Australian rock band Midnight Oil — known affectionately as “The Oils” — are supporting their latest release, Resist, with what is said to be the band’s final tour together, performing new material from the album across three continents.
The Resist tour kicked off June 1 at Vancouver, BC’s Malkin Bowl and headed across North America, ending at Oxon Hill, MD June 25, before making a quick transoceanic jump to Brussels on June 29. They eventually wrapped the European segment in Carhaix, France on July 16 before heading home for the final leg of Australian/New Zealand dates in August and September.
Starting with their self-titled debut in 1978, the band has not let up on its live show intensity and has a strong fan base worldwide. The sound supplier on the Australian shows is JPJ Productions (Clair AU) with a full L-Acoustics rig. For the North American dates, the production relied on venue-supplied P.A., with Clair Global handling the front-end and monitor needs. We spoke to the band’s audio engineering team — Colin Ellis at FOH, Paul “Kenno” Kennedy at monitors and monitor tech Kellie McKee.
Colin Ellis
FOH Engineer
Colin Ellis is an Australian sound engineer, having mixed live shows for over 40 years, mainly Australian rock bands. Starting in 1979 with INXS, Ellis says he was fortunate enough to do all their world touring until 1992. “Since then, I have worked with many Australian and international bands, touring the world,” says Ellis. “I worked for Midnight Oil from about 1993 to roughly 1996 — really only about three or four years — then returned with them circa 2010, when they started doing some one-offs and benefit stadium shows like Wave Aid and Bushfire Relief. I came back mainly because their manager said of all the bands’ engineers, I was the best they had. I’ve done all the band’s tours since then.”
Ellis has used many consoles over the years, usually a Midas Heritage or XL3 or XL4 in the mid 90’s with the Oils, which he loved, adding that the Oils — with great source sounds from the stage — were a good band to mix if you had to dial up a fresh console at a festival in a hurry. “That, and their two guitars have great clarity and a lot of interplay between them, without running over the top of each other or the usual ‘guitar carpet’ muddiness which seems to be popular with younger guitar players.”
When digital consoles arrived, Ellis moved on to the Avid Profile. It had a massive learning curve, but he was wowed by the miracle of saving, storing and then recalling a show. “Unfortunately, the sonic quality I enjoyed with the Midas analog boards was gone. So like a lot of engineers, I started adding plug-ins in an attempt to get back the sound I was missing. After adding 50 or so plug-ins, and many hours of frustration and expense — but also joy and learning — I finally thought I was getting somewhere. But latency was the new menace, causing lots of smearing of the overall sound. Finally in the nick of time, the Avid S6L arrived. I jumped straight on it, and haven’t looked back since. All the plug-ins I was running on the Profile would not easily go over to the S6L, but the console sounded so good without them. To this day, I have not missed them. I use about four of the factory in-built plugs and that’s it!”
An admitted old-school engineer, Ellis tries to keep things simple and mixes the show as a straightforward rock show without snapshots, etc. “I probably spend more time on ensuring the P.A. sounds right for me and do a lot of graphic and parametric tuning on channels, groups and mains, etc. I believe this is probably a holdover from the good (bad) old days when a P.A. speaker system sounded terrible out of the box and the best engineer was the one who could EQ it to at least make it sound usable.” Ellis adds, “Mixing the band can be challenging, but ultimately rewarding, with a range of musical diversity — i.e., one song could be a low-key ballad and the next song full-tilt mayhem and anywhere in between. Every song can feel like a ‘seat of the pants’ remix, so there’s never a dull moment.”
In Australia, The Oils are a JPJ Productions’ “Clair” client who has looked after the band for over 30 years. “They’ve been very good to us,” says Ellis. “We’ll use L-Acoustics K1, K2 systems, with 12 K1 and six K2 per side for main hangs and 12 K2 per side for side hangs, KS28 Subs, Kara front fills, V-DOSC delays. But configurations vary with different venues. I like to use flown subs as much as possible. All line array systems have their own unique sound and are good in their own way. d&b audiotechnik’s GSL and KSL are amazing systems; however, at present there is not enough of it in Australia to make it viable for us. I used a Bose ShowMatch system once that I thought was the best sounding P.A. I have ever used.”
Paul “Kenno” Kennedy
Monitor Engineer
Paul “Kenno” Kennedy is mixing on a DiGiCo SD5 (his favorite console), primarily because he’s been using the SD5 for quite a while and finds it’s easy to navigate. “All the layers are easy to customize and access. The macros are right there above the master section. The activity of your dynamics are in view on the meter bridge. It’s very comfortable to mix on.”
Kennedy doesn’t use any plug-ins, and never has. “I am an old-school monitor engineer who tries to reflect what the band is doing to keep them on the same page, not trying to produce something that’s not really there. I sometimes insert FX and graphics EQs over channels so as not to use loads of aux sends. Typically though, I would insert reverbs over things like brass instruments, backing vocals and graphic EQ’s over acoustic guitars. On this show, I inserted a de-esser on the bass, as it can get a little ‘clack’ when he really lays into it. It seems to be working well.”
