A Covid-delayed Tour Hits the Road in 2021
For decades, The Eagles kept journalists (and fans) focused either on how their music laid foundations for country-rock, AOR, Americana and other subgenres, or their interpersonal dynamics: the band’s 1994 Hell Freezes Over LP commemorated a truce and successful tour after a 14-year-long breakup. But here in the 21st century, the remaining members of the band who broke the charts in 1972 with “Take It Easy” create a happy place to work these days. That includes the crew on its Hotel California tour, the Covid-interrupted first leg of which wrapped last month at Seattle’s new Climate Pledge Arena.
“I’ll go up to Vince [Gill, the angelic tenor and guitar virtuoso who joined the band’s lineup in 2017 along with the late Glenn Frey’s son Deacon] and say, ‘What can I do for you, how can I make it better?’” says Brian Evans, who mixes monitors for stage right, which Gill anchors when singing lead on “New Kid In Town” among other hits. “And Vince says, ‘Hey, everything is just fine.’ They’re all total pros, great singers and musicians. The band makes my job pretty easy.”
The Eagles originally announced the Hotel California tour for 2020, after playing a stand of sold-out Las Vegas shows in 2019 devoted to their most successful album, which sold 26 million records. They played the initial shows through the end of February that year before the pandemic forced them to reschedule the majority of the dates. Back on the road since last September, it’s not unlike a show in the mid-70s might have been, with a basic backline of vintage guitar amps and a row of six microphones up front (plus one more for the gritty-voiced Don Henley on drums), with those amazing harmonies still sailing effortlessly out into the house.
20th Century Music, 21st Century Tech
Except, it sounds a lot better than the 1970s ever could. Those who were there may have hazy fond memories of the era’s sonics, but today, those songs in concert have to sound better than the Technics turntables with a quarter taped to the tonearm their vinyl was played on back then. Preparing to accomplish just that again tonight, FOH mixer Tom Evans is unpacking his SSL Live 550 console from its tour case, aided by systems engineer Brandon Schuette, in place 105 feet from the downstage edge and slightly off to the left of the venue centerline, where Evans prefers it. He keeps the console on the venue floor, without a riser, which he says avoids having any P.A. resonance interfere with what he hears, and puts him on the same plane as some of the audience seating, so he hears what they experience. Prior to the band’s arrival, Evans and Schuette use Logic Pro for virtual sound check to tune and EQ the P.A. “We need to make it sound like the records,” says Evans.
Evans found his way into Eagles’ camp via touring as FOH mixer for Don Henley since 2015 — his earlier credits include Christina Aguilera, Gwen Stefani and Snow Patrol, He says the combination of the Clair Cohesion and the SSL Live 550 actually achieve a good approximation of what the band’s records sounded like in their prime. As if to underscore that, the first half of the show is a replay of the Hotel California LP complete with crackling vinyl artifacts as an actor appears onstage to put the actual LP onto a turntable at far stage right, cosseted by some swirling wind effects he routes into the arena’s JBL VerTec house system that’s used as fills for the uppermost seats and to create a semi-surround effect for the theatrical openings (one of each for side A and Side B). After a couple of seconds of noisy anticipation, the band opens with the instantly familiar 12-string strains of the title track. The audience, who came of age with it as their youth’s soundtrack, knew every lyric and every lick.
The System
The sound system for Eagles’ Hotel California tour is built around the Clair Cohesion series CO-12 cabinets, configured as 16-deep main hangs, 14-deep side hangs, and 10-deep 270° hangs. Front fills are four pairs of CO-8 across the downstage on the subs, and four single CO-8’s wider on the downstage edge. LF is via CP-218 subs — all in cardioid configurations, with 18 in front of the stage, and three CP-218s/side flown behind the main hangs. Six Clair CM-22 and six CM-14 floor wedges complement the Shure PSM-1000 IEMs on stage. Both mains and monitors are powered by Lab.gruppen 20000Q amps, with the P.A. managed through a Lake LM 44 processor.
The system is deployed “expertly” — Evans emphasizes — to suit each venue by Schuette, who has toured with the Eagles since early 2019. “Brandon does a fantastic job of getting the P.A. to sound consistent in every environment, and ensuring very even coverage for every seat,” says Evans.
Mics, Mics, Mics
In keeping with techniques of the time, most of the instruments are miked, including all of the guitar amps, in some cases, such as with both of Gill’s amps, two mics on each speaker cabinet — a Sennheiser MD409 and DPA 2011Cs, mainly — one close in on axis for cleaner sounds and the other with a bit more space from the cone and slightly off-axis when he gets gritty, with a Tonebone Headbone VT amp switcher and Radial JX44 switcher, letting Evans balance Gill’s guitar tonality specifically for each song. Joe Walsh also uses two amplifiers, each with a single mic on each cabinet. All of the acoustics are inputted via Neve and Radial DIs, as is Timothy Schmit’s bass, although Evans also takes a direct out from the bass-amp head, post preamp, as a backup.
The mic cases are filled with Shure Beta 87, Beta 57a, Beta 91a, SM58 (the vocal choice for Walsh and Schmit), SM81, Beta 56, Beta 58a, SM48; Audix D6, SCX25a; AKG 451;
Audio-Technica AT4050; Telefunken M80, M80SH, M81 (Henley’s, Gill’s, and Deacon Frey’s vocal mic), M81SH; Sennheiser e904, e906, MD409, MD421; and DPA FA4018V, 2011C.
The orchestra comes up on a hydraulic riser as the strings enter on “Wasted Time” and perform periodically through the rest of the show, conducted live by Jim Ed Norman, who wrote the string charts for the original recordings. Players are heard through a combination of DPA 4099 lavs on each of the first-chair string players (violins, violas, celli and basses) and Shure KSM32 and SM81 condenser overheads. An array of KSM32s captures the chorus of 20 or so voices. (A horn section that toured with the show prior to the pandemic was left off the tour, given those instruments’ proclivity for dispersing aerosols.)
Monitorworld
Monitors are split left and right, with Brian Evans (no relation to Tom) mixing stage right on a Yamaha Rivage desk and Ricky Leon mixing stage left on an Avid S6L. Both consoles are fitted with Rupert Neve Designs 5035 Shelford Channel mic preamps. Between them, they’re managing over 140 inputs, including comms for the entire crew, which are being routed through all three consoles, with everyone on PSM-1000 in-ears. Monitoring choices are varied, from Gill preferring traditional wedges to Deacon Frey on IEMs and Joe Walsh using a combination of both.
Wireless mics are all Shure Axient, managed by Clair’s RF guru on the show, J.P. Howell, who says his biggest challenge remains the FCC’s spectrum repack from a couple of years ago, which further narrowed available UHF spectrum for wireless mics. “Including the orchestra, I’m managing about 70 channels,” Howell says, noting that he’s relying on Shure’s Wireless Workbench 6 software and ATX600 Axient scanner for frequency coordination. “It made sense to use that since so much else on the tour is Shure.”
The FOH View
For Evans, the key to getting the shows to really feel like the records is the SSL Live 550. “It’s the closest a digital console has come to feeling and sounding like an analog desk,” he says, adding that it reminds him of the warmth of the venerable old Midas XL-4, while the 550’s mic preamps offer studio-quality sonics. “But the big leap is in the automation‚ I couldn’t do this show without it.” For instance, on a tour in which Henley and percussionist Scott Crago switch on and off playing drums, Evans says he alternates separate snare channels for each drummer with automated EQ, compression, gates, and transient processing as they move on and off the kit.
