Ace Baker and Anthony Roberts keep horn-funk legends Tower of Power sounding TOPs 150 nights a year.
Quick, answer this question without actually thinking about it. You have a choice of two gigs. One is a mega-hot young band with a huge radio hit headlining arenas and doing stadium festivals. The other is a group of 50+ year-old guys who have not had a radio hit in 20 years and are on the road up to 200 days a year, playing everything from casino showrooms to clubs. Which one do you take?
If you ask Ace Baker and Anthony Roberts, they will take what’s behind Door Number Two, thank you.
The duo has worked together for more than a decade, coming up through the clubs of Hollywood through gigs with the likes of Bobby Womack and Sheila E, and for the past five years have manned the FOH and MON positions for Oakland funk legends Tower of Power. We caught up with them in the middle of a three-night stand at the Orleans casino off the Strip in Las Vegas.
“We’ve been working together since, like, probably ’94 or ’95 in the clubs in Hollywood, and then we both got on the Bobby Womack gig and toured with him for five or six years,” says Baker. “Kinda through the years, whenever one of us would get a gig, we’d get the other guy on. He was front of house, and I was monitors with Bobby for the five years, and then on this one, I got it first, so I took front of house, and he’s monitors.” Which led to the inevitable debate on the virtues of FOH vs MON…
“Well, my first gig was just a one-off, and I was doing monitors, but they needed somebody to do the European tour,” says Roberts. “At first I couldn’t do it because Bobby Womack and I had another gigging group that I was working with, but they started canceling some of their gigs. Fortunately for me, when I called Tower, they still needed somebody. So I did front of house my first tour with them in Europe and some of the East Coast, until Ace decided to come back out. He goes, ‘I’ve been doing monitors for you long enough, man.’ Trust me, as much as he’s had to deal with their Web site and people on their message boards, I’m glad I’m doing monitors.”
Such are the risks you take when you take on a gig with a band beloved by musicians and engineers.
“It’s 90% musicians or engineers at a lot of the places that we play,” Ace explains. “Every once in a while, you go to a new city and someone will get on the message boards and complain that they couldn’t hear Dave’s second tom or something. But it’s no big deal. I kinda put it like guys who are in sports, you know, what it must be like to go out on Sunday, work really hard, then pick up the sports section and — Look at Grossman with the Super Bowl, with the Bears, the quarterback, what he’s gotta deal with. It’s just part of the gig.”
But Ace knows how to play the diplomat, which has helped with the rabid and soundsavvy fans. “One of the real active parts of the message boards is the live show reviews. My first year, I kinda took a look at who would go on that thing a lot, and made it a point when I got to those cities to meet those people. So…”
“The diplomat, right here!” Anthony exclaims.
“I’m like a politician, you know?” Ace continues. “So, luckily, they’re usually kind to me on there.”
A Quasi Briefcase Gig
Tower does such a wide range of gig types that it is not really practical to carry production, so Ace and Anthony work with whatever is in the venue when they get there.
“We do 10,000-seat great jazz festivals or things like that, and then we’ll do a jazz club that’s 400 people, and we’ll do two shows a night for a week,” says Ace. “Which has its own nice things about it because you get to sit in a town for a week. We do Boston, Seattle, and it’s not like every night’s a different place or whatever. So that part of it’s nice, but we do get tossed on some funky stuff every once in a while.”
Anthony pipes in, “You just gotta make it work.”
“It helps with your chops,” Ace says. “We’re on absolutely everything.”
Each of them carry one small rack. Anthony’s holds the wireless PM stuff and a reverb unit while Ace’s houses Rane G-4 gates and a PreSonus Firepod that has turned sound checks into writing sessions. The rhythm section will play during soundcheck and then take pieces of different jams and turn them into full-blown songs. They also carry a mic package that is almost exclusively Audix, and both rave about the D-Vice drum mic clips.
Keeping It Simple — The East Bay Way
You might think that with a 10-piece band mixing two generations of players and both PMs and wedges, that soundcheck would be a long ordeal. But you would be wrong. No 25-minute sessions to get the drums right. Sound check never goes past 45 minutes, and that is only if they are rehearsing a tune. Anthony says he has seen them do it in as little as 15-20 minutes.
“It’s simple,” says Ace. “They’re really simple to do. I mean, the EQs and stuff on the board usually are the same EQs you learn the first time somebody showed you how to EQ a kick drum. Like Dave’s drum kit — it sounds great. He keeps it tuned. It’s not like you gotta come in there and try to tune it. Nothing weird! You’re not struggling, fighting and trying to get this up or that up.”
What about compression? The horn section sounds so tight that it could be a single rock guitar. Is Ace using some secret weapon? He wiggles his fingers and says, “These are the only compressors I use. You just set it like you would a bar, man, and ride the little solos and little parts of things, but other than that, you just try to stay out of the way, you know, and they do it all from their playing.”
So what’s the coolest part about this gig?
“When we travel, a lot of times we get some time off or maybe extend a little, maybe leave early or something, and I get to go to exotic places and surf,” says Roberts.
“The coolest part for me is Rocco and David,” explains Ace. “They’re just doing it every f$@# night. Getting to see musicians like that play, or getting to see when they jam at sound check and hearing the stuff that they come up with, stretching and going out there. Just listening to the guys. Because each night, even though they’re playing the same tune, a lot of times Garibaldi will turn it around some way, and you’re just going, ‘Wow, that was amazing!’ Sometimes, you’re trying to figure out, did he mean to do that? And it’s just wild! You’re like, ‘Holy…’ I mean, for the first year listening to him play, I was like, ‘Wait a minute, that was cool!’ And sometimes, when he threw that cowbell in there, and it was like, ‘Who’s playing a cowbell?’ When you realize who it is, it’s like, ‘Does he have another hand back there or something? Wait a minute!’ It’s pretty incredible, those guys are just awesome.”