Mics are pretty standard, he notes. Vocalist Peter Garrett uses a Shure Beta58 mic on a UR4D wireless system. “We have tried a couple of different mic caps, but always come back to the Beta 58 — Peter prefers that sound over others. We’re using sE Electronics V7 caps on a Shure AD4Q-A system for background vocals. The band has JH Audio JH16 IEMs running on Shure PSM1000 hardware — a fairly standard, but very effective combination.”
The band also uses downstage wedges, with one Clair CM22 each. “The reasoning for this is twofold,” says Kennedy. “Primarily as a backup in case of IEM breakdowns (which are very rare). Bass player Adam Ventoura has kick and bass to give his ear mix a little extra oomph, and Jim Moginie has his keys in his wedge as he sometimes likes to pull one ear out to listen to his guitar rig, so if he plays keys with one ear out, they are in the wedge. The second reason is that drummer Rob Hirst comes downstage to play a ‘cocktail’ kit for a few songs. Rob is the only one in the band who doesn’t use IEM’s. So he needs monitoring downstage. At his kit, he has three L-Acoustics Karas atop two SB18 subs. A nice little drum monitor. Since 2017, I’ve never used side fill with this band. We tried it in rehearsal but found they messed too much with the IEM mixes.”
Kennedy uses a mix of mics for drums. “A Sennheiser 901/902 combo on kick gives a nice tight sound,” he says. “I use Sennheiser e904s on the toms. On snares, it’s a Beta 57A on the top, for a bright sound (plus it’s hard to break if it’s hit), with a SM57 on the bottom, and on the second snare, a Shure Beta 98AMP miked underneath. KSM137 are on hi-hat and overheads. As for backline, it’s an e906 and a KSM32 on Martin’s guitar amps, Beta 56 for miked bass amp mic and an e906 and Beta 58 (yes, a 58) on Jim’s guitar amps. During rehearsal one day, we were short of mics, so I threw a Beta 58 on Jim’s Vox AC30 — it’s been that way since and seems to work with that amp.”
Kellie McKee
Monitor Tech
Monitor tech Kellie McKee has been working fulltime with JPJ Audio for 12 years. If she’s not out on tour — which is a large portion of the year — or doing local gigs in Sydney, she works in the factory prepping and de-prepping gigs. “Some years I could do up to 10 different tours with local and international acts in Australia as they are normally quite short tours,” she explains. “This is my first time touring overseas in the States and Europe, and it’s a great opportunity, especially with a band like Midnight Oil. This is my third tour with them.”
McKee starts her day with getting all the gear off the truck, on stage and building monitor world with Kenno, cabling up monitor world and running the FOH snake. “I then get the wedges out downstage, build the drum fill, run in all the stage looms and mic-up the stage with help from the local venue crew. Kenno looks after all the RF. During our changeover, I help with the line check, make sure it’s working without issues and we pink out all the wedges and drum fill.”
During the show, McKee makes sure everything works, and if something goes down, she’s there to fix it. ”Also, I’m keeping an eye onstage during the set to see if anybody needs something else in their mix. Kenno is all over it though! I take care of setting up Rob’s cocktail drum kit and mic later in the band’s acoustic set. I’ve done multiple tours with Kenno and the band and it’s always great being able to tour with him. I know how he likes things set up and we work together to achieve that. It’s always interesting getting a new audio package from different countries, but we try to duplicate the same gear and setup in monitor world wherever we travel.”
Midnight Oil Resist World Tour
AUDIO CREW
- Sound Company: Clair Global
- FOH Engineer: Colin Ellis
- Monitor Engineer: Paul “Kenno” Kennedy
- Monitor Tech: Kellie McKee
P.A. GEAR (Australia)
- Mains: (12) L-Acoustics K1 and (6) K2 per side
- Side Hangs: (12) L-Acoustics K2/side
- Subs: L-Acoustics KS28 Subs (flown)
- Front Fills: L-Acoustics Kara
- Delays: L-Acoustics V-DOSC
FOH GEAR
- FOH Console: Avid S6L
MON GEAR
- Monitor Console: DiGiCo SD5
- Wedges: Clair CM22s
- Drum Fill: (3) L-Acoustics Karas, (2) SB18s
- IEMs: JH Audio JH16s
- IEM Hardware: Shure PSM1000
- Wireless: Shure Beta 58 with UR4D (lead vox); Shure AD4Q-A with sE Electronics V7 caps (BG vox)
- Wired Mics: Sennheiser 901, 902, e904s, e906s; Shure SM57, Beta 98AMP, Beta57A, Beta56, Beta58, KSM32, KSM137s
More Midnight Oil Resist tour photos by Steve Jennings:
