offer of an input list, figuring the software would take care of it in a matter of minutes.
VENUE Link creates new Pro Tools sessions based on the currently loaded VENUE show file, automatically importing channel names and setting Pro Tools markers when VENUE snapshots are fired. However, once they got hands-on onto the console, they realized that they lacked the ECx Ethernet card that now comes standard in FOH Racks. "Then Brett turns to me and says, ‘Now do you want an input list?'" Frangioni deadpans.
The Live Show
Fourteen musicians joined Seger on stage. Divens says the approach was to keep the stage nearly as streamlined as the FOH location. "There were a lot of open microphones on stage, so the idea was to keep it as simple as possible," he says. "For instance, we used only one microphone on each of the three guitar amps. I wanted to be able to keep Bob's voice floating above the mix and making that sound effortless."
Which wasn't as simple as it might have seemed – while Divens tried to keep his mix at between 101 and 103 dB, the audience was routinely clipping 108 dB as they sang along to both the verses and the choruses. "There were times you wondered if [Bob] needed a vocal mic at all," he quips.
That, however, was fine with Frangioni, who was happy to get enthusiastic audience tracks that would nicely fill out the surround of any concert disc. "This is a homecoming show for Bob and for his fans in Detroit, and he's sold out all three nights and the audience is singing along, literally finishing the verses and the choruses for him," says Frangioni, speaking after the second night's performance. "We're getting enough ambience from the mics on the front of the stage; what we really wanted to also get is the audience recorded very clearly and up close, so you can capture the excitement of the moment but also really hear the words clearly when they're singing along."
Of the 64 channels available, the project took up 62, including six audience microphones, two of which were on the edge of the stage. The other four – a pair of Audio-Technica AT 4050 large-diaphragm condensers and two AT 4071a shotguns – were positioned on the corners of the FOH location, the 4050s set in a figure-8 configuration at the rear of the FOH position and the shotguns flanking the console and aimed towards the corners of the house. Four more AT 4071a shotguns were used, one at each side of the stage and two in the rear of the house, for general ambience, but the mics located around FOH were the key to getting the audience articulation, Frangioni says.
Plugin Processing
Divens relied solely on plugins for most of the processing, part of keeping FOH as uncluttered and compact as possible. All of the drums were processed through a Waves SSL E Channel plugin. "I like that the gate and the compressor are all on one channel strip," Divens explains. "The EQ is really responsive and the sonic clarity is good."
The kit was miked with a combination of Earthworks DP30s on the toms, a Shure SM57 on the snare top and an Earthworks DK25L under the snare; Neumann KM 184s on high-hat and ride cymbals, plus a Shure SM 91 and Audix D6 on the kick.
The overhead microphones were AKG C414s, processed through the Cranesong Phoenix analog modeling plugin, as was the high-hat. "The Phoenix is like the candle on the cake," says Divens. "It gives the high end some sparkle but adds a little analog touch to keep it sounding warm. You can definitely hear the difference."
The snare was processed with a touch of Waves SSL EQ and SSL G Buss compressor plugin. All drums were then sent to a group and processed with the SSL G Buss compressor and a Pultech EQ plugin and finished off with a bit of the Cranesong Phoenix.
One of the two bass guitar channels had the Waves C6 multiband compressor plugin applied, and its four crossover bands plus two additional floating bands were all used. The other bass channel was processed through the SSL E Channel plugin, as were the electric guitars.
The guitar amps, each miked using a single Audio-Technica AT4047/SV FET microphone, also had the Waves AXX compressor plugin applied individually along with the Cranesong Phoenix processing. They were then sent to a group on the Venue where Divens re-applied the AXX compressor plugin, SSL E Channel EQ and the Waves PS22.
A G buss compressor was used on the master buss output. "It might sound like a lot of processing, but the reality is that these were all very subtle tweaks," Divens explains. "My outlook on plugins is that you only really need a few of them, and you only need to use a little bit of each. [Just a few subtle changes] adds up to a nice-sounding big picture."
And a small FOH footprint. Like most savvy FOH engineers, Divens is aware of the economic dynamics at work in the concert business these days and understands the value of the real estate he occupies. It's all part of a less-is-more aesthetic that digital consoles and plugins have encouraged, much to the delight of promoters and mixers alike.
"There are so many consoles now that have fantastic onboard dynamics, and you really only need a few good effects," he says. "I mean, we're working in a hockey arena, a big cave, so you can often turn the reverb completely off, maybe keep a little delay on for the sax solos. Much of what you need is already there waiting for you."