Presenting the Eagles’ signature harmonies is a matter of programming each song, keeping the characteristics of each era in mind. Once the appropriate processing — EQ, reverb and dynamics — is dialed in on individual tracks, Evans assigns them a snapshot in the 550’s automation. “The automation on this console is incredibly detailed, and vital to my workflow,” he says. “So we can move between songs from different albums and eras and stay true to the sound of each one,” he says. “With the automation, I can get as granular as I need to with the sounds. You can even vary crossfade times between individual parameters on different channels.”
Most of the signal processing/effects are done within the console, but a few exceptions are a pair of Bricasti Design Model 7 reverbs, used as vocal reverbs — one long, one short. These are racked in a road case that also acts as the pedestal for the 12-channel SSL Fader Pack Expander used as a sidecar mixer, assignable to whatever he needs extra fader real estate for. Evans has also integrated a UAD plug-in bundle, mainly for its Empirical Labs EL-8 Distressor emulation, used on bass guitar. “With as many inputs as there are with the band, I’ve moved vocal reverbs off the console so I free up DSP for dynamics, EQ, other reverbs and other processing,” he says, noting the classic SSL Buss Compressor in particular. “The onboard processing gets more powerful with each software upgrade,” he adds. “The SSL plug-ins sound amazing — a huge plus for this console — you don’t need any outboard processing.”
Most of those snapshots were created during the two months of rehearsals in Los Angeles that preceded the tour. Before rehearsals, Evans went to Clair’s mega facilities in Lititz, PA for a demo of the Cohesion system, and he encountered the compact CP-6 powered speakers, recently developed by Clair design engineer Jim Bowersox. Evans liked using them as near-fields as they accurately emulated the sound of the larger P.A. “It let me establish the snapshots on the SSL perfectly, since I was hearing what I’d be hearing from the main system,” he says. “The automation and excellent onboard processing frees me up to focus on riding the faders for most of the show,” he adds. “The busing and summation on this board is so transparent, you can hear even tiny fader moves of less than half a dB.”
Evans stacks the vocals evenly for the classic Eagles sound. “You want to make it a solid unit of voices, often with no one voice out in front of the others,” he explains. “For both vocals and instruments, the band does a great job of mixing themselves on stage and know what the balance is supposed to be. The quality of the musicianship and performance on stage is incredible,” says Evans. “That makes my job a lot easier.”
It comes down to making sure that the audience hears what they expect, and they expect a lot. Evans says he’s not simply mixing a show — he’s curating an aural legacy nightly. “Very much so,” he says. “It’s not a show where I put my imprint on it. And from what I hear from people in the venue and see on social media, we’re succeeding.”
AUDIO CREW
- Sound Company: Clair Global
- FOH Engineer: Tom Evans
- Stage Left Monitors: Ricky Leon
- Stage Right Monitors: Brian Evans
- Systems Engineer: Brandon Schuette
- RF Coordinator: J.P. Howell
P.A. GEAR
- L/R Mains: Clair Cohesion CO-12, 16/side
- Side Hangs: Cohesion CO-12, 14/side
- 270° Hangs: Cohesion CO-12, 10/side
- Front Fills: (12) CO-8
- Subs: (24) CP-218 ground/flown — all in cardioid arrays
- Amps: Lab.gruppen 20000Q
FOH GEAR
- FOH Console: Solid State Logic SSL Live 550, SSL Fader Pack Expander
- Outboard: (2) Bricasti Design Model 7 reverbs, UAD Plug-in Bundle
- Near Fields: Clair Cohesion CP-6
- Drive Processing: Lake LM 44
MON GEAR
- Stage Left Monitor Console: Avid S6L
- Stage Right Monitor Console: Yamaha Rivage
- Outboard: Rupert Neve Designs 5035 Shelford Channel preamps
- Stage Wedges: (6) Clair CM-22 (6) CM-14
- IEM Hardware: Shure PSM-1000s
- Wireless Mics: Shure Axient
- Vocal Mics: Shure SM58 (Walsh and Schmit); Telefunken M81 (Henley, Gill and Frey); Shure KSM32s (choir)
