Pearl Jam rolled into town one October night in St. Louis and filled a hockey arena with remarkable clear sound for a sold-out crowd wanting it old school, and getting it. Like all Pearl Jam tours, while the visual elements are pitch-perfect, lighting and sets aren’t overpowering to the point of distraction. This was all about the music, kicked through an L-Acoustics K1 speaker system supplied by Rat Sound who has been working with PJ for 20 years.
The band members, all committed to family, aren’t the types that stay on the road constantly. Their most recent album, Lightning Bolt, released in the fall of 2013, is being toured on around the world, yes; but with reasonable breaks. “We started the tour last fall and then went through the winter, then we went to Australia,” monitor engineer Karrie Keyes explains. “Then we had a nice break, then a month in Europe, then had time off in the summer, and then we started back up again [in October].” St. Louis was the second stop on this final leg, coming off several rehearsals and a show in Cincinnati.
All About the Sound
There’s no opening act, the shows are three-hours plus, and the song set changes every night. “There are about 10 songs they pretty much do every night, but otherwise, they pull from a set list of over 200 songs,” says FOH engineer Greg Nelson. And to keep the sound crew on their toes, they get the set list is decided on about an hour before the band starts — and Nelson says even then, [vocalist Eddie] Vedder will sometimes makes some changes in mid-show. “Maybe he can get the message to me, and maybe he can’t, and when something starts up [that’s not on the list], I just go with it!”
It’s a family affair on the road, as most of the crew has been with the band for up to a decade. “It’s a stable crew, and everybody has worked long enough together that we all get along — there’s no drama,” Keyes says.
Arena tours can be challenging as some are easier to work than others, but Nelson says the St. Louis Scottrade Center was a good room to work and it was an especially smooth show. His work was crystal-clear throughout the arena, even behind the band, where they sold seats (no big video screen to block the view). Impressively, it sounded as good there as anywhere else.
Pearl Jam is serious about their sound, spending up to an hour doing a sound check, which they certainly did for the St. Louis show. They use the time to work out songs that they may or may not play that evening (this writer was treated to a wonderful version of Pink Floyd’s “Mother” that for whatever reason wasn’t performed that night).
Nelson embraces the fact that the set list changes so much from night to night. “I’ve done tours where the set is the same night after night, but this is more interesting.” Sure, it’s a little more work for him, but he’s happy to do it. At one point he had almost all the songs programmed, but he says he found himself scrolling through trying to find a certain song, and “the song would be half over before I found the it!” he laughs. So he just stays on his toes and mixes whatever comes his way when it comes. “I love it this way. It’s never boring.”
Nelson has been with Pearl Jam for a decade, and has also worked with Incubus, Jane’s Addiction, and the Goo Goo Dolls, among others. Appropriately, he puts Vedder’s vocals up front and free from a lot of effects, just using a touch of compression and a pinch of de-esser with few plug-ins from Waves SoundGrid.
Monitor World
Keyes met Dave Rat of Rat Sound at a Black Flag show in 1986, and talked her way into doing part-time work for him loading trucks and setting up gear. “I was just getting experience, and eventually was one of just five people who worked every single show they did,” she says. “Eventually I learned monitor mixing.” She moved up herself and established a long-term relationship with Pearl Jam and its leader Eddie Vedder, working almost exclusively for them since 2004, including on Vedder’s side projects.
“We are one of those bands that were not quick to use IEM’s,” Keyes says. “Maybe seven years into the trend we got a demo pair for Eddie to try, but no one else was interested in them. The technology wasn’t strong enough to support loud volumes on stage. But then a lot of years passed of not wanting to talk about it, and then suddenly it was, ‘God, it’s so loud on stage’.” Keyes suggested it was time to try them again. This was 2005, when IEMs had greatly improved from the early days.
Interestingly the band went through an evolution of experiments of partial IEM and still having monitors on stage, to some using one over the other, a little back and forth, to now there’s a combination of all of the above. Vedder has stepped away from IEM’s completely, relying on eight wedges and four Rat S wedges, two MicroWedges and two d&b M2s, plus a flown side of VerTec 4488 fills. Drummer Matt Cameron uses a stereo mix with two EAW MicroWedges and two MicroSubs. Those who use a combination of wedges and IEMs use either Future Sonics or Clear Tunes monitors.
It adds up to a lot of sound on stage. Keyes’ challenge every night is to create “sonic spaces” for each musicians so each individual can hear themselves, yet keep one from overwhelming and bleeding audio into another’s space.
“The biggest thing that has changed this year is the use of baffles onstage,” Keyes says. “It has helped cut bleed into each musician’s zone, allowing each musician to have some isolation. With the baffles, the sound is more controlled and has allowed the musicians to keep their rigs at the volume they want. Otherwise the mixes haven’t really changed over the years, and all the musicians are consistent in what they want to hear. There’s no, ‘I want to experiment tonight’ — so it’s just a matter of getting them what they need.”
Which she does. Keyes often walks away from monitor world to talk with one of the musicians, and make sure they are getting what they need from her. That said, she does admit that the outdoor gigs make her job slightly easier because “then you get some space on stage,” though for the band, it’s not their favorite thing as it presents different challenges. “They’re most comfortable in an arena.”
Changes
It took a while for the band and their engineers to be comfortable going digital. Keyes says her first attempt at digital was in 2005, and “in hindsight I chose the wrong console,” she says. “I chose the Yamaha PM5D because of the ease in setting up and mixing, but the band wasn’t thrilled with the sound, especially the way it overdrove the IEM’s, and there were a lot of latency issues. So we went back to analog.”
She continued on her Heritage board until “we ran out of outputs and inputs, and I thought, I’m not carrying around two consoles!” Research ensued around 2010, and the choice came down to a DiGiCo or a Midas, and she chose the Midas PRO 9 as “it was the closest thing I could get to analog, and we’re all happy with the sound and the quality.”
Last year, Nelson switched to the DiGiCo SD5. Formerly an Avid VENUE and Profile user, he’s on record for saying that the leap from 48K to 96K gave him better clarity and a more midrange and bottom-end in his mix.
The audio system is set up so that every input onstage hits a three-way splitter going to recording, house and monitors. Under the stage one finds a DiGiCo SD-Rack that converts all signals to digital. From there it’s sent via fiber to FOH, which at that point it continues to AES out to the Lake system EQ and AES right to the L-Acoustics LA8 amps.
Monitor tech Peter Baigent has been in pro audio for 25 years, working with the Red Hot Chili Peppers, REM, Oasis and Pink Floyd in addition to Pearl Jam. For this tour he says he “enjoys the challenging of integrating new and vintage technology with the different countries, languages, and buildings.”
But what doesn’t change is the old school commitment to creating a great rock show sound wherever they happen to be playing.
Sidebar:
Pearl Jam Soundgirls
Though she doesn’t make a big deal about it, monitor engineer Karrie Keyes is well aware that a woman being part of a major touring sound crew is somewhat of an anomaly. So with sound engineer Michelle Sabolchick Pettinato (currently out with Mr. Big), they founded SoundGirls.org last year. It has quickly expanded to over 600 members today. While waiting for the Pearl Jam sound check, Keyes gave an update.
“Everything!” was her response the “what is new?” question. “SoundGirls.org has filled a void, and the response has been amazing.”
The site features blogs about the daily challenges on the road, much of it relatable to all audio engineers. There are forum posts on things like on women looking for gigs, but also a lively one on dealing with sexism in the workplace that a lot of male road crewmembers could benefit from reading.
Keyes is especially proud of the profiles on women in pro-audio past and present. They recently posted an article on Kathy Sander, who was one of the very first women sound technicians to hit the road, going out with Elton John in 1974, and then with Elvis in 1977. “We just did an interview with Jackie Green of Audio Technica, one of the very few women who is a key contributor to pro audio products,” Keyes says. Today, Green is vice president of R&D/engineering at A-T, and holds key patents on digital and wireless developments.
Having a new profile every month is an opportunity for women working in the field to learn about those who came before them; that, hopefully will inspire others to follow in their footsteps, Keyes says.
Up next? Obtaining 501(c)(3) nonprofit status to raise money for scholarships and provide underserved youth the opportunity to attend a weeklong camp to learn about concert production. Look for some webinars from them next year, too. For more on the group, go to www.soundgirls.org.
Pearl Jam Tour 2014
SOUND COMPANY: Rat Sound
Crew
FOH Engineer: Greg Nelson
Monitor Engineer: Karrie Keyes
FOH Tech: Andrew Gilchrest
Monitor Techs: Peter Baigent, Tommy Carisco
Sound Crew Chief/Systems Tech: Tom Worley
System Techs: Taka Nakai, Mike Gazdziak
Production Manager: Liz Burns
Tour Manager: Mark Smith
FOH Gear
Console: DiGiCo SD5 Waves Digigrid
Mains/Fills System: L-Acoustics K1, ARCS II, KARA, 108P
Subwoofers: L-Acoustics SB28, K1-SB
Amps: L-Acoustics LA-Rack
Processing: Klark-Teknik DN422M, Lexicon PCM 80, Lexicon PCM92, Symetrix 501, TC Electronic LM44, Dolby Lake DLP.
DAW: Avid HD MADI
Mics: Audix OM7; AKG 414, 460; Audio-Technica ATM4050; Beyer Opus 87; DPA 4061; Heil PR40 Neumann BCM705; Sennheiser 421, e609; Shure Beta 52, Beta 56, Beta 57, Beta 91, SM57, SM58S, VP88.
Direct Boxes: Radial J48V DI’s.
MON Gear
Console: Midas PRO9
Processing: Lexicon PCM60, XTA DP-224
Speakers: EAW MicroWedge 12 II’s, Rat S wedges, EAW MicroSub 15’s, Rat Trap side fills.
Amps: Lab.gruppen
RF Mics: Shure SM58 capsule on UR2 handheld transmitter, UR4D wireless receiver, UA870WB antenna.
System Connect: Riedel RN.362.DO, Riedel RN.362.IR
Snake Assemblies: DiGiCo fiber
Breakout Assemblies: Whirlwind, Rat Sound
Power Distro: Rat K1-D1
